Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the senator but I would like to correct some significant inaccuracies in her contribution. First of all, I did apologise for both the briefing and the lateness of this. I know that at least one member opposite, Senator Dodson—and I hope he'll have something to say about this—was in fact at Garma when I made an announcement of significant changes to this. Because we were making sure that the announcement was going to be able to be made absolutely accurately with the significant change in the policy, we wanted to delay briefing anyone until that happened—and that is just the way it went.

In terms of some other inaccuracies in your presentation of how this has all gone, in my view that is somewhat in fantasy land. You say the RJCP was in its infancy, that it had hardly had a go. Well, it had had a decline of 60 per cent in the number of people who were even attending. I'm not sure what those opposite would want it to decrease by. Maybe we have to get down to 100 per cent of people returning to passive welfare, complete misery and danger to themselves that goes with that, so we did intervene.

You said, 'Seemingly, without consultation.' Now, if anyone was listening to that, they might think that actually meant without consultation, but, of course, it doesn't. It's one of those slim little words you put in there when you wish to confuse people. There was consultation, and I can tell you people said, 'We want to go back to CDEP.' We decided to, as much as we could at the time, move in that direction, and there has been remarkable success: 92 per cent of eligible jobseekers are now placed in work-life activities; and active participation, instead of seven per cent, has actually increased by 62 per cent. These are actual facts, and should be regarded as such by all those listening.

We put strong protections in place to make sure the penalties are only applied where they're warranted. These protections are the same for all jobseekers across Australia. These protections ensure that jobseekers don't suffer financial hardship. It's okay to say, 'Well, there were miles and miles of people who were breached,' but then you don't go on and say what I'm assuming you know, because you are a part of that process under which submissions were made by government to indicate that 90 per cent of those breaches were waived. It's interesting that, when making a contribution in this place to inform people, you would leave such important facts aside.

You've also talked to a couple of facts I can't let go. You paint a picture of a child having someone else's BasicsCard, getting into a taxi, apparently with not much language but managing to be able to calculate quite comprehensive fraud. I've heard some of these rumours, particularly about the taxi industry—that's probably the only one. In South Australia, there was a significant fraud. I congratulate Kyam Maher and the Premier in South Australia for prosecuting those individuals who owned stores there in that regard.

The other notion is that somehow somebody on aged care is somehow subject to CDEP. Perhaps I should send you another brief, Deputy President, Senator Lines; they're not even a part of this program; they're part of a completely separate program and are not subject to any CDEP activities or, in fact, any of those processes.

You talk about these large potential employers. We are working, wherever we can, to ensure that we're providing leadership in that area. The Commonwealth are, in fact, quite large employers in the community. You mentioned Mr Fred Chaney, a previous Liberal minister. Well, if you'd also followed the processes at Garma, he was quite complimentary—not of mine—of the government's initiatives and the new changes to move to CDEP. In fact, I think he suggested he was going to build an extremely small statue in his garden to commemorate the changes.

We've relied on more than letters in Warburton. In fact, the response we gave you today actually itemised around 15 points on communication. Yes, you've got a letter but, as you said: we send a letter in these cases, but we don't rely on that at all. What we do rely on is people knocking on doors. We rely on using local people, because they have that local knowledge. It is very, very important that we continue to rely on that local knowledge. That's why we're able to, in 90 per cent of circumstances, ensure the breach is avoided.

You also mentioned, Madam Deputy President, that we have substantially used the employment of providers. It's those providers who need to depend on local knowledge. You may not be aware, but it was only 2½ months ago that I stood in Cairns and told all the employment providers in this space that, if they were not an Indigenous organisation by 30 June 2018, they would not have a contract with the Commonwealth. I know that that has had a significant impact in that they are out there now, making sure they have a joint venture with local Indigenous people who have that network and can offer the jobs to local Indigenous people, as it was in the original CDEP days.

Can I complete my remarks by simply saying that we are moving to a new model, and that model is not a government model. It is a model that has been put forward by the communities, and it is going to be a wage-based model. This wage-based model will ensure that we move from poverty in these communities and increase the amount of money that people are actually getting. It's going to move to ensuring that an economy and the synergies of investment by the Commonwealth and states and territories can be acted upon and we can use those synergies for benefit. Again, in closing, Madam Deputy President, I just wanted to correct all of those errors in your contribution.