Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to the debate on the response to the Closing the gap: Prime Minister's report 2016. In doing so, I first acknowledge the traditional owners, both past and present, on the land on which this parliament meets. We all know the horrific statistics, the disadvantages and the injustices that afflict and torment Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people—the sum of which produces a reality, which is our national shame—namely, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on average die decades earlier than non-Indigenous Australians.

This Prime Minister's 2016 report on progress on closing the gap does nothing to lessen our national shame. The difference in average mortality rates has become known as 'the gap' and the question everyone has been trying to find an answer for is: how do we close the gap? How do we stop Aboriginal Australians from dying sooner than non-Indigenous Australians? Apart from the obvious calls for better Indigenous health, housing, education, job training, work opportunities, social condition and prison reform, over recent times many high-profile Indigenous leaders have focused our thoughts on policy creation, and I agree with them: Indigenous people should create Indigenous policy. Imagine if great Indigenous Australians like Stan Grant and Chris Sarra held the balance of power in this Senate, and in every vote in this chamber they were able to make a speech in this Senate and then cast a vote as their consciences dictated, not how their Liberal, Labor or Greens party bosses wanted them to vote. What a mighty nation we would actually become. How grown-up we would seem. And then over time, with greater Indigenous involvement in government policy making, credible and workable solutions will be found to close the gap.

The key question is: how do we encourage natural Indigenous leaders and great Australians like Stan Grant and Chris Sarra to become involved in political parties, and then help them become elected into this place? And it has to be this place, not an ATSIC, or some other symbolic Indigenous group, because it is here in this Senate, in this parliament, that the policymaking and deals happen that affect Australia's Indigenous people. It takes a rare Indigenous person, and luckily we have a few of them in this parliament, to put up with all of the BS and corruption that automatically comes with the baggage of all Australian political parties.

If you do not have the ability to introduce private members bills into this parliament, then you really are not at the cutting edge of policy making in this country. That is why I say we should look to New Zealand, Canada and some states of America, where Indigenous people have had the ability to submit their bills to their parliaments and as a result have managed over time to close the gap. Therefore, today, I will again repeat an offer to this chamber I made about a different approach to closing the gap between the first people of Australia and those who joined them from countries all over the world. This parliament that we serve can be overwhelming, if you let it, because of its size and grandeur. This Senate can intimidate and frighten with is complicated rules and procedures. However, stripped away to its bare essentials this is a place where we make decisions on how to share Australia's national wealth and prosperity with its people, through argument and debate. Put simply, we sit at our nation's table, have a conversation and we carve up the pie. We decide how much of the pie each Australian receives and how it is eaten. How can Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians ever have any chance of receiving a fair share of the pie and determine how it is eaten if they do not have a permanent voice at our nation's table. My message today is simple: if you want Australia's first people to have a fair share of our national wealth and a proper say in how it is spent then every piece of legislation that passes through this parliament must be scrutinised and spoken to from an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander point of view.

This democratic objective can be achieved in number of ways. We could establish parliamentary committees that review all legislation and ask the questions: one, will this be good or bad for first Australians; and, two, how can we improve this legislation to help Indigenous people? The other way to guarantee that every piece of Australia's national wealth is wrapped up in the documents we consider in this Senate, and is spoken to by an Indigenous voice, is to establish dedicated Indigenous seats in this parliament. This is not a new concept. A number of progressive countries have already established dedicated Indigenous seats in their parliaments. Our brothers and sisters across the ditch in New Zealand established dedicated Maori seats in 1867; and, importantly, in countries that have dedicated Indigenous seats the gap in mortality rates between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people is lower than Australia's gap, and it is lower by a long mile. In 2007, an international health and human rights research article, which examined the human development index of Indigenous people in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, showed that Australia was the worst-performing country and the only country that did not have dedicated Indigenous seats.

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The study confirmed the Maori mortality gap of 8.5 years and closing is not as large as the gap for Australia's first people at 23.2 years and widening.

If two or three per cent of Australia's population is Indigenous then I cannot see why two or three per cent of our seats in parliament cannot be designated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander seats. This one change—dedicated Indigenous seats—while not a silver bullet, if international experience is to be valued and respected, will do more to close the gap than any other symbolic or practical measure that has previously been put before the Australian people.

Recently there has been a public debate about who is and who is not an Indigenous person. An article in The Australian by Michael McKenna says:

A landmark finding disqualifying a claim of Aboriginality by a former senior NSW public servant has led to indigenous leaders calling for tougher identity checks amid warnings that “fake Aborigines’’ are involved in widespread rorting of benefits, government jobs and contracts.

The politically sensitive issue dominated a meeting of the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council late last year to discuss a new commonwealth procurement policy that at least 3 per cent of all government contracts should be allocated to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses.

A formal submission has since been made by the council to Malcolm Turnbull’s office to abolish the practice of local Aboriginal land councils signing off on claims—often on the basis of a single statutory declaration—with power given to native title groups to use certified genealogists.

Council chairman Warren Mundine and Queensland Aboriginal leader Stephen Hagan, who until recently headed a council of Australia’s Federal Court-vetted native title organisations, said the existing system to approve claims of Aboriginality was outdated and being rorted. “You can go to any town in the nation with a significant indigenous population and you’ll see not one, but numerous ‘white blackfellas’ falsely claiming Aboriginality to get jobs and benefits that should go to our people,’’ Mr Hagan said.

In Tasmania there has been a similar debate on who is Indigenous and who is not. The fact remains that the Commonwealth recognises about 25,000 Tasmanians who are indeed Indigenous and the state government recognises only 6,000. This is because the Tasmanian state system for Indigenous recognition for decades was corrupted by the TAC and the Mansell family, who were allowed under extraordinary state laws to be the final judges of people's Indigenous heritage. The Mansells, with successive state Labor, Greens and Liberal governments, have rorted and corrupted the system of identifying Indigenous people in Tasmania, even denying hundreds of Indigenous Tasmanians who had submitted themselves to scrutiny from a federal tribunal in 2002.

Over the decades, millions of dollars have gone missing or been denied to tens of thousands of Indigenous Tasmanians, causing the gap in Indigenous disadvantage to widen. I condemn the politicians who have stood by and allowed this rort to happen and congratulate the whistleblowers for the courage they have shown to speak out about these injustices.