Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I want to concentrate on the area of housing in relation to the issues that this delivers in trying to deal with closing the gap. I must say, listening to Senator Leyonhjelm and Senator Macdonald, it beggars belief that they can ignore the history of this country and the history that Indigenous communities have had to bear over the period of white settlement in this country.

Senator Leyonhjelm discussed how jobs, propped up by a procurement program, are not real jobs. I'm sure the South Australian coalition senators will not be saying that about jobs created in South Australia arising from government procurement in the defence sector. For Senator Leyonhjelm to argue that you can't count anything that's been aligned with government procurement as a real job is a crazy proposition. Australia is not a market economy. We are a mixed economy. That mixed economy is the market and government. Government play a huge role in providing employment, housing, health and education in this country. To simply pass judgement on Indigenous communities, to say that if they got some government support through a procurement program then it's not a real job, just doesn't stack up on the basis of common sense.

Senator Macdonald argues that if you treat Indigenous communities like every other Australian community, then things will be different. He argues that employment opportunities are what should be in place, that you'll fix all this by providing a block of land that an Indigenous person can buy and pay off and that that will result in well-paid jobs and opportunities for Indigenous Australians. Nothing could be further from the truth, because if that scenario doesn't work for white Australians and Australians living in metropolitan areas then it certainly won't work in other areas such as remote communities in this country.

AHURI, the government-funded body that looks at these issues, has done some simulation estimates on what the issues are. Across Australia about 1.3 million households—that's 14 per cent of households—are estimated to be in housing need. That includes people in overcrowded households, people who can't access rental accommodation at a reasonable price, and people living in stress because they're paying off a mortgage or they're trying to pay rates. Fixing Indigenous issues by saying that you will create a market in housing is just not realistic.

My first day in this place coincided with the apology. It was a remarkable day not only for me, personally, in becoming a senator but also for what Labor was trying to do through the apology and through focusing on the real issues for Indigenous Australians. You can't argue that you'll simply provide opportunity and everything will be fixed. I've heard the argument of equality of opportunity from my own side—I've heard it many times in this place—but there is no equality of opportunity for an Indigenous Australian against a barrister's kid or a QC's kid in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. That equality of opportunity is just not there; it's a myth. In these communities where we have real problems in relation to housing we need government procurement, we need government jobs and we need access to government social security payments to keep those communities alive.

The argument that I've heard here today is basically that, if you need that, you shouldn't be in that community. I think that is the height of contempt for our Indigenous people in this country. We heard those arguments today and we heard Senator Macdonald raise the issue of how much money is spent on housing. In 2008 Labor invested $5.4 billion in the National Partnership Agreement for Remote Indigenous Housing to build and refurbish houses in remote Indigenous communities. We are not saying, 'Put the bulldozer through remote communities and send all these remote Indigenous families to other areas where they can get jobs and live like whitefellas.' That is an absolute nonsense. We want to build and refurbish houses in remote Indigenous communities. We do want to implement robust and standardised property and tenancy management in Indigenous housing. We want to increase employment opportunities for local residents in remote Indigenous communities. The National Partnership Agreement on Remote and Indigenous Housing did that.

I have spoken to both the Minister for Housing and Public Works in Queensland and the Minister for Housing and Community Development in the Northern Territory this week. They both outlined how there's been a steady increase in employment arising from the investment that governments have made in these communities on housing. For instance, in Western Australia there has been an increase of 22 per cent to 47 per cent in jobs. Jobs for concreters, plumbers, carpenters, electricians, roofers, labourers, painters, tilers and cabinetmakers are being created through this program across the country. Yet Senator Scullion today couldn't give a clear answer on whether the program would continue. What Senator Scullion indicated was that the program had finished; it was a 10-year program. He indicated to the minister for housing in Queensland that the program was over. That is not a way to bring jobs and employment into Indigenous communities across the country.

Apprenticeships are being created in Indigenous communities. We need to get away from reliance on fly-in fly-out tradespeople from major metropolitan sectors into those communities. We need to create the jobs, we need to create the apprenticeships. If you want to create a market then you have to actually intervene, as we do in many areas in this country. We hear so much about jobs growth from the coalition, but the bulk of the jobs growth is coming from government initiated programs. The NBN is creating jobs, as a government initiated program. Even though the outcome is not great for many communities, the program is there. It's the government initiated programs in many areas, like the National Disability Insurance Scheme, that are creating jobs. In all these social areas where jobs are increasing, it's been government that has increased the jobs—predominantly initiatives from the previous Labor government that this government is crowing about now. It was Labor that initiated those programs that created those jobs.

We need to treat our Indigenous communities the same as you want to treat white communities and metropolitan communities. Government plays a role in job creation, government plays a role in housing, and that should be the way that we treat our Indigenous communities in the future.

Sitting suspended from 18 : 29 to 19 : 30