Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Whilst I was not here when the apology was made two years ago, I was going through Sydney airport the day after and I can confirm that I saw the pride of many Indigenous men and women who were walking through the airport feeling 10-foot tall. As a consequence of Indigenous pride, that moment in time demonstrated Australian pride at the same time. It is a window of opportunity for Australia, through the celebration of Indigenous culture. If we get it right in the future we will have an Australia we can all be proud of.

I often talk about the Indigenous cultures in my electorate, where an elder structure is strong, where belief in family is strong, where land management practices of 40,000 years are strong and where dreaming and spirituality are strong. In a parliamentary sense, we grapple with the concepts of spirituality, family and land management on a daily basis. Quite often we continue to be blind to the opportunity to listen, to learn and to celebrate a history of 40,000 years. Look at the engagement in Indigenous family structures by comparison to family structures in non-Indigenous Australia today. Our lack of respect to elders, for example, is shameful. There are many lessons for all of Australia to learn about the concepts of family and respect for elders. Likewise, I know leaders of both political parties quite openly put their spirituality on the table. I would hope there is a spiritual and a values base in all members in this place. It is questionable as to why you are here unless you have that values vase and that spirituality base.

But again, there are lessons to be learned, there are stories to be celebrated and there are keys to our future in learning from the spirituality of the people who have been here for 40,000 years. There are issues of land management. In fact we are grappling with the concept of climate change and global warming in a parliamentary sense right now. At no time yet in the debate have any of us stopped and reflected and thought about land management practices that are 40,000 years old and whether the keys to the future might lie in some of those land management practices.

My point is that we quite often wrestle—and I hear it from political leaders—with what it is to be Australian and who we are as Australians. I would hope that this process of making ‘black the new black’ and making Indigenous culture really part of Australian culture is the answer to what it is to be an Australian and what it is to live in Australia. We have a wonderful cultural history to celebrate and to embrace. I would love to live in an era where so-called mainstream Australians know the Dreamtime stories, know what Indigenous nation they live in, know some of the words from their local languages, learn about the family structures and spirituality, and also respect the land management structures that have gone on for many, many years before the Union Jack was planted at Port Botany. The apology, a couple of years ago now, was an important moment. Hopefully, in a cultural context, it does start to shape an Australia that has our Indigenous history and our Indigenous stories front and centre in the Australia of the future.

Two years later, in regards to the Closing the gap report and in regards to the work I do as a local member representing a large Indigenous regional population, in a ‘Torah! Torah! Torah!’ moment I say to anyone who may just want to look at one page of this report, please look at page 12, page 12, page 12! My message to this House is the message contained on that page. It is a message to a government, an executive, a Prime Minister wanting to embrace the topic—which I respect—and wanting to put the issue on the agenda—which I also respect.

But, again, I worry about this continual falling into the trap of thinking that all things Indigenous are either in the Northern Territory or in Cape York. There is so much more to the story. The previous speaker mentioned the very large Indigenous population in Western Sydney. That is the first time in my 15 months here that I think I have heard a comment such as that made in trying to embrace the complexities and the challenges around urbanised Indigenous communities. That is why I say ‘page 12, page 12, page 12’—because it has a map of Australia and it identifies where the Indigenous population of Australia lives.

The point that I continue to make—and I wish government would hear—is that we all have an obligation to crack the stereotypes that over time have formed in people’s heads about Indigenous issues being about outback, dusty towns. They do not accord with the facts. The vast majority of Indigenous people live—and these are very rough boundaries—smack on the east coast, roughly between Sydney and Rockhampton and maybe a little bit further north. That is the area where more than 50 per cent of Australia’s Indigenous population lives. But it is lost in the rhetoric and in the politics. Because of the constitutional weakness of a territory we seem to have focused entirely on the Northern Territory. Because of the wonderful skills of Noel Pearson in Cape York we seem to have focused entirely on Cape York and Cape York alone in Queensland.

The story lies on page 12, which shows, without doubt, that more than one in two people live in New South Wales or Queensland—we are getting up to nearly 60 per cent of the entire population. It is the east coast window. Everyone in Australia wants to live in this window, so it should not surprise anyone that there has been the same feeling over the last 40,000 years, let alone the last 200. But it is the regional Indigenous communities which I would like to hear more about and would like to see more work done on. The member for Macquarie spoke about the remote service delivery aspect. The whole Samson and Delilah feeling is an important one and remote and rural issues are important. But they should not be at the expense of the vast majority of regionalised and urbanised Indigenous people and communities. There are complexities about that and, if we are serious about closing the gap, we are not going anywhere fast unless we tackle those complex, challenging regional and urban issues.

I enjoyed the report—I particularly enjoyed page 12. I would love everyone to have a look at it and to think about how they view many of the issues wrapped up in the ‘closing the gap’ story. I hope it challenges a few people to rethink. I hope it challenges the executive to spend more time, effort and energy on the window between Sydney and Rocky. And I hope we can start to tackle some of those complexities. I know the many local members, from all political persuasions, in the window are trying, but there are particular challenges on which we need the help of government. The one I want to focus on in my time left is education. We all hear it talked about as a key both to reconciliation and to getting out of the poverty trap, and I agree with that.

I want to put on record a couple of examples where we as a region have been trying, in a bottom-up way, to help ourselves. We have asked government—they were not big asks—for some assistance and some support for us as a region to help ourselves. There are some frustrations. The first one I want to get on the record relates to the tremendous work that is done by Macleay Vocational College, which is pretty well smack in the middle of South Kempsey. Kempsey was identified by Tony Vinson as one of the six most problematic areas in Australia. We do not hear about them in here that much. We do not hear conversations about the Vinson hot spots as much as I would like, because most of them are regionalised communities—not rural or remote. But Kempsey is one of them and this vocational college got off the ground largely funded by local community fund raising. There are some opportunities, without going into detail, where government could provide greater assistance in helping the principal, Jann Eason, who is right on the front line trying to keep engaged kids who have been suspended or expelled or who are not turning up to so-called mainstream education. At the moment she is frustrated with the lack of help that is coming through from government. They are not big asks that she has; there are two or three of them. But it is a tremendous, practical, front-line delivery of education that I think a few of us are starting to feel is being left behind by government. So I ask for some assistance on that front.

The other is a proposal to government that a few education providers put together about place-based learning. Place is incredibly important not only for Birpai and Dhungutti in my region but, I am sure, for everyone’s local communities—if they are seriously connected, they would understand the value and importance of place.

We put a proposal to government last year about a bottom-up approach. Yes, it is almost the complete opposite of a top-down emergency intervention but we think we are in a position to help ourselves. We would love some help. It challenges everything about the way government views itself, where it is a paternalistic deliverer of Commonwealth taxes. Yes, it challenges all of that. It challenges all of the silo thinking in the delivery of government—we give a bit here, here and here, depending on departments. It challenges all of that, but, if we are serious about social inclusion, if we are serious about closing the gap, if we are serious about self-determination, then the bottom-up approach, the place based thinking, is one that has to get into the psyche of government. It is a nut that has to be cracked. We have to turn this around from being a top-down delivery to being a bottom-up delivery—use the word ‘organic’ if you want—approach about people helping themselves. It is a much more sustainable model than the alternative.

If we want value for our tax dollars then I am asking the Deputy Prime Minister in particular, and the executive more generally, to give us a bit of help with this place based model. It does challenge convention. It is the complete opposite, as I say, of emergency interventions and all the politics around that type of thinking, but it is a better way forward. It is a sustainable model and, if we are serious about closing the gap, for my region, where we have 11 per cent of the New South Wales Indigenous population, I am confident that it is the way forward.

There is a proposal in the government’s hands. We are getting a bit frustrated that we have not heard back—it is now nearly six months. I am worried that it has been lost in the silo thinking, that it does not fit in a box. I ask for a minister and an executive to assist, particularly from the angle of social inclusion and education being the ticket out of some of these traps that we have found ourselves in over the 200-year history of this conflict. Here is an opportunity to do some good work. Deputy Prime Minister Gillard, I once again ask for your support.

See this speech in context