Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

It was not working while I was there; hopefully, it is now. That is not criticism of anybody, but it was not working. The point he was making is that you have to start with the cause and not try to patch up afterwards. I think the great strength of the intervention is that it has attempted to break that cycle.

Senator Siewert, I do not have a response to the range of issues you raise. You got a lot of them into the question. I am certainly sure that Minister Macklin, who has taken a very keen interest in this and has provided great leadership in this area, will be happy to respond to the detailed issues you have raised. I suspect that is probably best done by means of a briefing. But I want to make it very clear that we are committed to the Northern Territory intervention. We are committed to making it work and, if it is not working, to making adjustments. We have some differences of approach from the previous government but the fundamental commitment is there. We think we have to do some things that perhaps we would not have done a few years ago. We have to adopt a more radical approach in order to try to break that cycle that was destroying Indigenous communities.