Malarndirri McCarthy (NT, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Nampijinpa Price for bringing on her private senator's bill, the Northern Territory Safe Measures Bill 2023, but also for expressing her own experiences with her family in Central Australia. I do think it's important that the Senate hear those stories. I guess, in a lot of respects, First Nations people across the country have stories of such experiences to share.

Mine began when I was in my 20s, and we wanted to put in place in Borroloola a call for an alcohol management plan. I remember trying to call a meeting of all our different language groups—the Yanyuwa, Garrwa, Marra and Gudanji peoples—and how the women, who were my aunties and my grandmothers, called the meeting because we wanted the alcohol to stop. We wanted the destruction and what we could see happening to our children to stop. So we had that meeting and it went well. People agreed, and we talked about it on local media to see if we could have those changes in our community. But the next night, when alcohol began to flow again, we got eaten alive. There is no doubt that the abuse that we experienced is something that I've never forgotten. The alcohol didn't stop, but the abuse continued, and certainly the retribution in terms of wanting to stand strong against it continued.

I spent the next 10 years looking after my mother after the domestic violence she experienced from her then partner, before she went on to renal failure and kidney disease. Then I took on my sister's children—her four children—because of the domestic violence and the alcohol issues she was facing. I remember receiving the phone call in Alice Springs to leave what I was then doing—working with the ABC. I went back to Darwin to take those children and to look after my sister, who needed time to recover. Those kids were aged from 18 months to 10 or 11 years of age, and I took them on. At the time I was reading in Darwin for the ABC news at 6 am in the mornings and getting up at 5 am, getting the kids up and getting someone to help me get them to school—as well as my own two children. I had to make sure that those children would know that there was a better way, that alcohol wasn't the way and that domestic violence wasn't the way.

So I'd leave my car with a neighbour so that that neighbour could then drive the six children to school when I was reading the quarter to eight news on ABC radio, and the kids would ring me from the car when I got off air. In the mornings I'd catch the bus—or a taxi because it was early, 5 am—and at about quarter past eight I'd talk to the kids on their way to school. I'd finish at around one o'clock or two o'clock, and then I'd go get the car by catching the bus to my neighbour's, and then I'd go and pick up the kids when they finished at school and take them home. I'd pick up my mother and my sister and cook dinner for everyone, and then I just fell into bed to get up again at 5 am the next day and do it all again. But that's what you do because you know that alcohol is a scourge, and you also know that domestic violence is rife. I still had a job as well to try and put food on the table to care for the kids. So we all have our stories.

Then there's my aunty who was smashed to smithereens by her partner because of alcohol. We stood by her bed for the next six months as she lay unconscious, being told that she was never going to come to life again. But as a family we stood around that bed, just holding her hands and massaging her legs while she lay in ICU. I firmly believed she was going to come through, no matter what the doctors said. She and I were born at the same time; she is only a few days older than me. But I was determined to stand by that bed and make sure she got through. And you know what? She did. Today she lives in Borroloola with no feet—they had to be amputated. She can't move her elbow because of the fractures that she received from the hits. Her left arm is okay—it's not that good—but it's better than her right arm. But we talk every day, and I'm incredibly grateful that she survived. We work with her children because her daughter has gone through domestic violence too. And her daughter's daughter has now been relocated with a good family living somewhere else just so that she has a chance.

My other sister, my cousin's sister, struggled with alcohol. Her six kids have been taken off her. I've taken three of the children, so we're raising an eight-year-old and nine-year-old twins just because we know they need a bed, to be fed and to be loved so that they have a good education and have access to a good school. So they live with us, and when I fly away my husband looks after them. He's a schoolteacher, and he tries his best to look after those three children. Sometimes my aunty comes up from Borroloola on the bush bus just to help him when I'm down here in Canberra.

So I know only too well, just like many First Nations people, that we look after our families and we care for them. It does not lessen, however, the importance of process and the importance of governments and the responsibility of governments and oppositions when it comes to policymaking. Whilst this private senator's bill has been brought forward by my colleague from the Northern Territory, I have to say to the Senate that the Northern Territory government is doing what we expect it to do. I say to the Senate that there has been enormous pressure applied to ensure that the Northern Territory government does what we know it is capable of doing within the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly, and that is to make the amendments that are required. Did they do it too late? Have they been real slow? I think we can all answer that. But they are doing it. It's going to be there. The bans we want will be in place on Wednesday, right across every area of the Northern Territory that we're talking about.

The difference here, senators, is that we've also, as members of government, had to look at this extremely closely in light of the history of the Northern Territory intervention and the sense of disempowerment that also occurred across the Northern Territory. I do hear what my colleagues are saying about those concerns with the town camps, but there are other things, senators, you also need to know about the concerns people had regarding that intervention.

I am such a firm believer in democracy in this country. I'm such a firm believer in the empowerment of people at every level, as flawed as we may be in our ability to make and enable others to have the power to stand up for themselves, we've got to always keep trying to get it right. To step in over the Northern Territory government a second time with a major intervention? Not after what we've gone through, after 15 years.

The stronger futures legislation was sunsetting. There was not one word in April last year. I asked the coalition government—and this is not to blame; this is just to put on the record—what are you doing? You are going to remove, after 15 years, a system people have been made to live under—right or wrong, good or bad—but how are you going to prepare them for exiting? How are you going to prepare people for the fact that this legislation, once it ends, removes all of these things? What are you doing? There was no response.

Then we get into government. Did we move quick enough? Did we do the things we needed to do? Goodness me, after nearly 10 years in opposition, there was a hell of a lot to learn in a couple of months. That's not an excuse. It's an explanation of the extraordinary amount of things we had to do. One of the first things that Marion Scrymgour, Linda Burney, Pat Dodson and I did was to urge the Northern Territory government in August to please have a look at their legislation, to ensure those bans were in place again. We did that. We did that in Garma and we did that in numerous phone calls. And, or course, we had so many other things to also do in that time period. Again, that's not an excuse. It's an explanation of timing.

The Northern Territory government can speak for itself, but I want to explain to the Senate why we have worked the way we have, because there is no way—certainly for Marion Scrymgour and I—that we would ever want to be setting up an intervention like that which occurred in 2007. But we will hold people accountable, irrespective of who is in government, as to how the processes is occurring. Dorrelle Anderson, an incredibly articulate and intelligent woman with skills that go beyond all that we could imagine here in regard to those relationships with the language groups of that region, is the right person to have as the Central Australian Regional Controller. And it was her report last week that made the Northern Territory government move to where it is today and enabled us, as the federal government, to provide the $250 million that we announced for Alice Springs and Central Australia.

But we also know, senators, that it's not just about alcohol. It never really is. It's always about what are we doing to enable people in our regional and remote areas to step up and stand up. We know that we have issues with health. We know that we have massive issues with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. And we must invest in those areas, even more so, to be able to work with the Alice Springs Hospital and to continue to work with Congress, which is the Aboriginal community controlled health organisation in Alice Springs that is currently working on so many levels, including in the FASD area. It's absolutely vital that part of the $250 million goes to that, because it impacts—and this Senate did an inquiry into FASD; please, Senators, I urge you to read that inquiry that we took across the country—young people, not just in Alice Springs but across the country. We talk about the issue of alcohol and other things impacting communities in Western Australia and Queensland, so have a look at what FASD is doing in those areas. It is not isolated.

We are also, as part of this, working with families with parental concerns, again on outstations. Dorelle Anderson is working on a number of the outstations around Alice Springs to ensure we can work with the families—specific families, because the Northern Territory police can identify which of the families actually need this support. And, for a broader, holistic approach, we know that we need to get the employment programs going in those communities surrounding Alice Springs—Yuendumu, Hermannsburg, Papunya, Santa Teresa, Mutitjulu to name just a few. We know that part of this $250 million has to be about ensuring that community development program where we're talking about jobs actually means jobs. We know now, even more so, that we need to see the runs on the board with that employment.

In conclusion, I ask you to see what the Northern Territory government is doing. This has been a traumatic time for the people of Alice Springs and the families of Alice Springs and the businesses of Alice Springs. But let me tell you that as a senator for the Northern Territory there is a better way, and we are doing the best that we can with that way. And I know you'll keep me accountable if that way does not work.