House debates

Monday, 23 February 2015

Documents

Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

6:45 pm

Photo of Shayne NeumannShayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | | Hansard source

I acknowledge the Ngunawal and Ngambri people, the traditional custodians of this land on which we are meeting and pay my respect to their elders past and present. I rise today to speak on the Closing the Gap: the Prime Minister's Report 2015, the seventh annual report. It is a sombre read. As I stand here today there remains an uncomfortable and unacceptable truth in this country of two Australians—one, an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person; the other a non-Indigenous person. One is more likely to die at a younger age. One is more likely to suffer trachoma, a Third World disease all but eradicated in developed countries—except Australia. One is up to 15 times more likely to be imprisoned and 31 times more likely to experience family violence. One will find it twice as hard to get a job.

Seven years ago, Australian governments of all levels and political persuasions created the Closing the Gap framework, acknowledging that the perpetuation of Indigenous disadvantage was unacceptable. It remains so today. This year's Closing the Gap report is a serious wake-up call for all of us who share responsibility to work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to end intergenerational disadvantage. We are on track to meet just two of the seven Closing the Gap targets. Though there has been some modest improvement in life expectancy, our efforts must be strengthened and accelerated if we are to Close the Gap in life expectancy within a generation.

The disparity in educational outcomes remains, with no overall improvement in Indigenous reading and numeracy since 2008. We did not meet our early education target, with an alarming backward slide in early education enrolment. Sadly, the gap in employment rates has widened. In challenging times, it is easy to question whether we can really make a difference. The answer is a resounding yes. There are wins and it is important to acknowledge them. The report shows that we are on track to halve the gap in infant mortality rates, following sustained investment in maternal and child health over the life of the Closing the Gap framework. There are more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students completing year 12 or equivalent and we are on track to halve this gap by 2020. It is through the commitment and dedication of individuals, organisations and governments working together that we are beginning to see improvement.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank the thousands of front-line services, their hard-working staff and supporters for their tireless efforts in Closing the Gap: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services; Family Violence Prevention Legal Services; children and family centres; community controlled health services; and drug and alcohol services.

Even now as we stand in this place, thousands of critical Indigenous front-line services continue an agonising wait to see whether they will be funded into the future. Now is not the time to scale back our commitment. The Closing the Gap report presents a startling reality and the warning signs are clear. If the government continues its funding cuts and the upheaval and uncertainty, we will not Close the Gap at any level beyond this year. The government must not continue down this path.

This is not the first report to express concern about our progress in Closing the Gap. The Social Justice and Native Title Report2014 from Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda characterised this past year as one of deep funding cuts, uncertainty and upheaval in Indigenous affairs. The findings of his report were significant and serious. The massive budget cuts and radical reshaping of existing programs, determined without meaningful engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, have resulted in corresponding loss of services to the community, despite the promises of the Minister for Indigenous Affairs that cuts would not affect front-line services. The time for fine words from the Prime Minister and the minister has passed.

If we are serious about Closing the Gap, we must look to our actions. The Prime Minister's Closing the Gap report clearly shows that we cannot afford the Abbott government's massive cuts to Indigenous affairs. You cannot rip more than half a billion dollars from Indigenous programs without dramatically reducing the capacity of front-line services. You cannot rip $165 million from Indigenous health programs and expect to close the life expectancy gap within a generation. You cannot create funding uncertainty for more than 5,000 organisations and expect that they will have the capacity to continue to maximise their efforts to Close the Gap. I could go on and I will.

There has been $13.4 million ripped from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services; $9.6 million cut from Indigenous language programs; the prisoner Throughcare and antirecidivism programs have been cut entirely; $15 million cut from the only national representative body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples; the Indigenous and Remote Eye Health Service is gone; and the National Indigenous Drug and Alcohol Committee axed without warning. The impact of these cuts is devastating. The casualties are our most vulnerable people.

Family Violence Prevention Legal Services are at the coalface of family violence. Its centres provide culturally safe, holistic services for vulnerable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children escaping domestic violence. Anyone who knows Antoinette Braybrook would know her to be a passionate advocate for the protection of women and children and the prevention of family violence. Her commitment and tireless advocacy has seen the service grow over the past 12 years. Nationally, in 2013-14 the Family Violence Prevention Legal Services have helped 5,330 clients, more than 90 per cent of whom were women and children fleeing family violence. The service was cut by $3.6 million initially, and last year was pulled within the scope of the Indigenous Advancement Strategy, effectively defunding it to the tune of $20 million. That means that more than 5,000 Indigenous women and children escaping family violence may have nowhere to go in the future, nowhere to get urgent legal assistance and nowhere to turn for early intervention. Staff relying on incomes to support their families have been forced to make incredibly tough decisions to leave in search of secure employment.

The chaos and uncertainty created by this government continues to take its toll. These are the human costs of their cuts. I stand here today as I did last year I stand here today, as I did last year—and as I will again next year—to call on the government to honour its commitment to develop a justice target in closing the gap We cannot stand by as our First Peoples continue to be among the most imprisoned in the world. The incarceration epidemic will undercut our efforts to close the gap in education, employment and health. It will not be addressed, as the government would have us believe, simply by working towards the other Close the Gap targets. The evidence says otherwise.

While we have made modest improvements over the years in closing the gap in health, education and employment, incarceration rates have continued to increase. We had two landmark reports last year. The Productivity Commission's Overcoming Indigenous disadvantage report found a 57 per cent increase in Indigenous incarceration rates between 2000 and 2013. Mick Gooda in his Social justice and native title report said:

It is shameful that we do better at keeping Aboriginal people in prison than in school or university.

The fact remains that an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander adult is 15 times more likely to be imprisoned than a non-Indigenous person. These statistics should horrify everyone in this House.

After 12 months of misleading Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples about his commitment to a justice target—and certainly in opposition said so—the minister, Senator Nigel Scullion, simply walked away from it late last year from this bipartisan commitment to develop a justice target in closing the gap.

I say to the Abbott government: if you are serious about closing the gap, walk back. Walk back. Let us sit at the table together both sides of politics, state governments, stakeholders, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and work together to close the gap in incarceration and victimisation rates.

There is a real disconnect between what the Abbott government says and what it does. This was picked up on in the recommendations of the Close the Gap Campaign Steering Committee's Progress and priorities report 2015, which found that the government's shambolic Indigenous Advancement Strategy was not adequately connected to the Close the Gap framework. Instead, the government seems to have substituted its own priorities without regard to the holistic nature of the Close the Gap framework.

The inconsistencies do not stop there. The report points to the massive cuts to the tackling smoking and healthy lifestyles program. The government cannot credibly claim to be committed to closing the gap in life expectancy while gutting funding for a program reducing Indigenous smoking rates.

I do commend the government for its commitment to implement the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan developed by Labor in office by the member for Lingiari when he was the Indigenous health minister. I urge the government to look beyond short-term budget fixes and understand that these cuts will be felt for many years to come. You cannot cut your way to closing the gap.

6:55 pm

Photo of Alan TudgeAlan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Closing the gap: Prime Minister's report 2015. This is an important report. It was instituted by the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd back in 2008. I thought it was a very good idea to institute such a report where the Prime Minister of the day each year early on in the term of parliaments will table a report which goes through some of the key metrics to determine how well we are going overall in Closing the Gap.

There are six key metrics and a further one which we added last year, so seven in total. Perhaps similar to previous reports, this is in some respects a disappointing report. I think as a nation we would have liked to have progressed more rapidly than what we have done as indicated by the statistics enclosed within this document. But it is not all doom and gloom. There is some significant improvement in a number of areas. For example, the year 12 attainment rate has gone up quite rapidly over the last decade; and the proportion of 20- to 24-year-olds with year 12 or equivalent was 45.4 per cent in 2008 and is now 58.5 per cent in 2013, so quite a stark increase in a small amount of time.

The proportion of people with a university degree has also considerably increased in recent times; the child mortality gap target is very much on track; and even the life expectancy gap has made little progress in recent years but, overall, that gap is now only 10 years, when it was considerably larger some years ago.

So there are many positive signs in this report, and we should not lose track of it but, overall, the message from it is that there is still a very long way to go towards ensuring that there are equal opportunities and outcomes for and from Aboriginal people in this nation. I think together as a parliament across this chamber there is a very strong commitment to ensuring that we do whatever we can to ensure the advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

When the Abbott government came to office, the Prime Minister made Indigenous advancement one of his core handfuls of priorities for his government. As a result of that, a number of steps have already been taken to fulfil that pledge. The first was a series of governance changes. Initially, it started with putting all of the government's Indigenous specific programs into the Prime Minister's department, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. What that did was ensure that those programs achieved greater status and could have greater coordination across the myriad programs which did exist.

The second part of that governance reform was—and this is ongoing at present—the merging of 150 federal Indigenous specific programs into five. Again, we do this so that we can more sharply focus on some core priorities and ensure that there is a greater streamlining of effort and greater coordination across the governments, and decisions will be made in relation to the funding applications against those new programs in the weeks ahead.

A final part of the governance changes has been to devolve power down to executive level officials in the regional areas. That allows those officials to act as problem solvers rather than just as contract managers and means they are able to work more effectively with local Indigenous leaders on the ground. It empowers them to work cooperatively with the government in a shared effort to advance local Aboriginal people. So that was the first series of reforms—important governance changes that we have instituted.

The second important reform was in some respects a philosophical change. By that I mean that the Prime Minister has articulated three very sharp priorities for this government in this area. They are: ensuring that kids are at school, that adults are at work and that communities are safe. Why were these three priorities chosen? In large part, it was because they have underpinned functional societies in almost all of human history. That is, kids learning from adults, adults working for their sustenance and law and order being the bedrock of a community. Without those core things occurring it is so much more difficult to ensure the advancement of other areas. That is why we are determined to focus on those three areas. We believe that if we do focus on those three areas and are successful in them then other things will be able to be achieved much more readily.

Then, finally, in our first 16 months we have already instituted some very practical changes. In school attendance we have identified the first 34 schools that will achieve the direct instruction model of education, which is much more explicit teaching in those schools. And we have 24 Indigenous-specific training centres up and running, which provide 5,000 Indigenous people with guaranteed jobs should they walk into those training centres. That is such a starkly different model to what often occurs—training for training's sake, which does not necessarily lead to a job at the other end.

We are rolling out full-time work for the dole in regional and remote areas across Australia and we will make many other decisions in relation to the Forrest report in the weeks and months ahead. We are taking every single one of those recommendations very seriously, including looking at the cashless welfare card idea. We are currently in discussions with banks and communities in relation to that.

So there are very significant changes which have already been made in the first 16 months of this government: governance changes, changes around priorities and some very practical changes to support those priorities. We hope that when these are fully implemented that we will see much greater success against those Closing the Gap indicators.

Just in the few minutes which I have remaining I would like to express my disappointment with the response from the Labor Party to this Closing the gap report. In some respects I am most disappointed, because I believe some of their critiques and analysis of the problems are dishonest. And if there is a dishonest analysis of the problems then it is so much more difficult to get a sensible solution to those problems.

The first piece of dishonesty which I think that the Labor Party has put forward is the suggestion that any savings that we have made in this portfolio are somehow contributing to the poor results in this report. I would just like to make a few points about that.

The first is that in relation to this report, nearly every indicator actually relies on 2013 numbers—not 2015 or even 2014 figures. So, in some respects, this is a report of the years leading up to 2013 rather than a report on this government's time in the last 16 months. The Prime Minister did not point that out; he did not think it was appropriate. We are disappointed as a nation for not progressing more rapidly.

The second point I would make is that if money were the answer to closing the gap then we would have closed it years ago. That is the sad truth. There has been an 80 per cent real increase in funding to Indigenous-specific programs over the last decade. We now spend something like $44,000 per Indigenous person, according to the Productivity Commission—about $30 billion in total spent on Torres Strait and Aboriginal people. Our savings represent about 0.2 per cent of that $30 billion.

No-one likes having to make savings—no-one does—across any aspect of the portfolio. But to suggest that a 0.2 per cent reduction out of the $30 billion spend on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people somehow contributes to the failure to close the gap more rapidly I think is actually just dishonest and I think it is just disappointing.

The shadow minister was asked in an interview—in a debate that I was in with him—that if there were one single thing that could be done to ensure that the closing of the gap occurred more rapidly, what would he do? His response was, 'I would reverse the savings decisions which the Abbott government has made.' I just do not think that is honest—an honest analysis of the problem. We are investing in Indigenous affairs, and our sharp priorities of getting kids into school and adults into work are what will see progress being made. (Time expired)

7:05 pm

Photo of Warren SnowdonWarren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | | Hansard source

I am pleased to be able to participate in this debate, as I have done on a number of occasions over the past years.

Can I say that I, too, am disappointed—disappointed at the contribution from the parliamentary secretary; particularly at his reference to the shadow minister actually representing a dishonest argument. It is very clear that the argument being put by the shadow minister is that you cannot cut your way to closing the gap. What is very clear as a result of decisions taken in the budget last year is that we have had $543 million taken from vital culturally-specific programs, leaving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians worse off not better off. That is the antithesis of what we have been striving for!

You cannot have it both ways. You cannot on the one hand, as the shadow minister said, come in here and say that the Prime Minister wants to be the Prime Minister for Indigenous Australians and then on the other hand take deliberate actions which undermine your capacity to close the gap—which is what they have done. They might ask: give us a real example of what we have done? Well, there was $165 million cut from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health programs. Think about it: they have cut $165 million from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health programs.

Now, I agree that this report that we are discussing tonight is not a report of the last 12 months. But, if we are to achieve the objectives that we are aiming for under the Closing the Gap targets, you cannot—over this past 12 months—cut funding to programs which are essential to improving health outcomes. It just beggars belief that you cannot see the contradiction. And the parliamentary secretary gets up here and spouts, as he did—very ineffectually I might say—that somehow the arguments being put forward by the opposition shadow spokesman were somehow not accurate!

Photo of Ed HusicEd Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | | Hansard source

He didn't say 'inaccurate'; he said 'dishonest'!

Photo of Warren SnowdonWarren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | | Hansard source

He said 'dishonest'. He ought to come and apologise for that, because they are not dishonest; they are entirely accurate.

Tobacco smoking, for example, is estimated to be the leading cause of the burden of disease amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people; it is responsible for about 12 per cent of that burden of disease. Yet this $165 million is a direct cut to antismoking programs. Let me tell you just a little bit of data: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians are more than three times likely to have diabetes than other Australians; they are twice as likely to have signs of chronic kidney disease; they are more than four times as likely to be in advanced stages of chronic kidney disease; and they are at experiencing increasingly high levels of chronic conditions at a comparatively young age. If you want to stop this, you have to do a range of things. One of those things is to get people to stop smoking.

Currently the smoking rate among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across the nation is 47 per cent; compared to the general population which is about 14 to 15 per cent. If we can cut down smoking rates, you can have a direct material impact on closing the gap. Yet this government forecast—when they were in opposition—by the then shadow Treasurer saying he did not think these programs were any good. We have learnt was has happened as a result: these programs have been cut. Frankly, you cannot have it both ways, and it is really dishonest of the parliamentary secretary to come into this chamber and abuse the integrity of the shadow minister at the same time that he gives this piffle of an argument, which is in fact empty.

We are making some progress. As has been pointed out, we will reach the target of halving the gap in infant mortality rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children under five, and that is a very important thing to do. It is being done as a result of investments made over a number of years by the participation of Aboriginal community controlled health services, through public health organisations and through private practitioners. It is being done in a coordinated way and it is only by addressing this particular need, by addressing programs that will deal with child and maternal health, that we will get the outcome we are after. We will only do that by continuing the investments that have been made.

As the shadow minister has said, we are very pleased that the government has adopted the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health plan, and we are looking forward to its implementation strategy once it is developed.

But I have to say, standing here and listening to the shadow minister talk about the administrative changes which have been made, the governance changes, which are simply chaos—no-one knows what is happening across in PM&C, let alone the Prime Minister or the minister responsible.

We know that the Indigenous Advancement Strategy is an absolute mess. Decisions were supposed to have been taken late last year; they have been put off we are told now until the end of March. That means organisations, as the shadow minister pointed out, have been wondering whether or not they will be funded beyond the end of this financial year. They have no certainty; they cannot tell their staff whether or not they will have a job. Yet somehow or another this is a good thing, because the parliamentary secretary gets up here and tells us that his governance arrangements are making a difference. But they are not making a difference. They are creating chaos and uncertainty. And we know, as do they, that the whole thing is a mess. Five thousand applications have been received under the IAS. Critical services, including women's shelters in remote communities, did not receive their funding previously. And it is clear it is not proposed to fund them under this strategy.

We need to be very clear. We want to work with the government in a bipartisan way to improve these outcomes. But we cannot be bipartisan in approaching the budget in the way this government approaches the budget. We cannot accept that we must be bipartisan when we see administrative decisions taken which are inimical to getting the outcomes we all want. We cannot be bipartisan in supporting the government in that regard, just as we cannot be bipartisan in supporting the government for doing what it is doing.

It is scandalous really. The previous government funded the establishment of 38 children and family centres across the country out of the National Partnership Agreement on Indigenous Early Childhood Development. This government has refused to provide them with ongoing funding and said that it is all a state responsibility. We know what happens in those cases. In my electorate, Yuendumu, Maningrida, Gunbalanya, Ngukurr and Palmerston have all been affected by this government's decisions, and that will adversely affect the outcomes for young kids. On the one hand, you are talking about getting more kids to go to school, making sure they all have a job and making sure communities are safe, but at the very same time you are not providing certainty for funding for organisations across 38 communities, having a material impact on the outcomes you want to achieve. It beggars belief.

I know that not all members of the government support the positions which have been adopted. I do know there are people of good will across the parliament who want to see an improvement in these outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. But I think it is worth noting that the Closing the Gap Steering Committee report makes a series of recommendations; one of which is particularly important. The government, just prior to Christmas, scrapped the National Indigenous Drug and Alcohol Committee. For what particular purpose, it is very hard to understand. But this particular committee provided a process for getting coherency and opportunity for communication around Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander drug and alcohol issues. It meant that experts, administrators, doctors, nurses and health workers—everyone involved—could come together and discuss what were the best options for improving outcomes. That is gone. It no longer exists. And it says to me that the government is not really serious.

I commend to the parliament the Close the Gap Campaign Steering Committee report. It is entitled Progress and Priorities Report 2015. I commend the report to all members of parliament to read because it does make, I think, some good arguments as to what we should be doing and makes some, I think, very well founded positions on what we should be doing.

For my own part, there is one area that I want to make sure we continue to invest in, and I hope the government will continue to do so—that is, invest healthily in the Aboriginal community controlled health service organisations around this country, who have been fundamental in us achieving the gains thus far and will be fundamental to making sure we achieve the gains we all want to achieve in the end.

7:15 pm

Photo of Melissa PriceMelissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I am pleased also to offer my contribution following the release of the latest Closing the Gap report. There are 274 remote Aboriginal communities in Western Australia with the majority of them located in my electorate of Durack. They are located in the Kimberley, the Gascoigne, the Pilbara, the mid-west and also the northern wheat belt. But as we have heard, the gap remains very wide. Durack has the second largest number of Indigenous people living in any electorate.

In discussing the Closing the Gap report, you are left with this sinking feeling that serious restructuring of the way that we do things is required to address the difference between the living standards of Aboriginal people and the rest of the Australian community. The reorganisation does need to be transformational and this government has made a good start on the right path. We need to focus on education and schooling, jobs and meaningful work, training opportunities leading to a job—not training just for training's sake—safety and security in the community and in the home, and, of course, health and wellbeing.

Only with positive, reliable and sustainable practices in these four areas will outcomes be realised, will the breach lessen and will the gap narrow. This is an easy thing to say but so difficult to do, as previous well-meaning governments have experienced. Let us take some time to look at the progress against the seven targets as outlined in the recently released Closing the Gap report: closing the gap in life expectancy within a generation, not on track—limited progress and much more to do; halving the gap within a decade in mortality rates for Indigenous children under five, on track for the longer term—some good news there; access for Indigenous four-year-olds in remote communities to early childhood education, not met—however, noting the target is 95 per cent and all jurisdictions have committed to this; closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous school attendance within five years—new targets have been set against the 2014 baseline to close school attendance gap by 2019; halve the gap in reading, writing and numeracy for Indigenous children, not on track—alarmingly, no overall improvement since 2008 so most unsatisfactory; narrow the gap in year 12 or equivalent attainment, on track and the gap is narrowing—some positive news there; finally, halve the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, not on track—in fact, in decline since 2008, very disappointing.

We see some improvement but, overall, a pretty poor report card by any means. Frankly, if we cannot get kids to school, which this government is working hard to achieve, and improve numeracy and literacy then we should not be surprised that employment targets have not been met. But are the expectations of the system we have too low? What are the programs? Who is getting funded and are these programs effective? Where is the accountability? These are the questions we have to ask ourselves. This government is focused on answering these questions and on quality outcomes for Indigenous people but there is much more we need to do—that is obvious to all.

To paraphrase Warren Mundine, Chair of the Indigenous Advisory Council: it is not about money; it is the fact that the money is not going where it is needed—and I sadly see that in my electorate all the time

However, others add that the problem relates in many cases to culture. So many Aboriginal Australians are caught in a cross-cultural chasm, which complicates, confuses and compounds everyday life for them. Further, many are homeless, victims of family violence, suffering from alcohol or other substance abuse issues or are incarcerated. But pretty well most Aboriginal Australians, to some greater or lesser degree, find themselves wedged and then torn between conflicting ideologies—the ancient, nomadic Aboriginal culture where land and ancestry are the essence of life and living and the Western culture, like the institution of this very parliament where we gather today to make speeches, to make laws and the like. But it is not Aboriginal lore. It is not how a 60,000-year-old Aboriginal culture maintains its law and order. As law makers, we must ask ourselves: are we addressing culture adequately and genuinely in our efforts to close the gap?

It is my view that the practices and reforms that are intended to reduce the gap must be brutally culturally appropriate and led by those who have the ear of Aboriginal Australians. I am talking about leadership. I am talking about opinion leaders. And I would offer to this important conversation that we need and want more Aboriginal people to take on this leadership role. Perhaps, for too long, we have had politicians and administrators—mainly non-Indigenous—being the ones to present so-called solutions to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians.

There are many brilliant Indigenous leaders in Durack. I would like to take a moment to mention one young leader in Durack by the name of Torekana Bole-Turner, of South Hedland, which is a mining town in the Pilbara. Torekana is a finalist in the 2015 National Youth Awards in the Youth Leadership category. Torekana has been nominated for challenging racism and disadvantage in his home town by facilitating an outreach program known as 'The Hood Academy'. Torekana has shone through with his passion and dedication, showing that age is no barrier to getting involved, to showing the way, to being a leader. Torekana is a credit to our community and an outstanding youth ambassador across regional Western Australia. We need more people like Torekana to step up and to work in partnership with communities, the non-government sector and government. The federal government has commenced a program of real reform, significantly changing policies and programmes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

As we have heard, the new Indigenous Advancement Strategy has three priorities: get the kids to school, get the adults to work and make communities safer. There is no argument there that they should be our three priorities. I stand behind the genuine efforts across all levels and all persuasions of government to close the gap. I share in the frustrations of those Indigenous and non-Indigenous people who have tried so hard to make a difference. The recent release of the seventh Closing the gap report has heightened the disparity in health, education, employment and safety between Aboriginal Australians and the rest of the community. Despite the best efforts of previous governments, there is still so much more to be done to improve quality of life for all. We all need to work together to close the gap.

7:23 pm

Photo of Stephen JonesStephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | | Hansard source

This House and this parliament is built on the lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people. They so generously welcome us to country at the commencement of each parliament and on a daily basis when parliament is sitting. We start the day by acknowledging their continuous connection to land, their culture and their contribution to this region. I respect your elders, past and present, and extend that statement of respect to the elders of the region which I represent: the Dharawal and Gundangara people of the Illawarra and the Southern Highlands.

Before the time that Aboriginal people were displaced from their land and separated from their families, their stories, their traditions and their languages, Aboriginal Australians were our nation's first doctors, law makers, teachers and conservationists. Today, Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples experience significant disadvantages in their daily lives, with poorer access to education, health, housing and employment—the cumulative result of generations of dispossession, injustice and denial. It falls to us to make right this historical wrong. The time for justice is now. The problem is urgent.

In 2008, the then Prime Minister Rudd outlined a new future for Australia, one where:

… we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.

Prime Minister Abbott has now tabled the Closing the gap report for 2014, on the anniversary of Prime Minister Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generation. Regrettably, as numerous members of this place have observed, the progress we are making in closing the gap is stalling. We are on track and making progress on the target to halve the gap in mortality rates for Indigenous children under the age of five. That is something that all members of this place must rejoice in. Progress was made to halve the gap for Indigenous Australians aged 20 to 24 in year 12 attainment. Again, that is something that we must take some pleasure in. But, worryingly, we are not on track with these other targets to close the gap in life expectancy; reading, writing and numeracy; employment outcomes; and early education access for under-4-year-olds.

Doing nothing is not an option and doing less would be a breach of faith. Here is why: the life expectancy gap is 10.5 years for males and 9.5 years for females; between 2006 and 2010, the age-standardised death rate for Indigenous people was 1.9 times the rate for non-Indigenous people; in 2003 to 2005, maternal mortality rates were 2.7 times higher for Indigenous women than for non-Indigenous women and Indigenous people were 3.4 times more likely to report having some form of diabetes than non-Indigenous people; over that same period, Indigenous people died from diabetes at almost seven times the rate of non-Indigenous people; and between 2006 and 2010, after age adjustment, the notification rate of end-stage renal disease was 7.2 times higher for Indigenous people than for non-Indigenous people. I could go on for all of the remaining time allotted and give example after example in the area of health and in the area of education where we are failing to address these gaps and where our failure to do that marks us down. That is something that we should all be ashamed of.

I have heard previous speakers talk about the terrible blight that smoking is having upon men and women from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds. In 2009, almost 50 per cent of Indigenous mothers reported smoking during pregnancy. This level is 3.8 times greater than that of their non-Indigenous counterparts. The figure is actually higher if you separate the Northern Territory for every other region in the country. I see the member for Chifley here. It is worth noting that it is not a universal statistic. There have been measures that have been put in place and programmes that have been the put in place, including in the area that the member for Chifley represents, where maternal smoking rates have actually been reduced to that of the non-Indigenous population.

The case is not hopeless. We know that, with the right programmes and the right effort and giving control to the communities to take these issues up through local initiatives, we can do something to address these issues. If we were going to put in place one thing over the course of this year that would make a long-term difference for the benefit of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their families, it would be to tackle the gap in smoking rates and, in particular, the gap in maternal smoking rates amongst Aboriginal populations.

In responding to the Prime Minister's statement, the Leader of the Opposition has pledged to incorporate Justice Targets into our Closing the Gap objectives, and there is a compelling case for this. Incarceration rates of Aboriginal Australians are damningly disproportionate: 25 out of 100 of Australian prison inmates are Aboriginal Australians. However, only three out of every 100 Australians is Aboriginal. Acting Deputy Speaker, that figure alone should cause us all to pause and ask what is going on here. One in four Australians behind bars is an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person—that is completely disproportionate to the three per cent of Australians who come from Aboriginal backgrounds. As the Labor leader, Mr Shorten, said to this House: a target on justice is a missing plank in this picture. The situation has been getting progressively worse over the years. As a nation, we cannot simply attribute these rates of incarceration solely to the consequences of individual choices. To be sure, we cannot discount the importance of individual choices and decisions in these high incarceration rates. But to ignore the other factors—factors such as poor health, poor education, poor housing and unemployment, and a lack of hope in many of these communities—is to forget about the majority of the picture. These are all the social factors that lead to substance abuse and other criminal activity—the factors that are leading to this disproportionate number of people behind bars.

If we look at some of the reports—particularly out of the west and out of the Northern Territory—which look at the number of people from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds who are in jail, or who are on remand for what most of us would say are trivial offences—the non-payment of parking fines, for example, and other trivial offences—we have to ask ourselves: 'Is this the best use of our corrective services dollars? Is this the best way to treat this issue?' Surely we can do better. We also know that the justice system does not usually address the causes of a crime, but it shows the symptoms of these deeper, more troubling, social issues. We are all challenged to address this together—to walk together. Labor proposes formal, measurable targets related to justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

On Friday I was in the New South Wales parliament to listen to evidence being given to the Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. I was very moved by the evidence of many of the witnesses, and the next day I went out to Emerton in the member for Chifley's electorate—and I am certain that he will make some observations about the evidence that we heard at that hearing in his electorate. But, in Macquarie Street in Sydney, I was very moved by the evidence of the Co-Chair of the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples, Ms Kirstie Parker, who had this to say:

The increasing numbers of rates of incarceration for our people, particularly young people and women, is of huge concern within our communities. We do believe strongly that this is an area that the Commonwealth must show some leadership on.

Ms Parker went on to say that:

… there must be a concerted, collective effort to reduce incarceration rates. There must also be attention focused on reducing the number of our children in out-of-home care. These are things that are currently not covered by the Closing the Gap targets. We are on the record as pushing for justice targets, in particular.

(Time expired)

7:33 pm

Photo of Michael McCormackMichael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | | Hansard source

Yesterday in Wagga Wagga I attended the 23rd annual combined Rotary Clubs of Wagga Wagga Peace Day. Wagga Wagga was the first of Rotary Peace City in the world, and that concept has spread throughout the Wagga Wagga region, throughout the state of New South Wales, throughout Australia and, indeed, internationally. Cities are lining up now to become Rotary Peace Cities. At that marvellous function, the school captains of many, if not all, of the high schools of Wagga Wagga spoke of the ways which they have identified to promote peace and harmony within the community. Many of those school captains talked about the progress that their schools have made in reaching out to Aboriginal Australians, and about the programs whereby they have put in place peaceful ways to help Aboriginal communities within the Riverina electorate and within the City of Wagga Wagga, which is part of the Wiradjuri nation.

The welcome to country at this Peace Day ceremony in the Victory Memorial Gardens was given by Aunty Isabel Reid, a former Citizen of the Year of Wagga Wagga; a fine upstanding citizen; and an elder of the very best qualities and attributes. Aunty Isabel Reid gave a speech at the recent National Sorry Day ceremony and, in this Closing the Gap debate, I thought it would be appropriate to read Aunty Isabel's speech into the Hansard. She said:

It has now been 7 years since Kevin Rudd made the historical apology speech which brings us all here together today.

I stand up here every year as I have done in years before the apology. I am one of the many children who didn't have a choice where they wanted to be, who were given a path to walk which we weren't prepared for. A path which took us from our homes, our family, our kin—a culture which had been all that we had known.

I've shared my personal story time and time again as have my other brothers and sisters. I don't do this to revisit the hurt or to blame governments past and present. I do this because sharing knowledge and having understanding breaks down barriers and the more that people are aware the more we reach common ground.

The apology laid the groundwork; we cannot rest on the speech alone for the words must be living and breathing. Make the effort on significant days such as today. I said this last year: "By being involved we deepen our knowledge and understanding, by being involved we share our unity and being in unity we have strength."

The journey for us going forward is about not forgetting the past. We cannot do that. We can close our eyes but the memory of past atrocities is engraved in our history: deep within our history. I will not focus on the negative—yes, I was taken, however I am not a victim I am a survivor and a leader for justice who was once a little girl without a home who became the Elder I am today.

…   …   …

Fine words from a fine person—Aunty Isabel Reid of Wagga Wagga, a Wiradjuri elder. We could do well in this parliament to occasionally reflect on those words of Aunty Isabel and other Aboriginal elders, who no doubt also made fine speeches on Sorry Day, and who continue to make fine contributions when they do welcomes to country to welcome people onto their lands or to events.

While reflecting on the Closing the gap report of 2015, as the member for Throsby just indicated, we note there is much work to be done and many more important initiatives to be gained. There is much more than we can do as parliamentarians, as a parliament, as a government and as an opposition to help bridge that gap. But the report had some positives. The life expectancy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men in 2005-07 was 67.5 years; in 2010-12 it was 69.1 years. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in 2005-07 it was 73.1 years, and 73.7 years in 2010-12. They are not big gains but they are, nonetheless, important gains. This report notes that:

The Campaign Steering Committee welcomes the absolute gains in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander life expectancy from 2005-2007 to 2010-2012.

These are on the ground improvements to the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and should not be underestimated. Another year a father can spend with his son, or a grandmother with her grandchildren, or that a trusted elder can spend guiding the life of their community, is to be treasured. Certainly, that is very much the case.

When you look at the report, lifetime risky drinking and binge drinking is down in Aboriginal communities. On the child mortality rate, the Council of Australian Governments Reform Council reports that Australian governments are on track to meet COAG's target to halve the gap in child death rates—that is, the mortality rates of children under five—by 2018. However, the death rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children is still more than double the rate for non-Indigenous children. It is still unacceptable. We know that; we appreciate that. But we are working hard at lowering those dreadful rates of infant death.

I know how hard the Prime Minister works. He goes into a remote Aboriginal community every year and spends a week there—he governs the nation from a remote Aboriginal community. I know what the efforts are of the Indigenous affairs minister, Senator Nigel Scullion. He has come into my community to talk to the Wiradjuri people on a number of occasions—to communities such as Brungle, Wagga Wagga, Griffith, Coleambally and Tumbarumba—and to tell them of the expectations of the government and the expectations of the parliament. I know he is pleased at the fact that more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are graduating from university and that more Indigenous people are attaining year 12 levels at school. That is great. We obviously need to improve upon it—it is not the same rate as for non-Indigenous Australians—but we are making progress. As Senator Scullion says:

A good school education gives children the best start in life. Children need to be at school every day – no excuses.

He said that in an opinion piece on 11 February.

In his speech to the Senate on the Closing the gap report, Senator Scullion talked about the more than 410 school attendance officers and more than 100 school attendance supervisors now operating in the 69 priority Remote School Attendance Strategy, or RSAS, communities and 73 schools. In term three of 2014, there was a 13 per cent rise in the number of children attending school across 29 Northern Territory government RSAS schools and an eight per cent rise in the number of children attending the 11 Queensland government RSAS schools, compared with term three of 2013. They are small but not insignificant achievements, and the government is working hard.

I know there is bipartisan support to do all we can to close the gap. I see member for Chifley nodding; he knows how important it is. He has a number of Aboriginal people in his electorate and I know how hard he works to help those Aboriginal people in his electorate. I know how hard you work, too, Deputy Speaker Jones, in your electorate of Herbert, to do what you can to help Aboriginal people: to lower incarceration rates and to lower obesity rates, all those things which are affecting the life expectancy and opportunities other Australians take for granted.

As Senator Scullion said:

Guaranteed employment and job-specific training is the aim of vocational training and employment centres—VTECs—which build on the GenerationOne model. There are 28 VTECs around Australia and another VTEC in the pipeline.

So there is work and planning being done to help get better educational outcomes for Indigenous Australians. The government will also strengthen the Commonwealth's Indigenous procurement policy, using the Commonwealth's $39 billion procurement budget, to encourage Indigenous businesses in employment. Giving someone a job means giving them opportunity—giving them an income and getting them off welfare. We know that is the case for all Australians, but particularly so when jobs are so much harder to get; and it is so much harder for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to actually start a business and make it work. We are doing what we can. There is much more work to be done. Let us hope that next year's Closing the gap report can indicate even further gains in this very important policy area.

7:43 pm

Photo of Ed HusicEd Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | | Hansard source

I am very heartened; I do not ordinarily like following the member for Riverina because it means I have to listen to his speech, but I will listen to those types of speeches every day. They demonstrate aa genuine bipartisan commitment to this area—the recognition that we need to work together across the community to address some of the really difficult issues that are intractable and very hard to get movement on. But they have to be subject to an annual report, in the way that Closing the Gap speeches are delivered by prime ministers regardless of political complexion, because we cannot forget it. For too long these problems have been forgotten. They have been too easy to neglect, and they should not be. So we do need to be able to get focus on these issues.

We will have disagreements from time to time. We have, and we have expressed them. As much as this pains some of those opposite to hear, we understand the commitment that has been applied and expressed by those who stand on that side of the House and speak about this issue, but just understand that from our point of view, having known how difficult this is to deal with, we do have concerns when those budget cuts go on, because how do you actually make progress if those cuts are to eventuate? Those opposite will say, 'That's not actually running in the way you say.' That is an argument we will both prosecute across this table, and I appreciate that. But the main thing—the good thing—is not the argument itself but the fact that we are talking about it and the fact that we want to commit resources to it, work with communities on it and see something better than what generations have been stuck with for years before. This is something that we should find common ground to work on.

Chifley, the seat that the parliamentary secretary reflected on and that I am proud to represent, is home to 6,000 of our first people, Aboriginal people. In an urban environment, it is one of the largest populations. So I am enormously humbled that we are on Dharug land and I am enormously proud to represent the concerns of people from my area in this place. Certainly, when I travel through the electorate, we are trying to do our best to work more and more to recognise and to celebrate the various cultures, because it is not just the Dharug people; we are home to people who have come from all over New South Wales to make Western Sydney, and in particular Chifley, home.

I was particularly proud, as a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, that we had the report last year on Aboriginal language, because I think that is a bridge between generations and also a connection to culture. When you see how many Aboriginal languages are lost in this country, this is a central part of identity that is going before our eyes. Particularly for young Aboriginal people who do not a have a connection to their culture principally through dialect, this is a big issue. So the fact that we could have more and more of our local sites named in the local Aboriginal dialect is important not just as a mark of recognition and respect but also for the survival of dialect and to be able to build stronger identity, the lack of which, I would argue, is one of the big things that hold us back in making progress. So I certainly commend that work.

These were difficult. For a Prime Minister to deliver these figures is hard. I give particular credit for the fact that the Prime Minister is very committed in this area, and it would be hard to make these reports back, particularly in terms of the seven target areas of which only two are on track to be met—that is, halving the gap for 20-to-24-year-old Indigenous Australians in year 12 attainment and halving the gap in mortality rates in Indigenous children under five. We are on track to meet those, and that is excellent. But in closing the 10-year gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians by 2031 we are not on track. In halving the gap in unemployment outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians by 2018, we are not on track. These are big issues, particularly in Chifley, where unemployment in the 15-to-64 age group is about 18 per cent, or three times the national average. It is simply unacceptable. We should not bear this in any way whatsoever. Halving the gap in reading, writing and numeracy is also not on track to be met by the 2018 target, and these are big issues.

We certainly do need to be able to ensure that we are committed more and more to following this up. To be honest, I think that we should not just have a yearly report on this. Where we do have concerns and where we are falling behind, we should have quarterly updates, frankly, because you do wonder how progress is being made through the course of the year. In the period when we believe that we are not doing as well as we should, we should have quarterly reporting on this and then, when we get to a situation where we believe we are satisfied with progress, revert to annual. But, if we are serious about making headway on these things, we do need to commit more resources.

I was thinking of this the other day when my friend and colleague the member for Throsby referred to the visit by the Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. It was a very difficult consultation, insofar as a range of different views were expressed, some very difficult. But there is this constant argument that we are confronted with when it comes to this area, and that is: what good is it to have recognition in the Constitution if we are having all these problems where people cannot get a job, they are not literate and they are incarcerated way more? Why don't we make progress on that? I understand that, but the recognition within the Constitution is important, because the first people of our nation are excluded from the principal document that founds this nation. I do not think this is an issue of debate between our two sides, but the issue, fundamentally, is: aren't we able to do both? Aren't we able to recognise within our Constitution the first peoples of this nation and improve the things that are holding them back from their progress? That is what Close the Gap does. This is a constant requirement for us as a parliament and as a nation to make headway on these things, and this is important for us to do, as is recognition. Again this is hotly debated, and I understand the reasons for that debate. But the head and the heart should be able to work together on these types of things, and we should be able to make progress. So I think it is important that we redouble our efforts in this area.

There is one other thing that was mentioned to me on the weekend that I want to end on if I may. While I was at these consultations at Emerton on Sunday—and I want to thank the Mount Druitt and District Reconciliation Group, who do a tremendous job, who hosted the event on Saturday and who have done a fantastic job of hosting since 1998 the reconciliation walk in Chifley; they are a tremendous bunch of people—I had an Aboriginal elder come up to me on the weekend. He was very concerned about what was happening to a centre called Muru Mittigar, which is outside the Chifley electorate. 'Muru Mittigar', in Dharug, means 'pathway to friends'. It is an Aboriginal cultural and education centre, and it is based in Castlereagh in the member for Lindsay's seat; I know that she is quite involved with it. What it does is to advance Aboriginal culture, improve the economic and social capacity of the Aboriginal people in our area and empower meaningful participation to enhance their role as traditional custodians. It is involved in training and employment for natural resources management and mine and broadacre rehabilitation. It also trains in retail and customer service, and it provides a cultural renewal opportunity as well as financial counselling. So it does some great things. The elder that approached me said, 'Have you heard what's happening to Muru Mittigar?' and I said no. He said to me, 'They're closing it,' which floored me. I did not know why we would have this closed. I did not know if it was a funding cut or what was going on.

It turns out that there is actually a lot of work being done in the Penrith Lakes Parklands to redevelop it and there is a draft vision plan in place. I certainly know and others certainly appreciate the issues confronting the Penrith Lakes development and that site. There are a lot of issues there that are not easy to deal with. But Muru Mittigar has been told they have until May and then need to relocate. You understand that these things happen in these processes, but they have been given no place to relocate. On the stream of things I have mentioned they are doing, they are providing important activities, some of which are at the heart of what we are discussing today For them not to be told where they are going next puts enormous pressure on them, so I certainly call on the Baird government, in recognising—I will try to be as fair as I can—the challenge that they have in dealing with this through the department of planning, to find a place for Muru Mittigar. They are going to be disrupted enough as it is through the move. They are doing fantastic work across Western Sydney and providing a very important platform for Aboriginal people across our area. I just hope we can find a place for them to move, to make it as smooth as possible and allow them to do their work, because there are people who are actually helping us in the case for closing the gap. I commend the report to the House.

7:53 pm

Photo of Mark CoultonMark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I too rise this evening to speak on the Closing the Gap report delivered by the Prime Minister. I say at the outset that the Parkes electorate is one-third of New South Wales, and I am not sure if I am the second or the third highest Aboriginal population of any electorate in this place. But representing the Aboriginal people of western and northern New South Wales is a job that I take very seriously and a job of which I am enormously proud. I represent a large part of the Wiradjuri area, the Gomeroi and other areas to the west. Those communities right across my electorate have large numbers of Aboriginal people in them.

I might start by talking about some of the issues that we are confronting, but I hope to finish on a more positive note. I might also note that last weekend was the 50-year anniversary of the Freedom Ride. We had a re-enactment of the Freedom Bus last weekend, and I was very proud to be in Moree. It came through my electorate at Dubbo, had a day at Wallagoot and then came back to Moree. Fifty years ago in Moree the Aboriginal children were prohibited from using the pool. The pool is something that defines Moree; it is an artesian wonder, and people come from all over the world to take the waters at Moree. The local children were prohibited.

At the 50th anniversary I was speaking to some of these no-longer-younger people—they are getting on a bit; it was 50 years ago! But they were saying what a big deal it was. Charlie Perkins came to town with 29 university students in a bus. They drove down to the mission and said, 'Do you kids want to come to the pool?' They said sure, and on the bus they were singing Little Pattie's song of the day, 'Stompin' at Maroubra', as they went up the Streets of Moree to go to the pool. It was a big confrontation. In hindsight these big changes that we see are obvious, but at the time it took enormous courage because it was going against the convention. I am very proud to say that Moree is a very different place now than it was, but it was only within our generation 50 years ago that we had this level of discrimination in the town.

I am pleased to say that now Moree would be one of the few places in Australia where its workforce in the council represents the community. Twenty-three per cent of the workforce in Moree are Aboriginal people. The Moree council has a director who is an Aboriginal man, who I believe is the first Aboriginal director of a local government body in Australia. They have taken a real lead. Last year I was also very proud to be part of the reconciliation action plan. There was a large function in the Moree town hall where the Aboriginal community and the non-Aboriginal community came together to work towards and recognise a reconciliation plan for Moree. One of the elders in Moree, a well-known gentleman by the name of Lyle Monroe, whom I was sitting with that night, said that he did not ever think he would see a night like that in Moree. So we have come a long way.

Also in this place I am a member of the Standing Committee on Indigenous Affairs, and at the moment we are doing an inquiry into foetal alcohol syndrome. While that is not an exclusive condition for the Aboriginal communities, it is certainly prevalent in the Aboriginal communities. The fact is that a mother using alcohol at the time of conception can set the patterns and limitations on that child for the rest of their life. There is even evidence starting to show that possibly excessive use of alcohol by the father at conception can affect that foetus and the child and person it grows into. So alcohol has been a big issue for these communities—not exclusively, but it has afflicted them. Unfortunately, now we have moved to another stage. Even when we were in Cairns last week for the hearing of the committee, social workers from Cape York communities that have taken the decision to become dry communities are now battling with ice, as is every community in my electorate Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. Unfortunately for the Aboriginal people, these low forms of humanity that peddle in these drugs target disadvantaged communities.

If we as a society, as a community, do not tackle this issue head on, the consequences will be with us for a long, long time. When children at a young age get involved in taking these amphetamines, mainly sold as ice, more often than not they do not get a chance to grow up. If it does not lead to their early death, it certainly leads to a mental impairment that will affect them for the rest of their lives.

But I would like to finish up on some positive notes. Across my electorate in Moree, Brewarrina, Bourke, Coonamble and Dubbo, the Clontarf Foundation has been working for some time. Clontarf is doing a great job at keeping kids at school, encouraging them and mentoring them. It is one of the great pleasures of my job to be involved in Clontarf. Clontarf has been building relationships with the employers in town and corporate employers.

This time last year, two boys from Coonamble went to Sydney to undertake a 12-month traineeship with Leightons construction, one of the largest construction companies in Australia. On the weekend I got this text—wouldn't you know it; it has timed out, but bear with me. It is from one of those boys from Coonamble, and it goes like this: 'Me and Cody have a full-time job now with Leighton after our trainee finishes in April, and we're going to get a big pay rise. From Steve and Cody and the Coonamble boys.' When I was at Coonamble at Christmas time, I was talking to a young lad of about 13 or 14, in year 8. I said, 'Mate, have you worked out what you might do when you leave school?' He said: 'Too right. I'm going to go to Sydney and work for Leightons.'

It was not a concept. These two boys, until they were involved in the Clontarf Foundation, would not have had an opportunity like that. It just would not have been thought possible. I am personally so proud of them, and I know their community is and their family is, and that is happening all over. In Moree, we have young lads who have traineeships with GrainCorp and so on.

We have more to do with the girls because, more often than not, when the girls become women, they are the powerhouses that run the communities. They are the strong ones. Quite frankly, if we are going to close the gap in these communities, we need to do more to empower the younger women. I have done some work with people like Kristy Knight in Dubbo, who has a group called Shine Sisters, who are helping these kids. Some of these girls have already been in trouble with the law. We are looking at doing a range of things for these girls. The Moree Boomerangs football club, after successfully coming back from 12 years of being banned, now are looking at programs for younger children, boys and girls, in sporting and mentoring to keep them going.

While we talk about closing the gap in this place and we talk about the Aboriginal people as a whole, I am personally convinced that we need to be out there and we need to be helping people one person at a time, one community at a time. Until we personally take ownership and put our heart and soul into helping our Aboriginal brothers and sisters, we are never going to close that gap. But I take great heart, as I go around and speak to the communities, whether it be in Bourke or Brewarrina, Condobolin, Lake Cargelligo, Moree, Dubbo or anywhere else, at the great work that these communities are doing to help themselves. What we need to do is to be giving that help and encouragement, keeping the children encouraged to stay at school and go into employment so that they can be the role models of the future and breaking this vicious cycle that has been afflicting these people for so long.

Photo of Don RandallDon Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Parkes and, if I may be permitted to say so in relation to his comments on Clontarf, I concur with him.

8:04 pm

Photo of Graham PerrettGraham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I also congratulate the member for Parkes on his speech. We are on the Standing Committee on Indigenous Affairs together, and I know he is passionate about making change not only in his community but across Australia.

I begin this speech by acknowledging the traditional owners and thanking them for their continuing stewardship both here in Canberra and throughout Australia. A little bit of history before I go into the speech proper: I began by acknowledging the traditional owners, and I think that recognises those 50,000 years or more of history where Australia has had an Indigenous community and a non-European community, or a community from around the world. We can move forward to those interactions with the Indonesian traders, the Muslim traders, the Macassans in the north, the Chinese, the Dutch, the English et cetera—all those interactions on many levels with the Indigenous Australians—through to 26 January 1788, where that law of terra nullius came into play, where Australia was claimed for the Crown, the Crown that we serve under here today.

Obviously that concept saw a change from colonies to Federation in 1901, where the Constitution was written up—not with a significant recognition of Indigenous Australians. That pervasive legal fabrication of terra nullius existed. We go down the hill a bit to the opening of Old Parliament House, where Indigenous Australians, local communities, traditional owners, were there at the ceremony but not invited into the opening. There were many other changes, but we go through to 1967, when the Australian community turned around, as acknowledged by Prime Minister Abbott today in his words before the start of question time, recognising that Australia had changed. Still, sadly, nine per cent of Australians said that the Indigenous Australians should not be recognised in that referendum, but nevertheless we can focus on the positive that 91 per cent of Australians, in the biggest tick of approval ever for our 40-plus referenda, said that Aborigines should be welcomed as a part of Australia.

Then we go through to that High Court decision on, I think, 2 June 1992, where the High Court recognised that terra nullius was legally a furphy, effectively, through some meandering legal logic. Then later, in the Wik decision, we saw that Australia had always had an Indigenous presence and that traditional ownership sat alongside that terra nullius concept and the idea of the Crown taking control of Australia. Not every politician or every government stepped up when accepting this new legal reality. Not everyone did. Even though Indigenous Australians had always said it, not every government embraced that. Labor and Liberal had problems with these changes. I was still a schoolteacher rather than a lawyer back in 1992-93, and I remember the hysteria in the classrooms, on the airwaves and in the newspapers over what this meant. But, as it turned out, it meant that we recognised the truth rather than having a nation based on some falsehoods.

I remember my very first day in this parliament after being elected in November 2007. We started out under the Australian flag, in that space between the Senate chamber, the House of Representatives chamber, the ministerial wing and the public area—the space where those four areas intersect. Under the flagpole, the traditional owners gave us a welcome to country and welcomed the Australian parliament for the first time ever. Then there was that historic first event, the apology. I know some people chose to walk out of the apology rather than hear that bipartisan approach from Prime Minister Rudd and Leader of the Opposition Brendan Nelson. But I think history has shown that that was a significant first day. In fact, I was just up in Townsville with the member for Parkes and saw, written and recognised on the boardwalk, that date in February 2008. A few days after that, I made my first speech in parliament, and I went through the number of Indigenous Australians from my home town who had died. Since I made that speech in 2008, more friends, more people that I went to school with, have passed away—more people from St George whose lives have been lost way too quickly.

Sadly, the latest Closing the Gap data reflects that, despite the best endeavours of both the Rudd-Gillard government and the Abbott government to do what they can to close this gap—and I recognise on both sides of the chamber the genuine commitment to do that. But I would say again that you cannot make significant cuts to the Indigenous community, especially in things like legal aid, in the area that I have shadow responsibility for. When you make cuts to legal aid, you put lives at risk. The reality is, if people do not have representation or support in the legal system, they will end up either back out doing the wrong thing or they will not be represented and they will end up in jail. There are all those diversionary programs that I could go into in detail, but I will not—but I will make that general comment. Despite the spirit of bipartisanship, there cannot be such significant cuts to the Indigenous community in health, education and, especially, legal aid without there being consequences.

Anyone that works as a lawyer in Aboriginal legal services or in services that deal primarily with Indigenous women knows that Indigenous people suffer incredible rates of violence, incredible rates of incarceration. Indigenous children are incarcerated at rates nearly 50 times higher than non-Indigenous Australians. Even before those $530 million worth of cuts, the system was not perfect and had a long way to go and needed more support. Obviously the common-sense principle is that you must let local communities make decisions about themselves if you want them to be empowered. We are a long way from Cape York. We are a long way from north-western Western Australia. We are even a long way from the streets of Redfern. When it comes to Canberra making decisions that best serve the interests of local communities, we must have their input, must have their involvement, otherwise we will not have a decision that empowers people.

Sadly, I have heard too many Closing the Gap statements. As I said, they have all flowed from that first apology from Prime Minister Rudd, something that history will be incredibly kind to him about, because it was a significant day, even though there was a little bit of flak about how it would be perceived by the Australian people. I think all Australians now see that history will not judge kindly those who were on the wrong side of that debate. I know that much more needs to be done. Even with a tightened budget, with revenue difficulties, with headwinds coming the way of our economy, I would hope that the Prime Minister, with his responsibility of looking after Indigenous Australians, is able to make sure that they receive the best support possible, that they are empowered locally. If you are going to go into a tent in an Indigenous community symbolically once a year, that is a good thing, if the deeds match up with what the symbolism is supposed to represent. The symbolism of going into a tent in an Indigenous community just becomes hollow and abhorrent if you do not back it up with real dollars, real support, real engagement with Indigenous communities. I say that especially representing an urban electorate. As people have already mentioned, 50 per cent of Australia's Indigenous community now lives in an urban environment, not in a tent in a remote community. So more needs to be done. The empty words from this year's Closing the Gap statement need to be changed into direct action next year.

8:14 pm

Photo of John CobbJohn Cobb (Calare, National Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I think we all know that the importance of Closing the Gap cannot be underestimated. It also cannot be underestimated that it is not easy to do. Without doubt, if it was easy then the worst government Australia has ever had would have solved the issues a long time ago. What we all have to realise is that absolutely every member of this House, no matter what they stand for, would agree it is something that should be done in a very bipartisan way. We should all have that common goal whether we are in Western Australia, Tasmania or here, almost in New South Wales. Obviously, at some stage, our goal, our hope, our aim and our success must be that Indigenous Australians, like all Australians, must be able to reach their full potential.

We have always had the same issues and over recent years we have called it Closing the Gap. That is fine, but we also have to lift the game. The one thing nobody would ever want to do is leave here without being able to say that they did what they could to close the gap and to create the same opportunities for everyone in Australia, Aboriginal or otherwise. I have always been willing to stand up and fight for the Indigenous Australians in my electorate, whether it was Parkes, where I was originally, or Calare, where I am now. Parkes had a higher Aboriginal population than Calare. We are all together in that.

There is no point in beating around the bush on these issues. The latest Indigenous disadvantage report, like the six before it, does show alarming statistics—some improvements in some places but not in others. It is very common to talk about school attendance rates and, yes, they are bad. I too will talk about them. Getting kids to school, wherever they are, is incredibly important. Without it, you are closed. I think society has changed to the point where it is very hard for Aboriginal people and kids in particular to get some placements. We demand so much from education before anyone is even allowed to have a go at most of the jobs that exist.

Getting kids to school gives them the one thing they have to have in life—that is, the knowledge and how to go about things. They do not just learn maths and English—and I always say that maths is the No. 1 subject; they learn interaction skills, lifelong skills and social skills. We undoubtedly ask more of schools than we should and we probably ask more of them in remote areas where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander period predominate. Children in this day and age need to be at school mostly five days a week, without excuses. The onus is obviously on parents, carers and the authorities to make sure children go to school, and the onus is very much on us—state and federal politicians—to make that possible.

Education does go a long way too in keeping people out of jail, which is an enormous issue. The number of people of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage in jail is far too high. The number of Australians in jail is far too high, but the number of Indigenous Australia in jail it is totally disproportionate. If you think to yourself what does education have to do with jail, you find it does not have very much; the lack of it has a lot to do with the reasons that people are in jail.

Education is not just about going to school, going to college or going to university. Education is about learning generally. Life skills are probably one of the most important issues we are talking about here. If your parents, your community and your local state and federal governments do not combine on that, it does not work. It is education about drugs and alcohol, and that is not to say that people with a good education do not fall by the wayside too. But with education, you do not have much of an excuse. Without education, maybe you think you do have an excuse. It is important that we do whatever we have to to get better outcomes for Indigenous Australians in their education.

Having said that, we talk about programs and we talk about a lot of things, but there is no program as important as a job. There is no program or family that will teach us more about life skills and how to combine with a community than when one of the principals in a family has a permanent job. It is so upon us to deal with that issue, but it is very hard in remote communities. But we do make it hard too. I remember years ago being north of Broome in the north-west of Western Australian—in your state, Deputy Speaker Randall—at a community on the coast where they were doing a very good job of building their own homes. I remember the elder of that community saying to me: 'Minister, you white guys make it very hard for us. I worked for 20 years in the mines as an operator. What I did you won't let us do now. I learnt to work as an offsider for an operator until I learnt how to do it. Today, you won't let us do that unless we can fill in a heap of forms.' I guess there is a good reason for that. It is OH&S, and we have got to make sure they can do all these things but we have made it harder for those people in remote—and mining is such a great opportunity in those more remote areas, particularly in your state, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Randall, but in a lot of Australia. We have made it harder for them to learn how to operate a machine, because we demand the education that we are struggling to make sure they have. I think we sometimes have to think how to see around corners and how we help them to do that.

There are success stories, and we have them in my electorate—and I am sure we have them all through yours, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker. We have them all around Australia. We should not be totally negative about it. The Aboriginal Learning Centre of TAFE New south Wales in Orange is doing a very good job of getting young Indigenous people to get into trades and vocational learning which will give them skills that they need.

I believe we must make a much bigger effort on the education side so that we have got Indigenous nurses, teachers and police. It is much easier for them to listen to people they feel more comfortable with. I think this is a huge issue. Nurses, teachers and police—we need to make a huge effort in education to get those three professions, in particular.

We are not speaking for long tonight. All I can say is: it should be bipartisan. I think anyone has the right to ask a question of our government at question time on anything they like. But I think when we have bipartisan speeches, it should be that. Thank you very much.

8:24 pm

Photo of Andrew GilesAndrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I start my contribution by acknowledging the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, the traditional owners of this land, and pay my respects to their elders past and present.

I rise to make a brief contribution to the Closing the gap: Prime Minister's report 2015. In starting my contribution, I will reflect very briefly on the closing remarks of the previous speaker where he talked about bipartisanship. We are here to debate some bipartisan goals, but those goals and the fact that they are shared across this parliament should not obscure the real issues that we must consider that go to how we achieve these goals, and the role of government, whether it is a matter of leadership or investment. These are some matters that I will touch on in my contribution to this debate.

On that note, I was pleased and proud to be in the chamber for the full duration of the Leader of Opposition's contribution to this debate in which he starkly illustrated the challenges for all of us set out in this report. It was a compelling speech, and I hope that I and others in this chamber, on the government side as well as this side, will respond to the challenge it sets for all of us to make real the aspirations that we all sincerely share to close the gap.

This year's report tells us many things that are troubling and concerning. It finds that we are not on track in so many respects to closing the gap on a series of targets, including the gap in life expectancy within a generation; the gap in reading, writing and numeracy achievements for Indigenous students; and the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. It is plain that we have not done enough to meet the standards we have set and which we simply must meet to do justice to the Australia we wish to see.

I also note, in particular, that the target of ensuring access for all Indigenous four-year-olds in remote communities to early childhood education by 2013 has still not been met. This is despite last year's Closing the Gap report showing good progress towards this target. Instead, this year's report shows that we have slipped backwards with only 85 per cent of Indigenous four-year-olds enrolled in early education.

This takes me to an issue that is very important to the Scullin electorate and one that I am passionate about. Last year when I spoke on the Closing the Gap report for 2014, I spent a large part of my contribution speaking about Bubup Wilam for Early Learning: Aboriginal Children and Family Centre.

This centre is one of 34 centres around Australia established and funded under national partnerships initiated by the former Labor government. Labor established these centres, because we recognise the importance of early learning for all children, but particularly for children in Indigenous communities both remotely and in metropolitan areas.

Bubup Wilam remains an important and integral part of the Scullin electorate. I am continually inspired by the work of Lisa Thorpe, the CEO; her dedicated staff; the board; and all the community members and family who are associated with it.

Last year when I spoke, its funding was under threat from this government; now that funding has been cut and the centre is currently running down its savings. It is in every sense an unsustainable position for the centre and the 70 families it services.

I have made frequent representations to the Minister for Indigenous Affairs in this place and his former Victorian coalition counterparts. Neither were keen to offer anything by the way of support, much less solution. In contrast, I note the visits to the centre by the Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten, Senator Peris and the member for Blair, the shadow minister, which have done much to provide a firsthand demonstration of the valuable contribution this centre makes to the community, and I hope the future Prime Minister and Minister for Indigenous Affairs, respectively.

I have also been pleased with the response from the new Labor government in Victoria, particularly from Minister Mikakos. I know that she will do everything she can to ensure the ongoing viability of Bubup Wilam. But it is unlikely the Victorian government can do this on its own. Bubup Wilam has always been a shared responsibility between all levels of government.

In government, Labor listened to the experts, recognised the problem and, with facilities like Bubup Wilam, acted to address them. The Abbott government has acted but, unfortunately, in exactly the wrong way. The link to quality early childhood education and better outcomes later on in life, particularly for those coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, is beyond dispute. I note that these outcomes are also targets mentioned in the Closing the Gap reports.

The Leader of the Opposition was right in telling truths uncomfortable for this government—uncomfortable perhaps for many of us—that, if we are serious about closing the gap, we cannot ignore the cause and effect of cutting funding to places like Bubup Wilam and the disadvantage it will engender and perpetuate.

It is all too easy for the Prime Minister to talk the talk about being the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs, but it is another thing entirely to walk the walk. Australia simply cannot cut its way to closing the gap. More investment is required if we are to make good on the promises we have made in this place, and so I call on this government to reverse its cuts to Bubup Wilam and the other children and family centres.

8:29 pm

Photo of Lucy WicksLucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

The Prime Minister's delivery of the Closing the gap report is a very important moment in our parliamentary year and it is certainly a time when we can reflect on the Indigenous communities in our electorate—on some of the challenges but also on many of the opportunities where we can actually work together to see many of these challenges addressed.

I commend the Prime Minister for this motion and I also thank the many members who have shared their stories in this place tonight about their own experiences oft working with Indigenous people in their electorates to help build a better future. It is heartening to see such bipartisan support, particularly in this area. It is an area that I am very passionate about and it is an area that I feel quite committed to in my local area on the Central Coast.

Last week I was honoured to have the opportunity to meet with many Indigenous leaders in my community. I was joined by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister for the occasion. We spoke with many Indigenous leaders in my electorate about some of the challenges and also some of the opportunities that have been identified in the Closing the gap report. I would like to commend the Darkinjung Aboriginal Land Council CEO, Sean Gordon. May I also commend the Indigenous Advisory Council chair, Warren Mundine, who joined us with many other leaders to spend some time helping us understand what their perspectives are on some of the important challenges for them.

We were really pleased to see that the official school attendance rates were so high—basically at the non-Indigenous rate. However, many leaders recognise that there is still a lot of work to do on employment, particularly in my electorate on the Central Coast. I was pleased that the parliamentary secretary indicated a willingness for us to work alongside our local leaders to be able to assist them in this effort.

We have a strong organisation on the Central Coast called Barang. Barang is a partnership agreement between six Aboriginal community service organisations: Bara Barang, Bungree, Darkinjung Aboriginal Land Council, The Glen, Mingaletta and NAISDA, our Aboriginal dance academy on the Central Coast. It was an absolute honour to spend time with all of these organisations because, while they identified so many of the challenges that they have experienced, they also identified many of the ways that they were supporting our young people on the Central Coast with employment and education opportunities. I believe that by working together we can achieve real and lasting results to help close the gap on disadvantage, so that all Australians have the same opportunities.

It was fantastic to have the parliamentary secretary in my electorate last week, because events such as this demonstrate that our government is here to listen—to listen to what the community has to say and to listen to where we can work better and more cooperatively together on some of these core goals. They are: getting kids to school, adults to work and helping to make the community safe. A meeting such as the one that we held last week was another step forward for Indigenous organisations, such as the NAISDA Dance College, which was actually originally funded under the former Howard government. Indigenous leaders on the Central Coast expressed to me last week the fact that they love living on the Central Coast and their desire to help us work together to establish a long-term vision of cementing what we can do together for the Central Coast.

Another pleasing facet of this visit was the opportunity to open one of the buildings at Kariong, which the parliamentary secretary attended with me. We were joined by a community of around 70 Indigenous leaders and young people from the electorate, all of whom expressed a desire to be able to work together to help us to get to these very important goals of getting more kids to school, adults to work and making our community safe.

I commend this motion to the House.

8:35 pm

Photo of Matt ThistlethwaiteMatt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | | Hansard source

I consider myself to be extremely fortunate to represent an electorate with a very long and rich Aboriginal history and heritage. I have said it in this place before, that I am particularly proud of my family's heritage in connection with the community in which I live. But my family's connection with our community, although deep, is not a patch—it does not go near—on the connection of local Aboriginal families whose relatives' and ancestors' connection with our community dates back 7,000 years: countless generations of people who have developed, nurtured and passed on customs, language, laws and heritage that, importantly, still exist today and which make up the great fabric of the wonderful community in which I live. Their influence on the electorate of Kingsford Smith and, indeed, on our nation is everywhere.

The Aboriginal people have contributed so much to the development of Australia—to the way in which we live on this land, to the way in which we farm the land and to the way in which we fish in coastal communities. They have such a rich and wonderful heritage, a heritage which we all should be very proud of—the oldest continuous culture in the world. If Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have contributed so much to our nation, then why on earth is it that we have failed them so dismally? Why do we continue to fail them in the manner that we do?

Why is there still a gaping chasm in the difference between living standards of Australians of Indigenous heritage and those who are not of Indigenous heritage? Why are Aboriginal men incarcerated in such numbers in jails throughout the country? Why is it that a child born to an Aboriginal woman is half as likely to live as a child born to a non-Indigenous woman? We owe much to the original inhabitants of our great country, but tragically in our efforts to close the gap, to raise the health and life expectancy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to that of the non-Indigenous population, we continue to fail them.

Released on Wednesday, 11 February, the Close the Gap report showed efforts to raise the living standards and health outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have come up short, with the nation off track to meet half the committed targets. Indigenous Australians can expect to live 10 to 17 years less than other Australians. Babies born to Aboriginal mothers die at more than twice the rate of other Australian babies, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience higher rates of preventable illness, such as heart disease, kidney disease and diabetes.

There has been little ground made in halving the gap in reading, writing and numeracy achievements for children. And equality in employment is still a long way off. A high rate of domestic violence continues to plague Indigenous communities. An Aboriginal woman is 30 times more likely to know the pain and fear of family violence, and 15 times more likely to be driven from her home as a result. These figures paint a disturbing picture and send a clear message that more must be done to help Indigenous communities. The starting point needs to be the restoration of the $500 million in Indigenous funding and support for Aboriginal Australians that was cut by the Abbott government in their most recent budget.

In mid-August last year I was fortunate to visit the remote Northern Territory community of Ntaria, where, as a guest of the National Aboriginal Sporting Chance Academy, I volunteered at the local primary school. It was my job to not only help promote and encourage healthy living, education and employment for the young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students but also to experience firsthand the challenge of improving educational standards in remote Aboriginal communities.

Over the course of the week that I spent in Ntaria, I was fortunate to meet some very special people, and some very frustrated people. Many of the teachers told me of the difficulties they faced in educating students who would make progress with reading or maths in one week, only to then disappear for a week before returning once again behind the eight ball. That perfectly highlights the challenge of Indigenous education in remote communities. How do we provide these kids with a decent education that offers them all the opportunities other Australian kids are afforded through their education? And how do we allow them to maintain that very important connection with their land, their heritage and their culture? That is the challenge of Aboriginal education in remote communities.

There is little doubt that a truly needs-based funding model would go a long way to improving the educational outcomes for these kids in remote communities and many more throughout Australia. The teachers in Ntaria told me that resources make a difference. The more resources they can devote to kids in education, the better the outcomes will be. It is unfortunate that the Abbott government has not only cut funding for Indigenous programs; it has also cut funding for education, and children will suffer if the final years of the Gonski reforms are not funded by the Abbott government as was proposed in the last budget.

All the problems with the current system, which have been perfectly highlighted by the Gonski panel, were acutely on display during the week that I spent in Ntaria. The teachers were stretched to the limit, and as a result the kids are receiving a substandard education. When Labor came to government, the literacy and numeracy results from some schools clearly demonstrated that in many areas—particularly low socioeconomic areas or areas where there is a high Indigenous population, a high population of kids from a non-English-speaking background or a high population of kids with disabilities in schools—they were falling behind. In a developed nation like Australia it is simply not good enough for us to allow our education system to fail our kids, particularly when we know what the cause of that failure is: a lack of investment in education—in support for kids with special needs, for kids with disabilities and for Indigenous kids throughout our community.

That was why the Rudd government implemented the Gonski process, to inquire into the deficiencies in our education system and, more importantly, to fix those deficiencies in our education system. We can do better. That is what Labor sought to do in government, to implement those Gonski reforms, which would make a difference in Aboriginal education. The Abbott government's abandonment of the Gonski funding model in the final years and their harsh education cuts may condemn many Indigenous students throughout Australia to continued poor outcomes and a continuation of the tragedy that is Indigenous remote education.

More broadly, the Abbott government funding cuts have exacerbated a number of problems in many Indigenous communities. For example, the rate of jailing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people has almost doubled in the last decade, yet the Abbott government has cut funding for Indigenous legal aid. How can we expect to reduce the rate of incarceration for people from Indigenous communities if the support for proper legal advice is being cut by this government? The Abbott government must recommit this funding and recommit the nation to achieving equality for Australia's—and indeed Kingsford Smith's—original inhabitants.

Justice must also be included as a benchmark for closing the gap. Around three in every 100 of our population are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, yet they are more than a 25 in every 100 of our prison population. More needs to be done in all areas. We need to work together and come together to fix the great injustice that is the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

8:45 pm

Photo of Sharman StoneSharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

This is the seventh Closing the Gap report since the targets were set up by COAG in 2008. There have been some improvements in outcomes in education and health but, on the whole, Indigenous Australians continue to experience vastly increased rates of incarceration, lower life expectancy, higher rates of many life-threatening illnesses and poverty when compared to non-Indigenous Australians.

But I think we must look beyond some of those very sad statistics and focus on particular communities. For example, Aunty Melva Johnson is an elder of the Yorta Yorta community living in Echuca. She was forced to give birth on a veranda at Echuca hospital when she was younger woman. She then a little later worked in the hospital as an unskilled supporter. But now she is on the Echuca Hospital board. She actually takes part in managing that very large public hospital. In her one lifetime she has been gone from being a pariah forced to give birth on a veranda through to now being part of the hospital management board. I think that is an extraordinary situation and one we must celebrate.

When I was elected, I have to say, that the protocol of acknowledging country and welcome to country were practically unknown. In fact, if you had acknowledged country, people would have wondered what on earth you were talking about. But today we have that protocol of acknowledging country or receiving a warm welcome to country, particularly in my electorate, virtually every day. And the flags of the Indigenous and Torres Strait Islanders fly at most schools, particularly the Aboriginal flag, alongside the Australian flag. If we were in Queensland, we would see many more of the Torres Strait Islander flags proudly flying.

Sadly, our Australian history curriculum in our states and wherever there is still Australian history taught to an extent still does not teach about the pre-colonial Australian cultures nor of the culture contact period—the period when the people who were invading Australia largely from Britain did not understand the way the Australian continent was owned by numerous numbers of tribes, each with very distinct and well-known boundaries who were prepared to protect those boundaries with their own lives, not just from the new colonial British but also from one another if there was an incursion.

So we have a situation in Australia too often where there is a lack of understanding of why we have right now such extraordinary rates of poverty, violence in communities, very high-risk alcohol and other drug consumptions which lead to violence, neglect of family, often brain damage and certainly some of the highest rates of incarceration in the world. Too many young Indigenous Australians are born with irreparable brain damage, particularly to their cognitive capacities, which are the consequences of their mother's drinking alcohol when pregnant. We all know the statistics where, per person, Indigenous Australians are less likely to be a drinker compared to non-Indigenous Australians. But when Indigenous Australians do drink alcohol, they tend to drink at much higher levels of risk.

A recently published report on the incidence of foetal alcohol syndrome and the foetal alcohol spectrum disorder in an Indigenous community in Western Australia has found some of the world's highest rates of irreparable brain damage and other associated disability in the population of children under eight years of age. Ironically, that particular community has imposed some of the most successful alcohol reduction strategies in their community in Australia. But now they have to live with the legacy of the alcohol impacts of the earlier high-risk drinking rates that were prevalent in their community for generations. We just recently had a tragic car accident where one of these young, damaged people only some 13 years of age has been involved in an accident and there have been deaths. This is a tragic outcome for that community, which has seen so many deaths associated with high-risk drinking and the violence that often ensues.

I chair the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and our current inquiry aims to identify the reasons why Indigenous communities are drinking alcohol at such high-risk levels. We want to identify successful strategies that have reduced alcohol consumption or that have helped those with drinking problems to be rehabilitated. We have seen, unfortunately, very few examples of these successful strategies. Too often, the strategies that we do come across identify are extremely short-term in their funding generation or they have lost the champion who was making sure that they were well established and functioning in a particular community. The impacts of high-risk drinking include: extreme levels of violence—some of the highest levels of violence you will find in any community in the world; child neglect; poverty; and, as I have already said, incarceration rates that rob children of their parents, particularly their fathers, as they grow. But unfortunately there are also extremely high rates of Indigenous women incarcerated related to their high-risk alcohol consumption.

Our government's priorities for making real improvements in the lives of Indigenous in Australians include: getting children to school; keeping them there for a good education; getting adults into work; and making Indigenous communities safe so people can live, work and raise their families. As I have been inferring, the key ways to make sure these communities are safe, that the adults are able to have meaningful work and that the parents supervise their children's school attendance are very often affected by whether or not the families are addicted to alcohol and other illicit substances.

One of the saddest things about the inquiry that we are undertaking now in 2015 is that almost all the identical terms of reference were given to a committee in the 1970s chaired by Mr Philip Ruddock. Those terms of reference came up with, I am sure, what will be similar outcomes and conclusions as our report will find. And that is the tragedy of Australian Indigenous life—the fact that we have been trying, government after government, state, federal and territory governments, to find ways forward. I do not agree with the previous speaker, who said it is just about resources. It is not just about more financial resources. It is about strategies that are put forward by Indigenous communities themselves. It is about champions, like June Oscar in Fitzroy Crossing, who are stunningly courageous women who have taken issues in their community and run with them. They are really working towards a better life for their children.

Unfortunately, in our particular inquiry, we are finding that there is still a great deal of despair. People are throwing up their hands and saying, 'We have tried everything. We are not sure how to get children to stay in school. We have tried removing welfare access and we have tried having the children go to other places for school, but we still have not as yet managed to find an outcome which ensures that most Indigenous children go to school and stay in school.' They end up having no choices in their life other than going back to a very remote and small community where their destiny is probably likely to be like that of their fathers and mothers. That is, a life of abuse, poverty, poor health and, too often, incarceration.

I just want to read a section out of a book which I produced many years ago in the 1970s, which looks at the evolution of Australian government policy in relation to Indigenous affairs. This is a speech made by Paul Hasluck in the House of Representatives on 8 June 1950. It says:

According to the census taken in 1944, there were then in Australia 71,895 persons who were classified as aborigines…

He goes on to talk about how many were half-castes. But he says:

… one-third were classified as nomadic and slightly fewer than one-third as being in employment.

So the employment issue was really being addressed. This was prior to the time of a lot of welfare being available. He says:

The problem today is not a problem of protection. In the old days, when they were a primitive people living under primitive bush conditions, the problem chiefly was to set up a barrier between them and the invading white community. Those days have gone and the nation must move to a new era in which the social advancement rather than the crude protection of the natives should be the objective of all that is done in this sphere.

He goes on to say:

We must either work for the social advantage of aborigines or be content to witness their continued social degradation.

He says:

… their future lies in association with us and they must either associate with us on standards that will give them full opportunity to live worthily and happily or be reduced to the social status of pariahs and outcasts, living without a firm place in the community. In other words, we either permit this social evil to continue or we remedy it.

If we take away some of the racist language, which refers to these people as primitives and so on, I think the sentiment is the same now as it was 75 years ago. That is that we have people in our Australian community who are underemployed or unemployed and who are not enjoying the advantages of being full participating members of our Australian community. I think he is saying that they can either be pariahs and outcasts or they can live with the community and enjoy all that is good. (Time expired)

8:55 pm

Photo of Darren ChesterDarren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence) Share this | | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure that I participate in the Closing the Gap discussion before the House. I would like to recognise the other speakers who have participated in what I would regard as a largely bipartisan way. I also acknowledge the presence of the Parliamentary Secretary for Indigenous Affairs. I would like to thank him publicly, while I have the opportunity, for visiting my electorate last year and engaging with the Indigenous community in Gippsland. It was a greatly appreciated visit. He had the opportunity to learn from people in Lakes Entrance and Bairnsdale, where we have quite significant Indigenous population, about some of the health and education challenges we face and also some of the great achievements. I think that is—

Mr Tudge interjecting

And the Clontarf Academy. The parliamentary secretary reminds me of our visit to the Bairnsdale Secondary College where the Clontarf Academy is doing some great work with young Aboriginal boys. I would like to begin my comments there in that while we saw some of the challenges faced in the Gippsland community, we also saw some of the great achievements. That pretty much sums up the Closing the gap report. There has been some significant achievements but also a concerning lack of progress in a range of areas. I would like to acknowledge the contributions of other members, particularly the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition for their contributions to House. As the Prime Minister pointed out, improving the lives of Australia's first people is a challenge beyond partisan politics. For many of us in this place, particularly those members who are living in communities where there are significant Indigenous populations, it is one of the biggest issues that we face as federal members.

The quote from the Prime Minister that I would like to refer to is:

On days such as this, we should acknowledge where we have failed. Equally, we should acknowledge where we have made progress and stir ourselves to keep persevering on this vital but difficult journey.

I acknowledge that the Prime Minister indicated that for every step forward there may be steps back in many cases. There are some key failings in the Closing the Gap statement this year in relation to our failure to have success, if you like, in relation to closing the gap in life expectancy within a generation by 2031. Also, there has not been the success we would look for in halving the gap in reading, writing and numeracy achievements for Indigenous students. The one area where I think our greatest concern remains is in halving the gap in employment outcomes for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. That is because until we can find ways to have more Indigenous people becoming full participants and contributors to their own economic independence through paid employment and the dignity of having a job, we will not achieve the other significant challenges put to us by the Closing the Gap initiative.

In the brief amount of time I have, I would like to refer to one area where I am greatly concerned in relation to the health impacts on Indigenous people: the rate of domestic and family violence. The actual figures may be disputed from one reports the next, but the figure that is quoted to me is that an Aboriginal woman is 45 times more likely to experience domestic violence than a white woman. These violence patterns are of great concern in the non-Indigenous community, but to think that an Aboriginal woman is up to 45 times more likely to experience domestic violence remains an incredibly sobering statistic and a difficult challenge for our nation.

In a year when we have Rosie Batty being announced as an Australian of the Year and as we recognise that up to one woman per week dies at the hand of a partner or ex-partner, the challenge facing our Indigenous community is magnified beyond belief. It remains an extraordinary challenge to break down this pattern of abuse and dysfunction, which will require our ongoing and unrelenting focus both in this place and in state jurisdictions. We need to break that cycle of dysfunction. We need to get adults working. We need to provide safer homes and safer communities for young Indigenous people.

I congratulate members in this place who are committed to working to help close the gap on Aboriginal disadvantage in our nation.