Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

The Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program, known as SIHIP, has failed Northern Territory Indigenous people and has in fact become a national disgrace. The program has been dogged by waste, mismanagement and bureaucratic bungling. As Senator Scullion, who led this debate and who is the opposition spokesman on Indigenous matters, clearly pointed out, the waste, mismanagement and lack of information is just criminal. I regret to say that it is another glaring failure of the Rudd and Gillard governments to implement policies in an effective manner. We had the pink batts fiasco, the solar rebates debacle, the boat people mess and the imprudent rush to splurge $43 billion on Senator Conroy’s NBN project; and now we have the SIHIP tragedy.

I call it a tragedy because Indigenous people of the Northern Territory have been promised so much by this government but have received so little. Millions of dollars have been squandered while whole communities continue to suffer living conditions that would not be tolerated in Third World countries. At Ngukurr, a remote community in Arnhem Land, there are 1,300 people living in just 113 homes. That is incredible. In one house, there are 25 people sleeping under one roof. As the ABC reported last week, elders in Ngukurr feel they have been conned by the Gillard government. One of the Ngukurr elders, a man called Walter Rogers, told the ABC that he believed the community had been conned. He said the community was promised some 53 new homes and the repair of all existing homes in exchange for signing a lease agreement, and that promise has been broken. Mr Walters has now been told that the $30 million program in that area will only provide eight extra bedrooms in the whole community. This is a demonstration of the Labor government’s mismanagement of this program. It is a program that promised so much but is now seen as a joke in the Northern Territory. Regrettably, it is a joke on the Gillard government, but I can assure you that members of the Indigenous community are not laughing. The depth of distrust of government is very evident.

While SIHIP relates particularly to the Northern Territory, I will digress a little bit to talk about another chronic neglect of Indigenous housing in an area near where I am based in North Queensland—that is, Palm Island, just off the coast of Townsville. The Howard government approved $762 million for the construction of Indigenous housing there. Mal Brough, the then federal Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, released a plan for 46 new homes on Palm Island under the Howard government’s scheme. Three years later, not a sod has been turned on that project. The disgrace in what is happening on Palm Island is that the money was allocated but not a sod turned, and that reflects what is happening under SIHIP in the Northern Territory.

The Labor Party is simply incapable of managing money, and it is certainly incapable of assisting some of Australia’s most needy people. On Palm Island, up to 30 people are forced to crowd into one three-bedroom home; others are squatting in tin sheds made from scrap iron they got from the tip. So where has the money gone? That $762 million was allocated four years ago, and one wonders what has happened to it. Has it been used for the wages and accommodation of public servants, the very people employed to administer the scheme? No-one seems to know, yet Indigenous people on Palm Island continue to suffer in the sort of accommodation that would not be tolerated in Third World countries. Our first Australians deserve better. No wonder they are disillusioned with this government that is so long on promises and so short on action.