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

[by video link] It's an honour to follow both the minister and the shadow minister and to be followed by my good friend the Member for Lingiari in this debate, all three of whom have done much to educate me and share their knowledge of Australia's Indigenous people and have committed their lives to the betterment of our First Nations people. I'd like to start today in speaking about the important work of the Commonwealth Closing the Gap implementation plan by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land in my electorate where I'm coming from today, the Dharug and Kuringgai people, and paying my respect to their elders past and present.

This is a different Closing the Gap statement. It acknowledges we've entered into a new era of partnership between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples through the Coalition of Peaks and governments, and, in saying 'governments'—plural—I mean Commonwealth, state and territory. There are two firsts in this process: the involvement of Aboriginal people in setting and delivering against the targets, and the involvement of all governments. One of the things I think is poorly understood is that, although in 1967 the people gave the Commonwealth power to make laws about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, the truth is that most of the laws and policies which affect our First Nations people are made by the states and territories. So bringing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and all levels of government to the table is something of a watershed moment in our history.

I want to acknowledge the leadership of the minister, the Prime Minister and Pat Turner in bringing this about. The way this Closing the Gap process has taken place is, in my view, a harbinger of what the voice can potentially achieve. It shows that real change can be achieved when you listen to and involve Indigenous people in the decisions that affect them. Speaking of watershed moments, I note that the Prime Minister in his remarks in the Closing the Gap statement added that 17 August marks 50 years since Neville Bonner delivered his maiden speech to the senate and became the first Indigenous person to serve in the parliament.

I wanted to say something about Neville Bonner in these remarks as I had the privilege of getting to know Neville in February 1998 when we were both elected ACM—No Republic delegates at the constitutional convention. He was No. 2 on our Queensland senate ticket behind Sir James Killen. Like the other ACM delegates, we stayed at the Garden City Premier Inn at Narrabundah during that hot February fortnight. Neville wasn't well. He was suffering from the cancer that ultimately killed him. At night he'd join other ACM delegates for a drink and dinner and he was often found outside having a smoko. He was warm, friendly and encouraging of this young bloke, and I remember the many distinctive rings he had on his fingers.

Neville and I served on an important subcommittee of that convention: a cross-party grouping comprising both republicans and monarchists on the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It was the only truly bipartisan recommendation of that convention and was about having a referendum on Indigenous constitutional recognition regardless of your position on the republic. The committee was the genesis of my personal involvement in that issue, and I still regard constitutional recognition as important unfinished business.

Neville Bonner made one of the two truly remarkable addresses to that convention, the other made by Sir James Killen. These two great parliamentarians—giants of our postwar politics—followed one another, and I was privileged to be in the chamber to hear these great orations. Bonner raised issues that day 23 years ago which are still with us and remain central to closing the gap. He said:

From the bottom of my heart, I pray to you: stop this senseless division. Let us work together on the real issues. Let us solve those problems which haunt my people—the problems of land, of health, of unemployment, of the despair and hopelessness which leads even to suicide. Let us unite this country, not divide it ever—that toy of those who already have too much: mere symbolism.

He then said:

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to end what I have already said by singing my Jagera sorry chant.

Then he left us spellbound with that awe-inspiring chant. Even now I get goosebumps thinking about it. That chant provoked a long standing ovation—the only one of the convention. Reflecting on the day of his own maiden speech on 17 August 1971, Bonner on another occasion had this to say:

As they were leading me up, I looked up and around the galleries and I could feel the whole Aboriginal race, of those who had gone before, were all up there, and I could visualise, I could hear voices and amongst those voices was the voice of my grandfather saying, 'It's alright now boy, you are finally in the council with the Australian Elders. Everything is now going to be alright.'

We can't make the promise that everything is going to be alright now, but we can promise to honour the memory of Neville Bonner by working to make this Closing the Gap Commonwealth parliamentary implementation plan successful in what it seeks to do. It seeks to address disadvantage, to build opportunities for Indigenous Australians and to build partnerships for working together.

The government has committed a billion dollars to support new measures delivering on its commitments to co-design and work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and I think it's worthwhile mentioning some of those measures. I want to say something about the Territories Stolen Generations Redress Scheme, and I think the shadow minister has already mentioned the financial compensation elements of it. I think there is actually a deeper and more important part of the redress scheme—that is, the opportunity for each survivor to confidentially tell their story about the impact of their removal to a senior official within government, and to have it acknowledged and receive a face-to-face written apology for the removal and resulting trauma. Too often in our country, people feel they are not being listened to by government and have nowhere to go to tell their story. So I think that this aspect is very important. One only needed to hear the voice of Pat Turner at the press conference, talking about her own mother's circumstances, to see how powerful such a measure will be.

There are several measures in relation to closing the gap around child care and education which I think are important. There is $120 million to improve the lives of thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children through better access to early childhood education. As we know, one of the best ways to improve people's lot in life is to ensure they have a good start with quality early childhood education, particularly for people who are disadvantaged—whether it is through the $81 million for an extra 27 new Connected Beginnings sites benefiting around 8½ thousand children, or money to fund up to 20 new childcare services in remote communities, or $9 million to create four new early years education programs in Queensland and Victoria. These will be significant measures. Importantly, there will be a $2 million trial of a new early learning teaching model to strengthen literacy and numeracy through explicit instruction. Evidence shows that play based learning alone may not be enough for some children and that explicit instruction can be more effective.

The plan focuses not only on early education; it also focuses on greater investment in secondary schooling. There is $75 million to improve options for secondary schooling for Indigenous children in remote communities and a $25 million investment in Scaling Up Success, a program that ensures the best evidence based programs are used in our primary schools.

I have the privilege of chairing the House Indigenous affairs committee and I want to say how important it is that we focus on Closing the Gap target 8, which is that by 2031 we will have increased to 62 per cent the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 25 to 64 who are employed. That number currently sits at 51 per cent. The Indigenous affairs committee is currently undertaking an inquiry looking at pathways to economic opportunity for Indigenous Australians around employment and small business. Our committee has heard evidence from a number of businesses that are working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to build partnerships and identify opportunities for training and employment, and I want to revisit some of the evidence we have heard. Voyages is a company that, prior to COVID, employed 1,100 people in Central Australia, 400 of whom were Indigenous. They are the largest employer of Indigenous people in Central Australia. They run the National Indigenous Training Academy in partnership with the William Angliss Institute and Charles Darwin University. They are a training-to-employment organisation providing people with great opportunities in the hospitality and horticulture sectors. We heard from Woolworths, one of the largest employers of Indigenous Australians, employing 5,000 Indigenous people across the country, about their important cultural training and mentoring initiatives. We heard from the Accor hotels group, who have targets for the number of contracts of value procured from Indigenous businesses. Since the imposition of those targets, they have reported seeing an upward trend in their engagement with Indigenous business. We heard from the Minerals Council, who said they are working in partnership to provide pathways for skills training and business development. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up about 3.8 per cent of the mining workforce, and the number of Indigenous employees directly employed in mining has more than doubled in the decade to 2016.

We also have heard much about the growth in Indigenous business, especially but not exclusively from the success of the government's Indigenous Procurement Policy, and the important links between Indigenous small business and Indigenous employment. An Indigenous businesses is 100 times more likely than a non-Indigenous business to employ other Indigenous Australians.

In conclusion, the focus of this new Closing the Gap initiative is on partnerships. Partnerships are essential. They build connections between governments and our First Nations people and build opportunities across the country. We will continue to work to build those opportunities until we reach the day when children can grow up and, regardless of whether they are Indigenous or non-Indigenous, have the same expectations as any other Australian.

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