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

The Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Emergency Response Consolidation) Bill 2007 is an important piece of legislation which purports to consolidate the government’s implementation of the Northern Territory intervention. I want to say that I respect the sincerity of the government’s support for the Northern Territory intervention. I have heard senior government ministers speak passionately in favour of the intervention in circumstances under which they could easily have taken a different view and to audiences that were inclined to be critical of them. So I do not for a moment doubt the sincerity of the government’s commitment to the intervention, but I do say to the government, with the same sincerity that they bring to this issue, that this bill will in significant ways water down the intervention and blunt its effectiveness.

I accept that it was a pre-election position of the now government that the permit system, as it had long operated in the Northern Territory, should be restored. I also accept that governments normally want to put into practice post-election what they said they would do pre-election. But pre-election they did not have on the record the views of such notable Aboriginal Labor members as Warren Mundine, the former national president of the Australian Labor Party, and Alison Anderson, the Northern Territory government member for Alice Springs and surrounding areas, to the effect that the permit system was part of the problem.

I have previously put on the record in this place the precise statements of Warren Mundine and Alison Anderson, and I will not further detain the House by doing it again. I simply say to members opposite: the permit system obviously did not protect these Northern Territory communities against predators. If the permit system had protected the Northern Territory communities against predators, the intervention would not have been necessary. So it did not work. Now that we have very significant and distinguished Indigenous Australians, whose Labor Party credentials are impeccable, urging the new government not to restore the permit system, I say to members opposite that they should think again.

One of the key elements in the almost diabolical situation that existed in so many remote townships was the exposure of young children to pornography. The Little children are sacred report made it very clear that exposure to pornography helped to create the environment in which the sexual abuse of children took place. Exposure to pornography desensitised the adults and, according to the report, it had the effect of grooming young children for quite wrong activity.

An important element of the intervention is the blanket ban on pornography in these remote Northern Territory townships. I have to say that the new government made no pre-election commitment to modify or water down the blanket ban on pornography. There was not the slightest suggestion pre-election that the government had any reservations about the former government’s blanket ban on pornography. Not only did the government give no prior suggestion of being soft on porn; the new Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, said in his 100-days booklet that one of the achievements of the government’s first 100 days was to introduce legislation banning porn in these remote Northern Territory townships. I regret to say to the House that the legislation that we are now debating does no such thing. It does not ban porn. In fact, it waters down the former government’s restrictions on porn and it allows pay-TV porn to continue in these communities.

Debate interrupted.