Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I rise as Leader of the Nationals in the Senate to also take note of the Closing the Gap statement and to put our views on how that is proceeding—or how the report, currently as it has been tabled, isn't proceeding as quickly, as swiftly as we would like but, more importantly, as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders need to occur in this country. Today is a day when, as we do each time this report is tabled, we take stock as a collective group of national leaders of how we can better work together to improve the life outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It's underpinned by the belief that when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have a genuine say in the design and delivery of policies, programs and services that effect them then better life outcomes are achieved. All Australian governments are committed to working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their communities, organisations and businesses to help achieve better outcomes.

But today we have to acknowledge that four out of 18 means that 12 out of 18 aren't going in the right direction. So we all need to put our shoulder harder into that wheel to work better with state and territory governments, with local governments and with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peak organisations so that the policies that are thought of and designed hit the ground in those communities and really change the dial. In terms of changes that we made whilst we were in government, we did take the practical step of creating the joint ministerial council, led by the national Coalition of Peaks, to inform the work with government and develop the evolving target areas, which was so critical to changing the way we looked at achieving the Closing the Gap targets. In order to maintain the momentum of the national agreement's transformative agenda, we've got to foster and enhance those partnership principles.

As the party of rural and regional Australia, if you look at the latest statistics from the ABS, the 20 electorates that have the most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in them as a proportion of population are all in rural and regional Australia, all 20 of them. Lingiari has 40 per cent. Parkes, represented by Mark Coulton in the other place, has 16 per cent. Mark Coulton, a National Party MP, represents more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders than he does farmers. So it's about making sure that we constructively work with whoever is in government and that we are in partnerships at the state government level. That is critical for changing the dial for the people that we represent as the party of rural and regional Australia.

We've got to look at the education piece. We've got to get kids into school. We've got to get great teachers into schools in remote areas to really back those young people's future opportunities.

We created Supply Nation, the procurement policy, while we were in government, with $5.3 billion that went into tens of thousands of contracts. Small businesses partnered with local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in great jobs right across the country. That was a way to take a creative gambit, if you like, to change the dial, and it did. I would like to pay tribute to the former minister in this space Nigel Scullion and thank him for that work.

I look forward to working however we can with the current government constructively to close the gap over their time on the Treasury benches, and we have all got to do better. There is no other way to say it.