Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

To take up the last point made by Senator Lundy, I agree that tacky divisions, as Senator Lundy put it, need to be avoided if we are to proceed on a bipartisan basis to address the problems of disadvantage and child sexual abuse in the Northern Territory. But what is obvious from the remarks that have been made today in the chamber by Senator Crossin, yesterday in the chamber by Senator Crossin and previously on the public record by Senator Crossin is that there are obviously divisions within the Australian Labor Party about exactly what the Northern Territory intervention actually represents.

Let us be perfectly clear: there are widely divergent views within the Labor government about just what this intervention is all about and, indeed, about whether the intervention itself is a good thing. We can see that plainly on the record from what Senator Crossin has had to say. I quote the words that she has used—this is not making up what she has had to say; this what she actually said:

... the dramas and the charades and the attention that was sought by the previous government in relation to child sexual abuse and child neglect, I believe, were severely overstated.

She thinks that our concern about child sexual abuse and child neglect in the Northern Territory was overstated. What does Minister Macklin think about it? On 16 June last year, just after the Little children are sacred report was tabled, she had this to say:

I don’t think anyone knew just how serious it was. What’s so important about this report is that it really has lifted the lid on just how horrific the levels of child abuse are. If there is one good thing that has come out of this report, it really does expose the dreadful level of child abuse that’s taking place.

Which is the Labor Party’s view? Is it the view of Minister Macklin or the view of Senator Crossin? These are not, under any reasonable reading, consistent views about the basis for the Northern Territory intervention.

The fact is that there is a subterranean view within the Labor Party, which occasionally comes to the surface in comments like those made by Senator Crossin yesterday and again today, that fundamentally rejects the basis on which the Northern Territory intervention has been mounted. The fact is that there are some in the government who would like—right now—to backslide on the intervention, who would cheerfully trash the entire exercise if they could. And what Senator Crossin had to say were not just the remarks of a single senator. They were the remarks of a senator who represents a vein of opinion within the government which needs to be, with great respect, understood and, if that view is going to prevail, that needs to be indicated now.

I want there to be bipartisan support for the policies of intervention which the previous government put in place. But I also think that the opposition and the government and all of their members need to commit in totality to what it is that was proposed and executed in that intervention. And it means the kinds of comments that Senator Crossin has made in this place, which, frankly, severely undermine the very basis for the intervention, need to be repudiated by the chamber itself and particularly by the leadership of the government. What Senator Evans had to say in the chamber today was to reaffirm that the government believes in the Northern Territory intervention and the basis for it. I welcome those comments, but I ask Senator Evans and the leadership of the government to indicate clearly whether that is the view of the government as a whole.

Senator Crossin made this remark yesterday:

Aboriginal people clearly rejected the methods of the intervention.

In doing so she drew attention to the vote by Indigenous people against the coalition in the federal election. The question raised by that remark is: if she thinks that Aboriginal people rejected the methods of intervention, does she reject the methods of intervention as well? I do not think there is any doubt that she did, that she does and that others in the Labor Party do.

We are entitled to know whether those views are minority views which are not representative of the government or whether they represent what is going to change the policy of this government as this intervention is rolled out. That is my fear—that we are seeing here the signalling of a change in government policy as this intervention proceeds. And we need to know now whether that is actually going to be the case or whether this is simply the wild and inaccurate remark of a single senator, made in haste and repented at leisure.

Question agreed to.