Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My electorate of Fremantle is named for the city at the Swan River mouth, a place known as Walyalup to the Whadjuk Nyungar people, who are the traditional owners of the land. It has always been a meeting and gathering place, and a place of trade and important stories.

I want to draw attention to a recent initiative in Fremantle that involved young Aboriginal people and occurred through funding support from the WA Commissioner for Children and Young People. Within a program designed to engage kids and teenagers on their thoughts about the future, a City of Fremantle initiative resulted in students from Winterfold Primary School and South Fremantle Senior High School collaborating on the production of a music video for a song called Keep it Real. It is a lovely piece of work. In it you can see the community-building and confidence-building that results from giving young people, and especially young Aboriginal people, the opportunity to talk about their lives and challenges and hopes for the future.

Unfortunately, while there are positive local efforts like this one, there are, at the same time, a number of much more significant moves in the wrong direction. I am extremely concerned by proposed WA and federal government action in three areas. The first is the proposal to close more than 100 remote communities as a consequence of the federal government's withdrawal of funding. Enough has probably been said about the Prime Minister's profoundly offensive statement to the effect that living in such communities is a 'lifestyle choice', but perhaps not enough about the deep misunderstanding that must lie beneath such a statement.

Fred Chaney's plea to the Prime Minister on this issue bears repeating:

Please Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs, don't repeat the brutal mistakes of the past when people were kicked out of their remote communities and left to rot on the edge of towns.

Listen to the many voices including that of your chosen adviser, Warren Mundine, reminding you of what you know, that Aboriginal people have a deep relationship with country that is central to their lives. Remember that many Aboriginal families in remote communities lead healthier and more peaceful lives away from disorganised larger centres.

The second matter of concern is a set of proposed amendments to the Western Australian Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972, which is designed to fast-track approval processes and which concentrate decision-making with the Chief Executive Officer of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs. On this issue I can only agree with the WA Law Society and WA Anthropological Society criticisms that the proposed amendments strip the Aboriginal Cultural Material Committee of its evaluative role and shift power to the CEO, who is not obliged to consult with Aboriginal people or to apply anthropological expertise.

The final area of concern is the Abbott government's intention to cut funding for community legal services across the country, including the support that is currently received by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services, or ATSILS, and its peak body NATSILS. How can we as a nation claim to be serious about justice and fairness when the government is taking away the supportive framework that provides access to our legal system for disadvantaged and disenfranchised Australians?

In what has to be a sustained nationwide effort at every level to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians we cannot have backwards steps and funding cuts and closed doors, and we cannot have the disrespecting of the rights and culture of Aboriginal people.