Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Chair of the Community Affairs References Committee, Senator Moore, I present additional information received by the committee on its inquiry into petrol sniffing in Aboriginal communities and seek leave to move a motion in relation to that document.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I stand here this afternoon to provide some comments about a letter that has been received by the Community Affairs References Committee in relation to its inquiry into petrol sniffing in Aboriginal communities. The letter was to the committee by Mr Gregory Andrews, the now Assistant Secretary of the Communities Engagement Branch of the Office of Indigenous Policy Coordination. It corrects the record on two matters that were mentioned in evidence during the Senate’s inquiry into petrol sniffing and on evidence that he gave on 27 April this year.

The comments I want to go to refer to the way in which this whole sad and sorry saga has been dealt with since that day. I will begin by saying that it became evident to me in the last two months that the Senate had been misled by Mr Andrews. In fact, on 18 July I put out a press release calling on him to correct the record. I understand and accept that he did and I want to thank him publicly for doing that. In this job I find that public servants who choose to mislead the Senate are not helpful, nor do they do their minister or their government any service by being dishonest in their evidence. But I do believe there is one section of his evidence that to this day has not been corrected, and we have not had any evidence to lead us to believe that the statement he made was in any way correct. I also note that he gave that statement on the ABC’s Lateline program—and I will get to the matters of that television show and the reporter, Mr Tony Jones, in a moment.

On 27 April Mr Andrews suggested that people were being raped and bashed and were killing other people and themselves. He went on to say that young people were hanging themselves off the church steeple on Sundays and that their mothers were having to cut them down. Since 27 April, I have travelled to Mutitjulu and have had a meeting with at least 30 members of that community. They are distressed, dismayed and horrified at the comments that have been made about their community. They have not had a chance to reply to these allegations and, at this stage, those allegations are completely unsubstantiated. There is no evidence at all that people have hung themselves off the church steeple. There may well be evidence that kids in that community have tried to commit suicide. Community members are certainly shocked and dismayed and they were extremely upset when they told me that no mothers had had to cut their children down off the church steeple. So why do we have public servants making these sorts of accusations?

I think we really need to take note here, with this letter that has emanated out of a whole flurry of activity at the ABC, of the role of the media in this sad and sorry saga. We now know that Mr Andrews was interviewed on Lateline as a former youth worker. In a letter posted today on the Crikey website, I notice that Tony Jones himself has written to clear himself of accusations against Lateline, which he says amount to a conspiracy theory.

But let us just put the question of a conspiracy theory to one side. Tony Jones admits in his letter that Mr Andrews being described as a former youth worker was in fact an unfortunate misjudgement, although a minor one. I notice, though, that Lateline was still happy enough to interview a whole swag of people in relation to petrol sniffing in that community and that only one of those people—that is, against a whole swag of people who had been associated with but were not involved with, did not live with and were not other Indigenous people in that community—was a senior traditional owner from that community. That is pretty one-sided reporting, I would say. I myself was a bit shocked and horrified when I saw the string of accusations being made on the Lateline show. I understand ‘a story is a story’ for some reporters, but I have to say that in my estimation the creditability and the high professionalism enjoyed in this country by Lateline have been severely diminished.

We now know that two weeks ago—a couple of months after these allegations had been made—the Northern Territory Police department issued a statement to say that 200 to 300 people had been interviewed in relation to the allegations at Mutitjulu and that they had not found enough evidence to charge anybody with any crime. I notice, Tony Jones, that you did not actually repeat that or seek to qualify the unsubstantiated accusations on your show. The Northern Territory Police’s press release suggested that they had viewed hundreds of people and had not yet come up with any evidence. Where is the balance in the reporting here? Where is the attempt to get out to the community and to provide another side to the story?

I think poor Greg Andrews is the messenger who has been shot here. It is unfortunate that this whole saga—as well as his misrepresentation of the activities of his department during Senate estimates—has come to light through his interview on Lateline. Why hasn’t Lateline reported the lack of spending on and commitment to petrol sniffing by the federal government? Why didn’t Lateline then seek to do a story on the outcome of the petrol sniffing inquiry? Why has it not revealed to the rest of this country that only three communities are involved in the 10-point plan—Docker River, Imampa and Mutitjulu—compared with the many other communities in the Northern Territory that want some action taken in relation to petrol sniffing? Why has it not revealed that any money this government has spent out there has been from the Aboriginals Benefit Account—that is, from Indigenous people’s own money derived from the royalties of mining? Not one new cent of the federal government’s money has been spent at Mutitjulu.

Why hasn’t Lateline revealed to the rest of this country that any programs funded at Mutitjulu operate on a six-month or one-year funding basis and not on a three-, four- or five-year funding basis, which would enable some consistency and some quality outcomes rather than poor people struggling to deal with these problems and having to stop every four or five months to rewrite grant submissions? Why hasn’t Lateline revealed that these are short-term funded programs, that there is a serious lack of youth workers and youth programs in this community and that there are community people out there who want action taken? Unsubstantiated accusations either by public servants or through shows such as Lateline do nothing to assist or arrest the strife and the dysfunctionality in these communities. Why won’t Lateline take its cameras out and give us a half-hour show on the success of the Mount Theo program or the Papunya program, given that there are no kids sniffing in those communities now? That has happened not thanks to the actions of this federal government but thanks to the actions of Indigenous people. In my mind, the ABC, courtesy of Lateline and Mr Tony Jones, has seriously eroded the creditability of Indigenous people.

I do not step aside from the fact that, if there are people out there doing as Tony Jones, Lateline and Mr Andrews suggest, they should be charged, locked up, sent to think about their actions and punished for their actions. We know that the paedophile they are talking about no longer lives in that region and has gone back to South Australia, but we and the police do not have any other evidence on which to base an arrest, a questioning, a holding or a charge. What are we doing to support the police in their actions to try to get to the bottom of this? What we tend to do is see on national television wild accusations which are unsubstantiated but then not qualified by the ABC. I seriously think that the reporting behaviour of this show needs investigating. I am grossly disappointed by the lack of impartiality of the ABC in relation to this, and I do not believe that their behaviour in the last two months has done anything to try and arrest the gross dysfunctionality in some of these communities or the lack of attention to petrol sniffing in this country.