Judith Adams (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today I would like to take the opportunity to speak about the Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Emergency Response Consolidation) Bill 2008. As my colleagues have said, the bill is reviewing not the whole Northern Territory emergency response but certain crucial aspects. However, these amendments could put the success of the intervention at risk. I believe there can be little doubt that the first year of the Northern Territory emergency response made a great difference to the lives of many Indigenous Australians who live in some of the most remote areas of Australia. There can also be little doubt that this action was urgently needed.

In June 2007 the Little children are sacred report shocked many Australians who were not aware of the parallel world that many of our Indigenous families experience every day, a world full of violence, neglect and despair. Many Australians at that time did not know that there are welfare dependent communities, tucked away out of sight and mind, with no-go areas protected by a no-visitor permit system. For others such as teachers, police officers and health service professionals working in those remote areas, the issues raised in the Little children are sacred report were of no surprise. It was just another report in a long line. May I say from a Western Australian point of view that General Sanderson released a report but, despite all the evidence it had about the northern part of Western Australia, unfortunately it was also put on the shelf to gather dust.

Finally it was the Howard government that said enough was enough. The then Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, refused to be trapped in further endless consultations. Instead, the former Howard government decided to take action and committed nearly a billion dollars to ensure every child in the more than 70 prescribed communities could have a health check with follow-up treatments. The package of legislative changes and policies introduced by the Howard government is, without doubt, the most important Indigenous affairs initiative seen in decades. Law and order had to take first priority. Policing was immediately and substantially boosted. Children who often suffered from hunger because their parents gambled away or drank the proceeds of their pension now had a greater chance to receive food and clothing, as these welfare payments were quarantined. Housing was to be improved, pornography was banned, alcohol and drugs were controlled and the permit system was modified so that people touring the outback could visit public places in Aboriginal communities.

While I was travelling between Alice Springs and Hermannsburg on a NORFORCE exercise, I took a photo of an Australian government initiative with a sign which says: ‘Warning—prescribed area’. It has a photo of a glass and a bottle with a circle around them and a line through it. It states in very large letters: ‘No liquor to go past this point’ and ‘No pornography’. To me, that is a very impressive sight on the side of the road. It also has, ‘For further information, contact the Australian government Northern Territory emergency response hotline,’ with the 1800 numbers. I would not like to see this removed, because it really does send a very, very strong message when one is driving along that road.

With the Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Emergency Response Consolidation) Bill 2008, the Rudd government is suggesting amendments and a review of four crucial areas, which my colleagues spoke about earlier. The old permit system is to be reinstated, with the communities once again locked away from general scrutiny. More than 35 per cent of pornography is to be allowed back on pay TV, and access to pay TV services will recommence. In addition, the transportation of pornographic material across prescribed areas is under review, meaning that people will soon be able to carry alcohol and pornography through the prescribed communities. Labor also intends to license roadhouses. I support this measure, which means that those roadhouses can be recognised as community stores. Also, for their financial management they will be set up with the software to allow them to cope with that.

This is definitely positive and I certainly do support that measure, but I have a query with it—that the government has yet to define ‘substantial dependence’ in practical terms. In addition, the government has to answer broader issues relating to the community store licensing system, especially how it intends to prevent the cost of attaining licensing accreditation being passed on to welfare dependent consumers, making healthy, nutritious food in these remote areas even more expensive. Having travelled extensively through the north-west of Western Australia and through the Northern Territory, it was quite horrifying to see just how much it costs for fresh vegetables, apples and milk for people living in those areas.

Although this does not relate to the Northern Territory, I was at Balgo a few weeks ago with another committee. The cost of transporting food stuffs every week into the community store at Balgo is $15,000. This gives an indication of the effect of the rising cost of fuel on outback areas. We think it is bad enough around the cities and in regional areas, but this huge cost for the transportation of food has to be handed on to consumers in outback areas who are therefore having to pay for it.

Through my committee work I have been very involved with looking at the effectiveness of the Northern Territory emergency response. In April, along with my colleagues Senator Moore and Senator Siewert, who have already spoken, I participated in committee hearings in Alice Springs and Darwin for the inquiry into the Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Emergency Response Consolidation) Bill 2008.

My Liberal Senate colleagues Senator Gary Humphries and Senator Sue Boyce and I believe that many provisions of this bill constitute a retreat from the principles which underline the Northern Territory emergency response announced and commenced by the former coalition government. As stated in the dissenting report by Liberal senators on the emergency response consolidation bill, Senator Humphries, Senator Boyce and I believe that the measures in the bill forestall the results of an independent review of the NT emergency response which is to report by the end of the month. I would question why the government is pushing this bill through the Senate today when we have a review currently going on which is to report by the end of the month. It really is pre-empting that review. I wonder whether the review will highlight the issues that the coalition is raising and whether it will suggest the need for change.

We believe the bill undermines the basis on which so much federal effort and money has been expended since June 2007. Such measures run the risk of confusing those benefiting from the emergency response, and those working on Commonwealth programs and initiatives constituting the intervention, as to the federal government’s position on the fundamental objectives of this exercise. The proposed amendments also appear designed to confuse and deflect the focus of the former government’s initiative.

Although I appreciate the bipartisan support with regard to the Northern Territory emergency response, I cannot support the suggested amendments proposed by the Labor government in this bill. As a consequence, I urge the government to leave in place the permit system provisions that have enabled access to public land; to impose a blanket ban on all pornographic material in prescribed areas; and to prohibit the transport of pornographic material through any prescribed area. There are positive signs the emergency response is working as it was designed by the former Howard government. Even the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, admitted this a year after the intervention started. She said that there has been an increase in the amount of food purchased and school nutrition programs are leading to children putting on weight. I did visit the Tea Tree school when I was in Alice Springs. It was great to see these children. They came out to inspect all the army vehicles. Each one of them had a pear. They had school uniforms on and they looked really very fit and healthy. I was very impressed with the way the school had trained the students. They all lined up to have their turn at climbing into the vehicles, tooting the horns and playing with all the different things that they were able to access.

In my view, Ms Macklin is now threatening this crucial work by introducing amendments relating to access to Aboriginal land, pay TV and R18+ programs and transport of prohibited material through prescribed areas. I really do not want to see the permit system re-introduced. The former Minister for Families and Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, was convinced that removing the permit system and allowing entry to Indigenous communities was essential for the success of the whole emergency response. An increased external scrutiny is in the interests of vulnerable persons in ‘closed’ communities. As a result, the former government had reduced the restrictions for access to some 0.2 per cent of Aboriginal land. There is an idea that the whole of the Aboriginal land has been opened up, but that is not right. These measures do not interfere with permits to access the vast holdings of Aboriginal land. Aboriginal people should have total control to practice their culture and to protect their sites. However, there must be exceptions granting general access to schools, medical centres, police stations and airstrips.

Arguing in support of the re-introduction, the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, the Minister for Housing, Tanya Plibersek, and the member for the Territory seat of Lingiari, Warren Snowdon, said the permit system was a vital tool in stopping ‘rivers of grog’ from entering the communities, but I would really question this information. An article published in Monday’s Australian quoted police figures which point out:

… the great majority of people summonsed or arrested for bringing liquor into alcohol restricted communities in the Territory in the past 15 months were Aborigines who did not need permits to enter their land.

The statistics show there was no basis for linking the flow of liquor to communities to non-indigenous grog-runners, or to the permit system. Rather, it was Aborigines who ran grog and supplied it to their own people.

The article was written by Mr Paul Toohey, a journalist from the Australian who has been reporting about Indigenous communities for many years.

At a hearing of the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs in Darwin, Mr Toohey presented the committee with an insight into his work. He made a very interesting point regarding the permit system. Mr Toohey said:

The permit system does not just work to keep people out; it also works to keep people in. People have this idea that this is a precious, special world that they are protecting, even if they are not quite sure why it is special and precious, because the community is living in the conditions I have described.

He went on to comment about Port Keats:

It is remarkable to look at Port Keats. I believe this has changed in the last year, but Port Keats has one of the biggest populations of an Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory. For the last three decades it has not produced one footballer for the Northern Territory Football League, which is an outstanding statistic given the physique of Port Keats people, who have a pretty tough warrior mentality. That is what I am talking about when I refer to keeping people in. The fact is that there has been no football player produced from Port Keats, let alone any artwork or any known artist, in three decades. There is not one piece by a Port Keats artist hanging on the wall of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, because there really are not too many Port Keats artists. It works to keep people in as well.

Whilst the permit system works to keep people in, it also works to keep business out. The Northern Territory opposition’s Indigenous spokesman, Adam Giles, recently made a very important point regarding the economic realities of remote Aboriginal communities in the territory. Speaking to the media he said:

“One reason remote Aboriginal communities remain mired in economic deprivation is that the permit system has isolated them from the wider Australian economy,” said the indigenous MP.

           …         …         …

“Without the free flow of goods and people into remote Aboriginal communities there will be no breaking the chain of welfare dependence that binds so many.”

I also call on the government to impose a blanket ban on all pornographic material in prescribed areas. At the committee hearing in Darwin, Helen Wodak, Advocacy Manager for the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency, made an interesting comment about sexual abuse. She said that, at times, pornographic material plays an important role in the grooming of people for sexual offences. I find that absolutely abhorrent. Of course, the overcrowding of homes with small children and adults all together certainly does not help in this respect. So I believe that housing is an absolutely essential component in these communities and we have to move a lot faster on this than we are.

The Little children are sacred report found that sexual abuse among Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory was serious, widespread and often unreported, and that there was a strong association between alcohol abuse and sexual abuse of children—and, to a lesser extent, between the use of pornography and sexual abuse of children. Liberal senators heard no evidence in the course of this inquiry to suggest that the magnitude or urgency of that problem in Indigenous communities had lessened in the last year. The suggested amendments to the bill proposed by the Rudd government would allow communities to lift the ban on pornographic TV coverage after adequate community consultations. I find this quite impractical. Whilst I am a strong supporter of community consultations, I am nevertheless concerned that this would lead to the removal of protections and put women and children at risk. To me, the safety of a child should remain the first priority.

Next to this rather ideological belief there are serious practical difficulties with this amendment being imposed upon the subscription TV industry. The bill proposes amendments to require that particular pay television licensees not provide television channels that contain a large amount of R18+ programming to certain prescribed areas. These amendments would cause serious difficulties for the subscription TV industry in trying to comply with the legislation as originally enacted. At the committee hearings in Alice Springs, Austar representatives noted that the difference between how it locates its customers and how the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007 defines prescribed areas means that it is not possible for Austar to know with certainty whether one or more of its customers is located within a prescribed area. According to Austar, this would create a number of issues should a blanket ban on R18+ rated programming across all prescribed areas be introduced. I therefore urge the government not to amend the current restrictions on pornographic broadcasting in the prescribed areas.

The former Chair of the Northern Territory Emergency Response Taskforce, Dr Sue Gordon, who has just finished her term as chair, said to journalists:

“While I appreciate that a lot of people were opposed to the NT emergency response, either as a package or in part, I would urge you to read what women and some men in the communities are saying about how it has changed their lives,” ...

Major-General David Chalmers, Operational Commander of the Northern Territory Emergency Response Taskforce, said to journalists:

THE Northern Territory intervention must run well beyond five years to make a real impact in indigenous communities ...

Furthermore, the article says:

General Chalmers said there was evidence the intervention had led to decreased violence, increased school enrolments this year, and more money being spent on food.

So I do hope that, when the review report is handed down, the people involved will come up with some really positive moves. We have started something that I think is very positive and I am very supportive of it continuing but I do not want to see these amendments, which would take us backwards, made to the legislation.