Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's fair to say that this Closing the gap report presents a mixed range of results. We should acknowledge that there are two important successes in the report. The target in relation to early childhood development and education is on track. That is not something to be sneezed at. We know from the work of Professor James Heckman at the University of Chicago that early childhood education and development are absolutely paramount to somebody's future.

The second success of the report is the fact that school completion rates are on track. We know that, when somebody completes year 12, many options open to them that weren't available to them but for their completing year 12, whether it's further education or employment opportunities. We know as well that for those that go on from year 12 to university and complete a bachelor's degree there is absolutely no gap between Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people. But we also have to be realistic that, other than those two targets, for all the other targets we are not on track.

I want to particularly focus on the target in relation to employment, because this particular report shows that there's been no substantial improvement since 2008. Although the targets are about to change, I think the employment outcomes demonstrate the need for new approaches, which the government, under the leadership of this minister, have embarked upon. Between 2008 and 2018-19 the national Indigenous employment rate increased only slightly, from 48.2 per cent to 49.1 per cent. The employment rate for non-Indigenous Australians over the same period remained relatively stable, at around 75 per cent.

There's an interesting point in the report about remoteness and employment too. In 2018-19 the Indigenous employment rate was highest in major cities, around 59 per cent, and lowest in very remote areas, around 35 per cent. That's a very small employment outcome for Indigenous people. There are a couple of interesting exceptions here. They particularly note that the remote employment rate for Indigenous employment in remote South Australia is at 67 per cent, which is an interesting and high outcome; similarly, in inner regional Queensland the rate is around 60 per cent. Those particular differences and results deserve further study.

One of the things that Minister Wyatt has done since being minister has been to commission the House Indigenous Affairs committee—which I chair and which includes, among other people, the member for Lingiari, who's my deputy chair—to look at new approaches to getting more Indigenous people into work and into small businesses. The committee held its first hearings this week, and early submissions show the huge growth that there has been, in recent years, in Indigenous people starting their own businesses.

I think today's report is a reminder of why the inquiry that the minister has established is important. Achievements in education demonstrate that employment outcomes should improve over the medium to long term. As I said, there's no gap with Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people who finish a university bachelor's degree. Evidence submitted in our inquiry indicates the Indigenous business sector has trebled over the last decade, and in the minerals industry—one industry that's led the way in making Indigenous training and employment part of their business as usual—there are 2½ times more Indigenous people working today than there were in the early 2000s. But across all industries, the submissions tell us, we need to have better links between training and employment. Also, we've seen, in the wake of bushfires, there is a greater desire in a range of industries to use Aboriginal expertise in dealing with environmental challenges. Those are the sorts of issues that have come through in some of the submissions in these early days. I think this report presents us with a challenge to reimagine and re-envisage how we deal with a thorny problem: getting more Indigenous people into work.

I want to acknowledge the comments of my deputy chair, the member for Lingiari, in relation to the government needing to listen more. I'm sorry he's not in the chamber, but I just wanted to note that Minister Ruston has been in the Northern Territory in recent weeks, and she's been going around talking to communities who are subject to the cashless debit card and listening to those communities. What she brings from that listening and consultation forward to government will be a matter for her, and it's something that I know all members will be interested in examining. In conclusion, I think the new approach to closing the gap, with the new targets, is going to be something— (Time expired)

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