Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before I talk about the specific program which we are taking note of answers on today, I would just draw the attention of the chamber to comments made by Senator McLucas where she said that Senator Scullion, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, made the comment, 'It's not my portfolio, so I don't know.' I would just put on the record: 'I don't know' does not mean 'I don't care'.

The other thing is that, as Senator Scullion pointed out, many of the programs to which the other side was referring in their questions came within the health portfolio. Sitting right next to Senator Scullion was the assistant minister representing the Minister for Health. So we had a person in this chamber of whom we could easily ask those very questions.

The other thing that probably warrants some attention is the nomenclature that is used when describing some of these amounts of money. There is a difference between 'saved', 'redirected' and 'cut'. When we get up in a place like this and talk about things being cut from budgets and front-line services being slashed and make all the kinds of very inflammatory statements that we have heard made today in relation to funding in this sector, we need to get our facts right. Much of the money to which Senator Peris referred earlier is actually money that has been redirected. It is not money that has been cut. It is not even money that has been saved. It is merely money that has been redirected. So, first and foremost, we need to be very careful that we do not start misinforming the public whom we are attempting to address, because many of the people who are taking advantage of, or who potentially could take advantage of, programs such as the Tackling Indigenous Smoking initiative, to which the initial and second questions referred, do not need to be scared by the kind of scaremongering words that get said when they say, 'Millions and millions of dollars are about to be cut out of the budget,' when they are not. These people actually trust us to tell them the truth and to be accurate in how we reflect what is going on. I would suggest that much of the stuff that has happened today—the questions that have been asked and the inferences that have been drawn, and the comments that have been made in taking note following that—has done nothing more than scare many of the people out there who would serve to benefit substantially from some of these sorts of programs.

As to the program that we are talking about, much concern has been raised about it and its ability to deliver good results. There are 50-odd teams out there on the ground, in my understanding, and some of them have been having greater levels of success than others. It seems to me only reasonable to actually do an assessment of what is actually happening on the ground, to check the results and to see whether the programs are actually working. That is exactly what we are seeking to do.

We are committed to continuing our efforts in this space, but I think it is entirely reasonable to undertake a review of this program to make sure that the future direction of this program is actually going to achieve the results that we seek to achieve, because, as was stated by those opposite a minute ago, smoking-related deaths and illness in our Indigenous population are very serious issues and we cannot afford to take them lightly. So I think we are being entirely responsible with the budget that we have, in making sure that we are spending the money in the most efficient and effective way we can on these sorts of programs. But there is nothing surer than this: if you want to have a generous and sustainable social program, and you want to have a generous and sustainable health program, you also have to match that up with an equally strong budget program. If we had not had to be standing here today and talking about budget measures to try to get our budget back under control, not only would many of these programs have been able to be sustained but they may actually have been able to be expanded and new programs might have been able to be introduced. But we had a budget that was in a position that just was not sustainable, and we had no choice but to introduce a number of measures that I am sure no-one on this side of the chamber wanted. To come in here and try to make it sound as though we are cutting budgets when in fact that is not the case—