Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The rate of incarceration of Indigenous Australians has almost doubled in the last decade. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up just over three per cent of our population yet they make up over 25 per cent of our prison population. This is shameful. Will the Prime Minister commit to a new justice target within the closing the gap framework?

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate this question from the Leader of the Opposition. I understand his quite appropriate concerns about this particular issue. Yes, the rate of incarceration of Indigenous Australians is horribly high—vastly disproportionate to their ratio in the population. We do need to get it down. I think the best way to get it down is to get the fundamentals right and the fundamentals are getting kids to school, adults to work and communities safe.

I do want to see in all significant Indigenous communities—in all communities with a significant law and order problem—a resident police presence. Over the years there has not been a sufficiently strong resident police presence in so many of these remote Indigenous communities. For instance, in the last few years of the Howard government I was the minister with whole-of-government responsibility for the APY Lands in South Australia, an area about the size of Scotland with about 3,000 people, five significant communities and just eight resident police. The police lived at a place that had virtually no local people living there—Umuwa. I think you would remember it, shadow minister. It was called the Canberra of the lands. It was an administrative centre. It was not a place where anyone lived. I think all but two of the resident police lived there. By contrast, Ceduna, a town of about 3,000 people, had 27 resident police.

This is a very serious problem. It has been somewhat addressed in the days since then. The Northern Territory intervention was part of somewhat addressing this. There are other places like Aurukun in Cape York with about 1,200 people. When I was there last there were 12 resident police, so I think that is starting to approach the kinds of ratios you would expect.

I do take the Leader of the Opposition's question seriously. I think it is important to reduce incarceration, but the best way to reduce incarceration is to reduce crime. That is the best way to reduce incarceration—to reduce crime. We do that by having proper policing in these places. The other thing we should be looking at is the healthy wealthy card, which is an important part of the Forrest review, because if we can make this work it will ensure that people are spending their money on the kinds of things that will help them rather than the kinds of things that will hurt them.