Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Heritage, the Arts and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to ask a question of the minister. Some $20 million was taken out of the Northern Territory emergency response budget. Minister, can you identify exactly which programs are to be reduced or cancelled as a result of that cut? We in the coalition are also concerned because some of the measures that have since been introduced as amendments to the original emergency response bills in fact increase costs. For example, now allowing 30 per cent of pornography to be on pay television in these prescribed communities will mean a lot more policing to ensure that not more than 30 per cent pornography on pay television is being screened into these most vulnerable settlements. Another amendment was to allow communities to ask that all pornography be removed from their communities. So there will be an additional policing cost. Of course, the coalition’s policy was no pornography at all. A further amendment to the emergency response bill provided that it was no longer a crime to transport pornographic materials and alcohol through these settlements. That, again, will increase the cost of policing. We are concerned as to how you are going to manage that, given the cuts in the budget.

I am most concerned to know whether the funding is continuing that the coalition put into the emergency response for reimbursing those who were on top-up with CDEP—there were not many but a few; about 1,500 people out of the 8,000—because they were doing some real work on CDEP. The coalition response to this problem was to transition those people as soon as possible into real jobs, to help them with job seeking and employment, but the top-up salary was there for another 18 months—though it was hoped that it would not be needed for 18 months—so that they could be transitioned into jobs without a drop in their welfare payments. We have heard little about this initiative since the new government has come into play, and it is of great concern to people out there.

My further question is in relation to the CDEP providers, who we intended would be going out of business as CDEP—the Aboriginal Work for the Dole—was replaced with real job opportunities and real work. We offered CDEP providers payments to become STEP—Structured Training And Employment Projects—providers. I would like to ask how many of those old CDEP providers have accepted the challenge of now moving to being real employment providers using the STEP. We had funding, of course, to support that transition, which we see as a key to helping Indigenous Australians in the emergency response areas to take up the vacant positions that are often surrounding them, depending exactly where their community is.

In relation to the Aboriginal boarding colleges, which were very recently announced—and which we in the coalition support wholeheartedly—as you would be aware, Minister, we already had significant numbers of those funded through Aboriginal Hostels Ltd. I would like to know: have you substantially increased the funding for Aboriginal Hostels? Besides the three that you have identified in the emergency response, there is great demand for such additional boarding colleges right throughout Australia. How are you going to handle that demand? Are there plans to put further funding in place to meet the additional demand which is already out there?

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