Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to this debate. If you listened to Senator Scullion, you would think everything is okay in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs and that he has the answers to everything. He has not. If he did, perhaps you would get some more agreement across this chamber to the policies that he is proposing. When a government goes to a billionaire and lets them write the policy on how we should address Aboriginal unemployment and Aboriginal issues, you know they are lacking in policy outcomes. This is the government that is currently preparing to do Australia over once again with the health and welfare card because the billionaire had a thought bubble that it might be a good way to address Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander disadvantage. While they are doing policies like that, they will not be getting cross-party support for those policies.

Let's look at the funding that has been cut from services in Central Australia, which points to the chaotic nature of what has just gone down with the Indigenous Advancement Strategy. We know that many groups have missed out on funding, because they are ringing us. As yet we do not have an overall picture, because that information is not available. We are at the moment having unfortunately to operate on anecdotal evidence. There is some list circulating around Australia for the Northern Territory and Western Australia. They do not tell us what projects have not been funded. They do tell us the projects that have been funded—and by electorate, by the way—but they do not tell us how much they are funding. They do not tell us which organisations have replaced other organisations. So we cannot get a picture about how the so-called brilliant strategy for Indigenous advancement has in fact been funded.

What the overall strategy is seems to have been a bit of a collection of what people feel should be funded, but they actually do not have an idea of what has been funded. That is clear from the picture from Central Australia, where the youth services for both MacDonnell Shire and Barkly Shire have not been funded. The sport and rec program in Barkly Shire which I am told employs about 30 Aboriginal people has not been funded. For the MacDonnell Shire past funding programs funded youth services for important areas that have been affected by both petrol sniffing and other substance abuse The Barkly Shire has apparently been offered eight per cent more in funding to fund a whole lot more areas—in other words, things that the MacDonnell Shire will not be able to do, with just an eight per cent increase in funding.

We do not know what has or has not been funded under the Indigenous Advancement Strategy. We do know that some organisations did not put in funding bids because they did not think they would be able to meet the guidelines in time. We also know that some organisations, because of the rapidity with which they had to put in applications, were not able to complete their applications to a satisfactory standard and they seem to have been assisted in improving those applications. Again, it makes a farce of the process. In estimates a couple of cycles ago the minister and the department admitted that the funding cut had not been made as a result of a strategic approach—it was an efficiency drive. There have been funding cuts to this program, and instead of the minister addressing the issues around the Indigenous Advancement Strategy, he goes to the same boring views and trite remarks about debt. Whenever a government minister does not want to answer a question in this place they make that point—and that is what he has just done. I expected him to be better than that and to address the issues. I understand that the department probably did not want to make a mistake about not funding those youth services that are absolutely critical in Central Australia in addressing substance abuse, but that is what happened—those applications were put in and they have fallen through the gap in terms of being addressed by government. Again, it makes a mockery of their claims that they have been through a strategic approach with this Indigenous Advancement Strategy. They have not. I resent the minister coming in here and lecturing us about what we should be doing and asking us to support them blindly.