Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] I'm very happy to speak about Aboriginal land lights and also to recognise the previous speaker, the member for Lingiari, for his long engagement in the area. Of course, the Wave Hill Walk-Off in 1966, Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta, was just a couple of weeks before both you and I were born, so in that respect there are a couple of us in this chamber who are very much a benchmark of progress in this area, based on the simple fact of how old we are. It was 55 years ago, and halfway into that time—the 27 years that followed 1966—was probably my first visit to Indigenous Australia, with the intention of doing research based in the semi-desert community of Lajamanu. On the way through, one stops at Kalkarindji for a triple-decker toasted sandwich before heading off to Lajamanu, where there were considerably less pickings in the local store at the time. They were celebrating the walk-off in 1993. It's important because, another 27 years into the future, we can make general assessments about what we're achieving generationally. I think very little was achieved in the generation between 1966 and 1993, and sadly I see no evidence of any more achievement in this area in the 27 years that have followed.

There have been apologies many times for the mainstream work in Indigenous affairs. My greatest concern is that I won't be forced to apologise to my children, to my grandchildren and to Indigenous Australians for what we did while we were here in this chamber, what we are voting for today, and in this case, we consider Aboriginal investment and economic empowerment. The previous speaker has connections to the Central Land Council dating back to 1993. Exactly the same period that he was there, I was studying medicine, and within two or three years I found myself in a remote community evaluating a newly devised azithromycin treatment for trachoma—Australia being the only developed country in the world that was afflicted. The result of that work is that azithromycin is now the mainstream treatment for this disease, and that blindness is almost unknown in Australia as a result of that drug that was first trialled in 1993 in Lajamanu.

So, personally, I go back to the people of Lajamanu and my very limited Warlpiri from being involved in that community for 15 months. It was bookended, on my first trip to the community, by the spearing of a young man, and when I left it was petrol sniffing and a community gathering under a tree to discuss these incredibly difficult issues. The phrase 'petrol sniffing' was inserted into Warlpiri. There was no way that the senior men and women could express such a scourge in their own language, so they had to appropriate English to do it. There were tragic elements at Lajamanu. And, while things may well have improved in certain areas, I have to admit that I am getting tired of listening to the respective leader every year talking about a couple of gaps closing and a couple of them opening.

This presumption that we need to close the gap with mainstream Australia forgets that we actually can dream of Indigenous Australia being better than us. It's not about closing the gap; in many cases, this community, by walking in two worlds with, as Noel Pearson says, a foot in both worlds, can be better than us. I don't want to close a gap; I want them to be better in many areas. And what are those areas that this Indigenous Investment Corporation should be focusing on? Let's be honest: what we've done so far hasn't achieved a great deal.

You're best to get out of Indigenous and remote Australia to see the solutions by looking globally. In my time in parliament, I have fought against this Aboriginal exceptionalism; this notion that there is something utterly unique about Indigenous Australia that necessitates particular and specific structures to help them realise their dreams. We are all part of humanity, and the general economic rules, wherever you travel, will be pretty much the same: four out of five families live independently of government; four out of five families raise their kids without them being vulnerable or at risk; four out of five families get their children to school to complete their education and go on to tertiary education or work; four out of five families are independent of publicly provided housing and they contribute to their aged care; and four out of five work for most of their career and fund their retirement. These are basic rules that apply no matter where you go—give or take.

What we have created in Indigenous Australia is utterly different, and I don't like it being explained away as being 'traditional' or 'connected to country', which are the excuses used for appalling outcomes. What are those outcomes? Every community relies on the provision and consumption of goods and services. But what we've created in much of regional and remote Australia is basically a single stream of welfare or royalties flowing in and a consumption mostly of imported goods and rubbish at the local store. There's virtually no production of local goods for Indigenous people. I use 'painting' as a terrible generalisation. Dot painting is a good, but they are not dot painting for themselves; they are dot painting to exchange for cash. And, then, what services are delivered between Indigenous people? That is a very important question, because half of mainstream employment is the provision of services to each other. With cultural elements aside, in the absence of a services sector, it's almost impossible to dream of full employment. So the Aboriginal Investment Corporation has a massive challenge here. There are these antecedent conversations that haven't been had in one or two generations.

My problem with the previous speaker is that he is perhaps inured by having been in those situations for so long that he simply can no longer visualise a way out. I'm saying today that there must be a way out of the paternalism and the patronising nature of mainstream structures being overlaid to ensure that Aboriginal people can manage their money. This is my concern with Aboriginal benefit accounts. With the greatest of respect to the good people in land councils, where else in the world do ordinary families appropriate the management of their personal finances to a barely elected body? I can understand the role of a local government, where we vote them in and pay a contribution, but this is very different. This is money that belongs to individual families.

With the Western overlay of these administrative structures that are in no way Indigenous, where we are, at the same time, eroding kinship and family groups with welfare payments to individuals, where does that leave traditional family and kinship structures? That is the pre-eminent structure to which I think every Indigenous person I've ever met would turn to for advice, guidance, counsel and leadership. But there is no role for these kinship groups in what we're doing at the moment—and I fear not in this investment corporation either.

We're all unified here in this chamber for economic, social and cultural prosperity, but my great concern is that there's so much symbolism and there are so many administrative overlays that we've lost all practical progress. We've got a blizzard of 16 gaps to close—so many that no-one I have ever met can list them all. There are three gaps that we don't have in there that would close the other 13. Fundamentally, this is about learning, living and working. We need four out of five families learning and showing up to school and transitioning into some form of employment which is their choice. Four out of five families need to be independent of government payments because they're earning their way through life. Lastly, we need four out of five families, because this is the way the rest of the world works, to be independent of government payments for the majority of their household income and independent of publicly provided housing. Learn, earn and work: if these things are taken care of, we don't need the other 13 gaps, because they will close on the way through to closing those three. We've got so many gaps that we can't focus on any of them. It's like a rotisserie arrangement, where one or two haphazardly close for the year, and we congratulate ourselves, and then we sadly mourn the fact that none of the others did.

I'm very disappointed about where we are at the moment, because I don't think we'll come any closer to a solution. I recently visited Indigenous businesses from the top of the NT to the centre, and the common theme for me was the fact that none of these individuals have been given an opportunity to run their own personal business. The notion is that if you go out alone you're competing against your kinship groups, so everyone either works within the cooperative or not at all. I'm all for setting up new Indigenous enterprise, but my concern is if it's nothing more than dot painting, which is about the only 'good' that might be produced, or rangering on traditional country, which is the only service being provided, then we're going to have to just wait until someone wants to pay for those services or those goods. Aboriginal Australians have moved past those dreadful, simplistic generalisations and can be so much more than that, and the Indigenous corporation needs to be attuned to that. We can't simply lift one or two individuals out of the red zone and show that they can run a business and then cross our fingers and hope that they'll employ one or two more. We need a fundamental rethink of economic activity on land.

Connection to country doesn't mean you're trapped on it, that you are mandated to earn your money from it. A lot of people aren't totally clear that capitalising and optimising Indigenous land, which by 2030 will be around 50 per cent of all of Australia, is not primitive rent-seeking. Ten per cent of mainstream Australians are rent-seekers. The point is that everyone else isn't. There's a substantial proportion of people carving their way through other forms of enterprise. This must be the focus of this corporation. It's not about liberating the land. It's not about exploiting the land. It's about doing whatever you're really passionate about. It doesn't have to be those generalisations that I am trying to break in this speech.

What we need is the recognition that family and kinship groups make these decisions for themselves. I've got on Stradbroke Island a pernicious system where individuals driven out of the prescribed body corporate are alienated from all of the current structures under the Native Title Act. They haven't forfeited their native title right—they still hold it—but they're excluded from the PBC. 'What is a PBC?' and 'Why do we need a land council?' are super-important questions. I know that no-one's thought of a different way of doing things. But, if you're talking about a way of extinguishing the rights of individual families and kinship groups, it's having a larger global entity making decisions on your behalf or your being voted down by majority, where the enterprise that you wanted to have invested in can't get any money from the land council because the others voted you out. We need a threshold under which individual families can maximise utility and engage the economy without interference or molestation by a land council majority decision. I'm not saying this is an endemic problem, but it's never worked anywhere else in the world, has it? Let's be honest. It's only in place in Central Australia. We've got to be brutally honest that we are failing in Central Australia.

A remote Indigenous community and a family within it will always be my barometer of success in Indigenous Australia. I love to death Indigenous people who are succeeding in the city. That's fantastic. But, ultimately, when it comes to closing the gap, the gap I'm most mindful of is the gap that we see in a household that still speaks an Indigenous language in remote Australia, where the delivery of services and opportunities are bleakest and most challenging. That is where we must be tested. That is where the focus must always be.

In conclusion, I'm all for something that's, hopefully, going to increase business opportunity, but the current language must change. We must be refocusing on individual family and kinship groups and identifying senior men and women to make decisions and control resources for their family group. I don't believe necessarily in an Indigenous voice to parliament. I want Indigenous voices to parliament, because there is no one voice that paternalistically and patronisingly speaks for Indigenous Australians. They won't cop it. They won't cop someone from some other family group, let alone another community, speaking on behalf of them. Let the voices come forward from local areas. There is no need for bureaucracy to make this happen. It should have happened yesterday. It's been two decades since ATSIS. Again, why do Indigenous Australians need to come to me, to you, Deputy Speaker, and to the parliament, for permission to have a voice? I want to be completely disintermediated from this and just see the voice happen organically. It will prove its value and its worth, and the facts on the ground will see legislation driven and, ultimately, constitutional change by virtue of it proving itself to its own people.

This is not a decision for white politicians. The voices to parliament already have a democratic path, but I absolutely support—as I would for any minority group—an alternative route to express opinions and give advice. There is nothing wrong and there's nothing to be frightened of. This business and investment corporation could play a role there. But, for those that are appointed—by Indigenous Australians, by government and independently—I will be personally challenging this corporation, whether this first conversation is had about what family groups individually want to do, and how much of everything that we're doing today in the last generation is actually adding to the patronisation of Indigenous families. We have to unlock the potential that you see in the rest of the world, and it starts with a new conversation—not a fixation on closing gaps or setting up new bureaucracies.

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