Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure to rise this evening to speak to an issue that I hope will be very significant for many Australians and will take a very prominent place in our national considerations tomorrow—and that is the Closing the Gap report, which is set to be delivered for the sixth time.

Closing the Gap is something which I hope Australians are becoming familiar with, but I thought in my opening remarks I might refresh people's memory. The Closing the Gap report, which is presented in the first week of parliament each year, is a commitment by all Australian governments to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians and, in particular, to provide a better future for Indigenous Australian children. When I think of the issues that will be reported on tomorrow, I particularly think of the young children being born in this country today. There are women who are going through labour right now, as we speak in this place, who will give birth to young Australians. We know that today some children being born into an Indigenous family will live a far shorter life than an Australian being born to a non-Indigenous family. This is a great national shame and it requires constant and focused attention at every level of every government.

The good news is that, in the six years since Closing the Gap was initiated by the Labor government—and it is continuing under the new Liberal-Nationals coalition—COAG has agreed to specific time frames for achieving its six targets. These six targets are very important, and when I read them I think: how can it be that this year it is the reality for Australians being born in the same country as me but to Indigenous families?

Our first goal is to close the life expectancy gap within a generation, and for that we have given ourselves a target of 2031. Our second goal is to halve the gap in the mortality rates for Indigenous children under five within a decade—and that decade is ticking over. The date we have set is 2018, and it is pressing on us. We need to keep our eye on the prize of delivering that important and essential life opportunity. Our third goal is to ensure that, within five years, there is access to early-childhood education for all Indigenous four-year-olds in remote communities. I am very happy to put on the record again here today what was noted in the report last year, which was that we actually met that target in 2013. This was the year we set as our deadline for achieving that goal. I may have some more words to say about the importance of early-childhood access, if time allows me towards the end of my speech.

The fourth goal that we seek is to halve the gap in reading, writing and numeracy achievements for children within a decade, again, by 2018, and to halve the gap in Indigenous year 12 achievements by 2020. I reflect on the comments by Senator Scullion today about school attendance: that should already set the alarm bells ringing. It is hard to be successful at school if you are not attending. Sadly, failure at school is too often linked to terrible health outcomes, shorter life expectancy, lower income and a life of significant and sustained disadvantage. Our final goal is to halve the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a decade—by 2018, and that date is close approaching.

These are worthy goals, and they will require considerable effort. I am pleased to report to the House that COAG has committed an additional $4.6 billion investment to Indigenous-specific programs—at least that was the case, because I do have some concerns at this point in time, given the rhetoric and practical action of this new government, about cutting significant amounts of funding support to Indigenous communities and the most vulnerable in those Indigenous communities. The targets I have just described already indicate these communities are suffering considerable disadvantage in this great countries of ours.

To that end of enhancing awareness of Closing the Gap and making sure that we continue to pay attention, and ensuring that we do not lose our focus, I took the opportunity in my opening speech to the Senate to indicate that I would put a motion to the Senate that would propose a joint meeting of the houses of this parliament, the Senate and the House of Representatives, to give status and due recognition to the importance of this report as part of our national psyche and our national endeavour, as a collective, across many parliaments, sadly, to achieve these goals. I am pleased to say that I was supported by all members on this side of the chamber. At the time, the government opposed this proposal; but, nonetheless, it did pass the Senate and a message was sent to the House of Representatives. I am pleased to note that yesterday afternoon senators were advised that we had been invited to attend—it is rather short notice, and I do not know how many senators will be able to make that occasion tomorrow, but it is an indication of good will, at the very least, that we begin to properly and symbolically acknowledge how critical this work is for this place and for the leading parliament of the nation.

One of the things that I also raised in my speech was that, apart from the power of the parliament to give significant symbolic impetus to the status of the report, in my time as a member of the House of Representatives I have noticed that increasingly fewer and fewer of the media have been in attendance to receive the report. It is not that they were not paying attention up in their media centre and getting the information out—I understand that—but when we report on the items that I describe as our targets for Closing the Gap, I believe that we are reporting to the First Peoples, to whom we need to give redress. The chamber should be filled with leaders of Indigenous communities from all around this country. The chamber should be filled with people who share a passion for the redress of this great shame in our country. I am sure there are enough media people present in this place to have at least a few of them in the gallery to acknowledge that. What will it mean to our Indigenous brothers and sisters that we continue to pay attention, that we attend physically, morally, emotionally and financially with 100 per cent of our attention to this goal from which we will not avert our gaze?

What I can say about Closing the Gap is that we have seen, in the past, comments about the power of parliament being degraded by people saying parliament cannot make a change. Even the national apology was once described by Mr Abbott as a campaign for something that was going to add a sense of grievance on one side and guilt on the other. But I am expressing my hope that there has been some significant change in the Prime Minister's position and that, after the 'sorry' speech, he was awakened to the fact that we can indeed achieve great things and that the parliament has a role to play in it.

What I am concerned about is that the power of that rhetoric, and the symbolism of this place, requires money to match it and this government is off to a shaky start with the announcement of a series of cuts and reviews that threaten to further marginalise Indigenous Australians. We know already that millions of dollars in funding for Indigenous legal assistance has been cut, that billions of dollars in school funding has been cut, and we sense impending cuts to welfare which have been much announced. My fear is that such policies will only serve to exacerbate the inequality between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia.

I want to acknowledge the Indigenous Advisory Council and the work of Warren Mundine, who I have personally seen make an amazing contribution to hundreds of young Indigenous people. But there is no reference to the Closing the Gap targets in the terms of reference for the Indigenous Advisory Council. I hope that does not indicate that we have taken our eyes off the prize. I hope it was just a very small oversight that can be rectified sometime very soon as we continue to put front and centre our acknowledgement that the conditions I describe, to which we aspire by these Closing the Gap targets, are untenable in this day and age. They are all Australians' responsibility. We need to pay attention to the report card, we need to put in more effort, speak more, notice more and write more—every single one of us.