Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Bradfield proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The need to build on the momentum and success of the intervention into the Northern Territory to protect Aboriginal children.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Brendan Nelson (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate very much the opportunity to bring on this matter of public importance, particularly on a day when the parliament has apologised to those Aboriginal generations that were forcibly removed from their parents. But I do find it extraordinary that not all of the parliament, unfortunately, was able to support a matter of public importance debate on the intervention in the Northern Territory, which is literally about saving and rescuing the lives of Aboriginal children.

The situation in Aboriginal Australia has been well documented in terms of health and life expectancy. Generally speaking, life expectancy is 17 years less for an Indigenous Australian than it is for a non-Indigenous Australian. That equates to countries such as Haiti, Ghana, India and Papua New Guinea. Kidney disease is 10 times more prevalent. Diabetes is three times more prevalent. One in five Aboriginal children at the age of 15 are not in school. One in four currently cannot pass a very basic year 3 reading benchmark. One in three cannot pass the year 5 benchmark. Unemployment is currently running at around 13 per cent for Indigenous Australians, but fortunately it is down from 30 per cent in 1994. More than half of Indigenous Australia is currently in receipt of some sort of welfare support. Hospitalisation rates are 17 times higher for Indigenous Australians. Women are 44 per cent more likely to be hospitalised for assault than non-Indigenous Australians. Imprisonment rates are 13 times higher, and juvenile Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians are 23 times more likely to find themselves in detention.

Last year, the report entitled Little children are sacred was released, having been commissioned by the Northern Territory government. That report was the straw that literally broke the camel’s back. The inquiry was headed by Rex Wild QC and Pat Anderson. The Little children are sacred report states that children are described as sacred in Aboriginal Australia because they carry the two spring wells of water from their country with them. The inquiry visited 45 communities in the Northern Territory and found evidence of sexual abuse of children in every single one of them. For the benefit of the House I will just repeat that: 45 Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory were visited, and in every one of them there was found to be evidence of sexual abuse of children.

If that were the situation in any other part of Australia, particularly suburban and regional Australia, there would understandably be a very strong, immediate reaction and dare I say a radical one. In 2007 the previous government described this as a state of emergency, and that is very much the view on our side of the House. In fact, the report concluded, amongst other things, that Aboriginal child abuse in the Northern Territory should ‘be designated as an issue of urgent national significance by both the Australian and Northern Territory governments’. It also reported a submission that in part said:

In cases of sexual abuse, the child is often removed from the community (to be taken to a place of safety or to be interviewed). This can lead to the child believing they have done something wrong, and make families reluctant to report as it is the child who is removed rather than the alleged perpetrator.

In other words, even when people were trying to act, the view was that the children themselves thought that in some way they were at fault and that, and many other things, was leading to inaction on something which violates everything that surely our country stands for.

So the government in 2007 made the decision that some radical reforms needed to be undertaken. The intervention had three principal elements. The first was to stabilise the situation. The second was to try to normalise the services that are provided to Indigenous people in the Northern Territory, including in infrastructure. The third was to provide longer term support. So that intervention included a number of things. It followed on in part from the recommendations of that Little children are sacred report, which focused on education. For example, why do we have truancy rates approaching 65 per cent in areas of Arnhem Land? It made recommendations about the devastating impact of alcohol and the unfettered access to it by many people in these remote communities, and the relationship between the Department of Family and Community Services, welfare payments and policing. A lack of policing that would be intolerable in any other community in Australia was simply considered to be the norm in Aboriginal Australia, as it still is in many remote Aboriginal communities.

On the subject of housing, in some cases you had more than 50 people living in a three-bedroom house. We asked ourselves on this side, and we still do: why is it that, as of late last year, there were 271 fewer houses in the Northern Territory in remote Aboriginal communities than there were five years earlier, despite the fact that an additional $1 billion had been spent on housing for Aboriginal people in remote parts of Australia?

The report also focused on gambling. Much of the money that arrives in remote communities goes into gambling, alcohol, tobacco and other things, the end result of which is that children are not fed and clothed. The report also addressed the dreadful and devastating impact of pornography in these remote communities.

The intervention, which was put in place by the previous government and supported by the then opposition, had a number of elements. The first was to get fair dinkum policing into these communities and to no longer accept the intolerable. The intervention used police from not only the Northern Territory but also the Federal Police and police from other parts of Australia and other jurisdictions. It also meant getting the Army in there to make sure that security was guaranteed—in particular, the NORFORCE forces in Northern Australia with which Aboriginal people are familiar.

The intervention also meant community management: appointing managers to actually manage government businesses. A lot of the problems relate to very poor levels of professional administration in many of these communities and also, in many other cases, downright corruption. It also demanded health checks of every child under the age of 16, many of whom had rarely had any examination of their health, and welfare reforms to stop that money going to gambling, alcohol, drugs, pornography and other things—to quarantine in the order of half of the money going to individuals under certain circumstances to make damn sure that it actually gets to the children who most need it and for whom it is intended.

The other thing, which should not be considered innovative but nonetheless had to be done, was to link welfare payments to school attendance. You cannot educate any child until you actually get them to school. Community safety meant getting people in the communities supported by the intervention to be involved in clean-ups, Work for the Dole and other programs. It also aimed to develop market based solutions to housing. Many people in these communities had no hope of ever owning a house or ever being part of the economic mainstream and having the reasonable expectation of owning a house.

We also desperately needed bans and restrictions on alcohol. Anyone in this place who is familiar with any of these communities—whether they be in the Kimberley, whether they be in the Northern Territory, whether they be in the northern parts of the cape or whether they be in northern parts of South Australia—knows that you only have to spend a very short time there to appreciate the devastating impact of alcohol on Aboriginal Australia. Enough is enough. Compounding all this was pornography, so decisions were made to ban the possession of pornography and also to audit computers.

The other element to this was the permit system. In question time the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs said that the permit system had not being enacted. It had been legislated, but it had not yet taken effect because the legislation needed assent. The permits were removed from common areas—from roads, barge landings and airstrips—but 99.98 per cent of land in the Northern Territory would still require permits. The key element of the permit system was to open these remote communities to the rest of Australia—to open up these communities so that the rest of Australia could actually start to engage with these communities and they with them. It was completely unacceptable, and remains completely unacceptable, that in these communities you have lives of existential despair and the most appalling things being done to children in terms of neglect, sexual abuse and other things, including malnutrition in the 21st century in a developed country like Australia. One reason that that has continued is that the permit system has not allowed engagement with the outside world and calibration of what is unacceptable in these communities with what, by any other standard in any other part of the country, is evidence of a caring, developed and sophisticated society.

We were very concerned when we saw some changes coming to this intervention with the election of the new government. One of the most remarkable Australians is Sue Gordon, the Perth Children’s Court magistrate. She has been chairing the former government’s intervention committee. On 15 January this year she was reported as saying that she would be asking the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, who is at the table, to meet the entire Indigenous intervention team, which I understand she has done. She wanted to know what direction the government is taking, and already we have seen changes to the permit system. Sue Gordon said:

Everyone wants to know what is happening following the health checks; what is the next phase? That is what the Government will have to be looking at. There’s not much point doing health checks and then no followup.

Australians, and these Aboriginal Australians in particular, need to know precisely the answer to that and many other questions about what is being followed up.

I also point out in relation to the permit system, which we now know the government has been backtracking on, that on the front page of the Australian newspaper on 18 January this year Nicholas Rothwell put it very well. He said that rolling back the changes from the intervention, which is what the government is doing, takes us back to the future:

… back to an apartheid world, where visitors to the 73 main towns and communities of the Territory’s remote north and centre can go nowhere without the stamped approval of a Land Council commissar.

He went on to say:

The primary effect of permits has long been to cut off remote Aboriginal societies from the outside world: to hinder economic activity, to kill tourist curiosity, to protect the incompetent administrators and local leaders presiding over their dysfunctional little kingdoms. Permits acted as a coded signal to outsiders, saying: ‘Leave your usual assumptions behind on entry, because things are different in remote Aboriginal Australia, educational standards are lower, social capital is lower, housing is worse, food is poorer—but that’s all OK, because it’s another kind of society.’

It was also, I might add, another way of Aboriginal people basically saying, ‘We are too fragile to face calibration or measurement against the outside world.’ I have spent about 15 years of my life involved in one way or another in doing what I can to give advocacy for Aboriginal people and the enormous disadvantage that they face, notwithstanding the good intentions of successive governments over a long period of time. But I confess to being guilty, to being, at one stage, one of those people who was not prepared to bring to the national gaze the circumstances that really exist in these communities. I think that in the false name of cultural sensitivity we reached the conclusion that in some way it would diminish the self-esteem of remote Aboriginal Australians if their circumstances went into the lounge rooms of everyday Australia. We were wrong, and on this day and every day I say, ‘I am sorry and I apologise for being a part of that.’

We need to open up remote Aboriginal Australia to the rest of the country so that, as non-Indigenous Australians, we can fully appreciate just how dreadful these circumstances are and just how important that intervention in the Northern Territory is, not only to those Northern Territory Indigenous people. We need to extend such an intervention, or one very much like it, into the cape and other parts of Australia. It is time that we made sure the money intended for Aboriginal children and the laws designed to protect and support them were made available to them and that no more apologies be offered for what has happened in the last 30 years. (Time expired)

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I congratulate Madam Deputy Speaker Burke on her election to her new position. I know she will carry it out with great care and attention. First of all, I want to say to the House what a wonderful morning we have had here in this parliament. It can only be described, I think, as a new chapter in our nation’s history. For the first time ever there has been a true indication of bipartisan support for tackling Indigenous issues and for ensuring that these very important matters are above politics. We have today dealt with unfinished business. As the Prime Minister said, it is time for all of us, right across the political spectrum, to come together to build a new future. The Leader of the Opposition has outlined in his remarks both this morning and again now the extent of the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians—not only the horrific 17-year life expectancy gap but also the gap in educational attainment. We have set ourselves targets to close those gaps, and we intend to do everything we can to achieve those. I hope that in the spirit of bipartisanship the Leader of the Opposition and his coalition will join us in making sure that we do everything to close those gaps.

I do think it is important to have an opportunity to update the House on the progress of the Northern Territory intervention. I should just say at this point that the government’s position on the intervention is very clear. We supported the intervention when it went through the parliament last year and it remains our firm position in government. It is unfortunate that the Leader of the Opposition did not see fit to also read into the Hansard the remarks that Dr Sue Gordon made after I had met with the task force. She indicated that she did understand the government’s strong commitment to the intervention and our strong commitment to taking a number of issues forward, which is the subject of this matter of public importance. I will touch on those in a minute.

We do understand that one of the critical issues with this intervention is that it is very complex. There have been a number of areas that have been implemented with, you might say, not a lot of care and thought beforehand. As a result, implementation has not always gone smoothly. One area in particular where we have had continuous work to try and address the problems has been income management. We certainly support the introduction of income management, but there have been many, many issues that have needed to be addressed by either Centrelink or other agencies because of the very complex nature of the project that has been put in place.

The other area that really was the subject of very poor planning was the previous government’s decision to just dramatically close down some community development employment programs. We are now starting to get reports from communities. The Leader of the Opposition may have seen the article in last weekend’s Australian which was headed ‘Policy made in haste locks communities in a jobs vacuum’. Unfortunately we are hearing similar things back from communities ourselves—that is, as a result of the previous government’s dramatic closure of CDEP, without thinking about what was going to be put in its place, a number of community members are participating less than they were when CDEP was in operation.

Our fundamental approach in this area, our guiding principle, is that of evidence. We intend to base our actions on the facts. We want to make sure that we identify what works and what does not work. That is what will guide our policy. There is not a member in this House that does not want to see the reduction of child abuse. We want to make sure that in this intervention we look at what is working, we look at what is not working and we make the changes that are needed so that we have effective and evidence based policy. As all of us know, policy decisions that are made poorly will have an impact on Indigenous children into the future. So we all have a responsibility to address these issues. That is why we have made a commitment, as the new government, to have a review of the intervention at the 12-month point. It will be a properly independent and transparent review and will make sure that the results are available for all to see so that we can go forward with evidence that tells us all about what will make a difference for children in the Northern Territory. It will also be important for us to assess, through that review, the effectiveness of the actions taken to date.

I indicated before that the new government has already outlined where it intends to put additional measures in place that will help children in the Northern Territory. Unlike the previous government, we have made a very significant commitment to deliver 200 extra teachers into schools in the Northern Territory. It is the case that at least 2,000 children—and we suspect the number is higher—are not even enrolled to go to school in the Northern Territory. Unfortunately, the previous government did not see fit to address this issue. Those children are not even enrolled to go to school and, if they did turn up at school, there would not be a teacher to teach them. So the government has announced that it will make sure that 200 additional teachers are put in place to make sure that when the children do go to school—and we certainly want them at school—there will be a teacher to teach them.

My colleague the Minister for Health and Ageing will be talking about the additional measures that we intend to put in place in the Northern Territory to improve primary health services. We know that the situation for children—and adults, I have to say—is very serious in the Northern Territory. But I will leave my colleague the Minister for Health and Ageing to talk further in this debate about the improvements we intend to bring forth in the health area.

We have also committed to building three additional boarding schools because we know that, for many senior or older students in the Northern Territory, there are no secondary schools for them to go to. We want to make sure that these boarding schools are built and that children have the opportunity to continue their secondary education so that they have the chance to get an education and get on in life. At the moment they do not have those opportunities.

We have also put in place something that was not done at all by the previous government, and that is a proper process of consultation. One of the important things in any area of public policy—and I have to say that it is particularly important in this area of Indigenous affairs—is to bring people with you, to make sure that you talk with people, consult with them and, in that way, guarantee that your policies are more likely to be well received and implemented.

In December, not long after the election of the new government, the Prime Minister and I went to Darwin and met with a range of Indigenous leaders about the Northern Territory emergency response. We have committed to continuing that consultation and working with representatives throughout the Territory to make sure that what we are doing is effective in reducing, in ways that people in the Northern Territory can commit to, the shocking levels of child abuse.

I thought it might be helpful for members of the House if I gave them an update on progress with the Northern Territory intervention. As I said, my colleague the Minister for Health and Ageing will go through the health areas, so I will leave her to talk about the health checks. In addition to the health checks, in the area of welfare reform, there are now over 5,800 people currently being income managed. We have certainly continued to roll out the program of income management. I have taken the advice of the chief of operations, Major General Chalmers, in each case, and there are now 24 communities and associated outstations and two town camp regions where income management is taking place.

At the moment, of course, we have only anecdotal information about the impact of income management. There have been difficulties, as I outlined before, and I say to all members of the House—and this particularly applies to our colleagues in the Northern Territory—that if there are difficulties we want to hear about them. I know my colleague the Minister for Defence Science and Personnel, who is sitting behind me, has been very responsive in helping us in that regard.

Even though there have been difficulties, there have also been positive stories, particularly of mothers and grandmothers saying that they understand that now they have more money to spend on food, that they are able to make sure that the humbugging and pressure on them that comes from people who want money from them is reduced. As I said before, at the 12-month point we will make sure that we do a proper review of the income management process.

Twenty licensed stores in 16 communities have been engaged in the Family Income Management program, and a further three stores are being operated by Outback Stores. There have been almost 600 non-CDEP jobs created. It has been a very positive change to see that people are now getting paid the proper wages that, frankly, they should have been paid a very long time ago.

On the issue of police, we certainly agree that it is a critical issue and one that should have been addressed a very long time ago. During the current financial year, an additional 35 to 40 police were assigned to the Northern Territory by both the Australian Federal Police and state governments. Sixty-six members of the Australian Federal Police will be put in place over the next two years. The additional police will gradually be introduced from mid-year, replacing those police that other jurisdictions generously gave to the Northern Territory. That has led to a new police presence in 17 communities, which demonstrates just how important this is.

At this point I want to acknowledge the role of the task force. It has been a very big operation that they have been asked to supervise. I have asked Dr Sue Gordon to stay on as the head of the task force and she has kindly agreed to do that. Major General Dave Chalmers continues to head the operations side. Roger Corbett is a very important member of the task force, and his role in Outback Stores is critical to making sure that communities have the good food and other things that they need in their stores. Dr Bill Glasson is an important member of the task force and I am sure my colleague will talk about his role; it has been a very important one in this intervention.

Finally, I want to go back to where I started. I welcome the new opposition’s interest in a bipartisan approach to Indigenous affairs. I hope that we can genuinely pursue our approach to Indigenous affairs in this way. We know that governments of all persuasions in the past have failed. We have made a big start this morning—a very big start. For a lot of people that is going to help with the pain and hurt, but I hope that it will also mean that we can now embark together on the very important task of closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. I sincerely invite the opposition to support the targets that we have set out in our election commitments, which we intend to meet. Together we can make a difference for Indigenous people.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Community Services, Indigenous Affairs and the Voluntary Sector) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This morning we focused on the injustices of the past, and this afternoon we should focus on the injustices of the present. This morning we apologised for the wrongs of earlier generations, and this afternoon we should face up to the wrongs done by this generation—wrongs that are likely to be repeated lest we recommit ourselves to good policy, as epitomised by the Northern Territory intervention.

In 2006, an extraordinarily courageous Alice Springs crown prosecutor, Nanette Rogers, chronicled the most horrific crimes being perpetrated against Aboriginal children, including one case where a four-year-old was drowned while being raped by a petrol sniffer. These crimes did not take place a generation ago, and these crimes were not perpetrated by white men against black, yet they did take place in part because of a culture of idleness and indulgences that successive contemporary governments—I stress contemporary governments—have fostered and permitted.

Let us not make the mistake of thinking that this is the first fault-free generation in history. Let us not think that we are morally superior to our predecessors. Let us not think that everything that happened before 1970 was wrong and everything since has been right. Yes, policy up until that time was tainted by assumptions about the inferiority of Aboriginal people and cultures, for which we should rightly, properly and abjectly apologise, but in terms of practical damage to Aboriginal people’s lives welfarism has been just as destructive as paternalism.

I want to congratulate the Leader of the Opposition for a truly magnificent address to this House this morning. He properly acknowledged the pain and the hurt of Aboriginal people, he properly pointed out that life was tougher for everyone in previous generations and he properly accepted the good intentions of the vast majority of past policy makers and administrators. Let me say that our overwhelming responsibility here in this place now is for present times, not past times. Future generations will not think well of us if we apologise for others’ misdeeds while perpetrating and perpetuating misdeeds of our own.

In response to the horrors chronicled by Nanette Rogers and further detailed by the Little children are sacred report, the former government undertook a massive and radical intervention in remote Northern Territory townships. It involved more than 70 separate communities. It involved more than $1 billion worth of new Commonwealth government spending and it promised to restore civic life in these very troubled places. In particular, it involved resident police in all significant townships, strict controls on alcohol, the quarantining of welfare payments, rigorous insistence on school attendance and the opportunity for homeownership.

I congratulate the then opposition, now the government, for supporting the Northern Territory intervention at that time despite ferocious attacks on it from people such as the member for Lingiari, who is now a minister in the new government, and from people such as Marion Scrymgour, who is now the Deputy Chief Minister of the Northern Territory. But there is some evidence that the new government is inclined to water down key aspects of the intervention, and I do not say this in a partisan spirit. I commend the goodwill and the decency that the new minister brings to her job—and I have to say that, in speaking to people involved with the intervention, they have said that they have appreciated her willingness to talk and the spirit that she has brought to those discussions—but the permit system is being restored and the health intervention is faltering. I am pleased that the Minister for Health and Ageing is here in the House to talk, presumably, about this aspect.

Let me cite—because the minister did not get to this in question time—the attitude of the Labor Party’s former national president, Warren Mundine, to the permit system. I quote him from last month:

The permit system didn’t stop crime. In fact, if you look at all of the reports that have come out in the last few years, crime has flourished under the permit system, so it’s a fallacy to say that it helps law-and-order problems. It really embedded these problems because some powerful people were able to get away with things without being watched.

Warren Mundine said this after the new government announced that the permit system would stay. The new minister really needs to explain why she is right and why Warren Mundine—the most senior Aboriginal person in the Labor Party—is wrong on this topic.

Alison Anderson, the extremely experienced Aboriginal member of parliament for the central Northern Territory, told the Australian yesterday that permits had been misused in some remote communities and should not be reintroduced. She said:

I think it has been used as a tool by some people in communities to reject certain people that they disagree with or don’t want out there.

The Labor people who know best—the Labor people most in touch with the reality on the ground—want the permit system scrapped. Why are permits wrong? Because, as that great journalist Nicholas Rothwell, who has made the study of remote Indigenous places something of a life’s work, said:

You’re too fragile to face the world, you need to be protected and coddled, suspect all strangers, the government will serve as your only help.

That is the attitude which people like Warren Mundine and Noel Pearson know is destroying and poisoning Aboriginal communities, yet—alas—that is the attitude which the new government wishes to perpetuate. I again quote Nicholas Rothwell:

In fact there is one reason for the Rudd Government’s move to reinstate permits, and it is an ideological reason. The progressive support base of the Labor Party loves the idea of sacrosanct Aboriginal Australia, untainted by harmful Western influences, its people performing ceremonial activities and tossing off the odd jewel-like work of art.

I say to the ministers at the table: please grow through that. It behoves Aboriginal people for members opposite to grow through their ideological preoccupations, look at what works and what does not work and back the Indigenous intervention.

On the subject of health, it was good to hear the minister talk about Bill Glasson. Unfortunately, Bill Glasson has pointed out that the health checks are rolling out well but there is not the necessary specialist follow-up, despite the fact that 800 doctors—many of them specialists—volunteered their services last year. Those specialists should be deployed. Warren Mundine said, in advice to the minister, ‘I think we should take advantage of what the former government did. We have to build on that. The biggest fear I have is that we start to fall back on our old ways and some of the failed policies of the past.’ I share that fear. I would love to be proved wrong, and I say to the minister opposite: anyone can apologise for other people’s faults, but it takes guts to own one’s own faults. Anyone can judge others harshly; it takes character to avoid making excuses for oneself. In how it prosecutes the Northern Territory intervention, the real character of the Rudd government will be revealed. (Time expired)

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I call the Minister for Health and Ageing.

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Congratulations on rising to this high office. I think we might have tested your new position last night. Hopefully it will not be quite so strenuous today.

I am delighted to be speaking on this matter of public importance motion today. It is indeed a matter of great public importance, and it is an honour to be speaking on this issue on the very day when we have really been able to start making repairs to and apologies for the past. It is very unusual for me to say in this place that I agree with the shadow minister who has just spoken.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Leader of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is this the first time?

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As old sparring partners, it may be one of the first times. I do agree that for us to make our apology today meaningful—our apology about actions of past governments and past parliaments—we need to ensure that this is the first step in taking actions into the future that will make a difference for Indigenous people, particularly Indigenous children. We want to make sure that today is just the beginning in righting some of the wrongs of the past, and we will make sure that today’s words are accompanied by actions today, tomorrow and long into the future. I am very pleased to be following my colleague, the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, who has the not insubstantial task of making sure that we do deal with what can be correctly described as a crisis, a tragedy or a seriously difficult situation. But we do, within this parliament and within our communities, have the wherewithal to make a difference. We now just need to act.

I want to concentrate on the action that is being taken in the health arena. There have been some misrepresentations and, I think, some fears expressed in the media, and there have been some concerns expressed by members opposite, that the health component of the Northern Territory intervention is somehow faltering. Nothing could be further from the truth. Since the intervention was announced by the previous government, nearly 6,000 child health checks have been undertaken across the Northern Territory. The latest figure that we have is 5,796 health checks in 58 different communities and 12 town camps across the Northern Territory. More than 200 healthcare professionals have been involved in this stage, and preparations are now being undertaken for referrals and treatment of many of the conditions that have been identified through the health check process.

I want to make absolutely clear to this House, and to anybody who is listening to this debate, that we are honouring the financial commitments made by the previous government in the Northern Territory intervention. We are committed to the rollout of the child health checks and we are committed to providing the follow-up services that will be needed, but we are committed to much more than that. And this is really the difference. We want to be able to build a healthcare system for our Indigenous communities that will last into the future. We know we have to enhance our primary healthcare services in the Northern Territory. We know we have to find ways to make the workforce sustainable in the long term. We cannot see this intervention as a one-off check, a one-off treatment, and then go back to where we were before. The real art to making this intervention work in terms of health care is to also be building the structure for the future. In announcing today that we are committed to the health aspects of the Northern Territory intervention, I also want to highlight additional things that we are committed to doing which will make a significant difference. Then, if time permits, I will come back to talking more specifically about some of the issues that people have raised in terms of the intervention itself.

What is forgotten when we look at the previous government’s decision to intervene is that we talked about one-off child health checks and the follow-up that might come from that, but we are still primarily in the phase of undertaking the remaining health checks. Prior to the election, we committed to doing something which the previous government did not do, and we have now started to roll it out. We committed to actually having an impact on life expectancy and health outcomes for Indigenous people into the future. We have committed a quarter of a billion dollars to closing the life expectancy gap—starting with the babies who are being born today. We will be making sure that they get home visits from nurses and that there are intensive support services available through mums and bubs programs across the country. We already have a number of fabulous Indigenous health services with nurses who provide great maternal health care. They need more support, they need more nursing staff and they need more infrastructure. Our $260 million commitment will, amongst other things, start to roll out that support to communities across the country. It will fundamentally enhance the sort of one-off approach that the previous government took to the Northern Territory intervention child health check. We need to build the infrastructure that is going to do the checking well into the future, and we need to make sure that it is going to be there for every single Aboriginal child across the country—not just in the Northern Territory.

That $260 million also makes sure that we are tying together health support with educational and developmental support. It is critical for us not only to look at how we can make sure that our four-year-old Indigenous children are getting good developmental support—and there are many people in this parliament, such as the parliamentary secretary, who is here, who will be working on those sorts of projects—but also to make sure that the babies actually get a chance to turn into four-year-olds to get that service. We still have appalling figures in this country. The chance of an Indigenous baby dying before they turn one is three times more likely than for a non-Indigenous baby. We know what interventions can make a difference. We know if we give proper prenatal, postnatal and intensive support for mothers that we can make a difference to birth weight and to reducing smoking and alcohol consumption during pregnancy, and that we can help children to have early problems identified and dealt with when they are young so that they can grow into happy, healthy children.

Last week when I was in Alice Springs and visited one of the town camps, I found the circumstances just as confronting as everybody would expect from the media reports—perhaps even more so. It really brings home that, for us to be able to provide decent health services, we have to be able to provide decent housing, decent employment opportunities and decent education. The challenge that the Rudd Labor government have picked up, following on from the Northern Territory intervention of the previous government, is to tie those things together and to make sure that, when we want to invest serious resources, time, energy and infrastructure in health services, we make sure that those services have a proper chance of being successful—by ensuring that there is decent housing for people and that there is a pathway to be able to get early childhood education and get into schools where there are teachers, as my colleague has already flagged. These sorts of interactions are going to be critical in the next phase of the intervention and the Rudd Labor government’s approach to Indigenous affairs.

What I would like to say when people concentrate so much on the very difficult circumstances that we absolutely do face is that there is in the Northern Territory a great strength amongst the Indigenous controlled health service providers. For example, AMSANT, Congress in Alice Springs and others are fully functional and very capable services that were not involved in consultations on the Northern Territory intervention. They were not asked to use their expertise to roll out ongoing support for these health services. We intend to make sure that, with the resources, energy and momentum from the Northern Territory intervention, we develop a proper relationship with those existing services that can provide ongoing support into the future. I think it is really critical that we do that.

We have also made a number of other commitments that are going to be very significant in the Northern Territory. We have committed $20 million, of which $10 million will be invested in upgrading our primary healthcare services across the Territory and $5 million will be invested in providing something that there is, unfortunately, a growing need for—that is, renal dialysis facilities. There are very few satellite services for remote communities. There will also be $4½ million for sexual assault counselling in the Northern Territory. Another $50 million—agreed to by COAG before Christmas—will be provided for alcohol rehabilitation programs, counselling and other programs across the country. So there is serious new money being committed by the Rudd Labor government to complement what is being done in the Northern Territory.

I am conscious of the time but I want to quickly flag that the results of the child healthcare checks that have already been undertaken show that a large number of referrals are needed. The highest number are referrals to primary healthcare services—not, as the member opposite pointed out, to specialist services, although there is a need for those. It is those primary healthcare services that we are investing in and supporting long term that are most often referred to. The next highest, which will not be a surprise on this side of the House, is to dental care. The previous government’s dental care program, which they lauded so much last year, failed to provide a single dental care service to any person under the age of 25 in the Northern Territory. We are going to fix that with our dental program. The previous government should be ashamed of their record on that. (Time expired)

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Leader of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to speak on this very important issue. When one considers the subject of this matter of public importance, one always thinks that there are a range of ways in which we can assist. We are very privileged in this place to be able to make a difference to our constituents and all Australians. I see quite a number of new faces in this chamber. Whilst I do not know them personally, I well imagine that being able to make a difference was very much part of their motivation for coming to this place.

We can make a difference through leadership and we can make a difference through policy development, outcomes and settings and the delivery of services. But we can also make a difference through providing hope—replacing despair with hope, creating opportunities and building self-esteem. We in this place should never underestimate the power of hope in uplifting all Australians. If we can provide people in very difficult positions with a way forward, a path to a better future, that is a very powerful driver, and I think it helps to build a much stronger community. If we can keep safe our children who are at risk and replace that feeling of fear with a feeling of safety, I think we will immediately provide positive outcomes.

I think most people who looked at the Little children are sacred report found the contents most confronting. People in this House were horrified by the problems that were chronicled in that very difficult report. I would certainly like to commend the intervention and the very strong stance that the previous government took in breaking the policy mould and taking a very strong position on this very difficult problem. It is all too easy to come up with excuses not to act. It is all too easy to bow down to vested interests. But I think the power of that intervention was that that very intransigent problem that we have—not only in the Northern Territory but in other areas as well—was very strongly confronted, as were what I would call those very noisy vested interests. I would plead with this government to not give in to the squeaky wheel. I implore them to take the very hard road and confront those vested interests to ensure that we get the very best outcomes.

No intervention is going to be perfect. Governments since Federation, through a range of policies, many of them misguided but certainly well intentioned, have attempted to solve the problems of our Indigenous communities. We need to keep our shoulders to the wheel. I see the intervention as a very good first step. I am concerned at the potential for the roll-back of the intervention and I would hope that the government will continue to confront the problems that we have. I have a very substantial Indigenous population in my electorate and, when I see young people who are offered hope and solutions, I see the dramatic change which occurs in their personal demeanour and their future. I think we can continue to make a difference right across the Northern Territory.

Unfortunately, remote Australia becomes a very challenging area in which to roll out policy. If you were going to design a model of an area in which it was difficult to roll out policy, you would come up with something that was very much akin to what we have in remote Australia, where we have vast distances and relatively sparse populations. Everywhere we roll out policy, we have a difficulty with labour forces, we have a difficulty with getting to the people, we have perhaps a reluctance for people to come and seek help and, in many cases, we have a lack of trust in the sorts of services that can be offered by governments and their associated bodies.

Let me commend this matter of public importance. We must continue to strive, on this very important day in our history, to improve our health outcomes. We must continue to ensure that our little children are safe, to ensure that they feel they have a future and to build their self-esteem so that they can take their rightful place in our society and contribute to it. If we build self-esteem and keep our children safe, together we can achieve some really outstanding outcomes.

Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker Burke, let me also congratulate you on your elevation to that noble role. I would like to share some of the sentiments that the member for Cowper has just put forward. We will stay committed to this intervention, to deliver the very necessary results that are required on the ground in remote communities.

I think Shadow Minister Abbott indicated how much we owe to Nanette Rogers, the Crown Prosecutor, for bringing these matters very publicly to our attention. But could I say—and all credit to Ms Rogers—that she was prosecuting briefs that were prepared on information that was relayed by the Northern Territory Police; therefore, I think it is incumbent upon us to look at what the Northern Territory Police have had to say about the scope of this intervention and how it should proceed, and what they have said specifically about the permit system. To date, the Leader of the Opposition has essentially argued that we need to wind back the permit system. He makes out that it is, effectively, a barrier to remote communities’ participation in economic benefits. This intervention is not about the participation of a community in economic development. That is something we specifically have to do. The Minister for Health and Ageing just indicated what we need to do and are continuing to do in relation to health, as we will also do in relation to education and training to ensure that the Aboriginal youth of these communities have access to all the necessary skills and abilities to allow them to fully participate in the economic benefits of our communities.

This is specifically about being able to access the remote communities of the Northern Territory. I did pay due deference to the views of Nanette Rogers, but perhaps I could indicate what the Police Federation of Australia said in their submission of 9 August to the Senate inquiry. They question the connection between the permit system and child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities and, therefore, they claim, changes to the permit system would be unwarranted. They go on to say:

Operational police on the ground in the Northern Territory believe that the permit system is a useful tool in policing the communities, particularly in policing alcohol and drug-related crime. It would be most unfortunate if by opening up the permit system in the larger public townships and the connecting road corridors as the government intends, law enforcement efforts to address the ‘rivers of grog’, the distribution of pornography, and the drug running and petrol sniffing were made more difficult.

They are not my words; they are the words of the Police Federation of Australia representing the specific interests of the police officers of the Northern Territory. They have indicated very clearly, from a law enforcement perspective, that it would be a retrograde position to do what the former government intended to do and that is to abolish the permit system.

In looking at what the Leader of the Opposition said about being able to open up these communities to the rest of the country at large, this exercise is not about opening up the communities but about addressing specific issues, specific problems, in these communities currently. If the police are coming out and making substantive submissions like that to the then government—which, incidentally, were ignored—it is incumbent upon us on forming this new government to at least listen to those people who operate on the ground, who have responsibility for law enforcement, who care about what occurs in these communities, who care just as much as the Crown Prosecutor who prosecuted all of those matters. These people were the very ones who laid the initial information, who laid the charges and made the arrests. We have decided here simply to take one version, and we are certainly committed to proceeding with the intervention, but in looking at what is a good tool in law enforcement we cannot take our eye off what has occurred and what is the practical experience of police. (Time expired)

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The discussion is concluded.