Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Northern Territory Safe Measures Bill 2023. I'm sure we've all seen and heard about the recent scenes in the Northern Territory, particularly in Alice Springs. I want to note that these things are happening not just in Alice Springs but in Queensland and parts of Western Australia. Senator Cash actually brought this to the chamber yesterday, about how this is it happening in my own state of Western Australia in the town of Laverton. So it's not an isolated issue. It is a concerning issue though.

There's an assumption in this place that this has risen as a direct result of the lapse of the measures of the Stronger Futures legislation. Whilst it might appear that way, it is actually a much deeper and much more complex issue, which, in fact, Senator McCarthy has already outlined. Alcohol bans will not address this. They will absolutely not address this. Too many First Nations people carry deep, unresolved and generational trauma. It's multilayered, multidimensional and complex in its manifestation, and alcohol is merely a coping mechanism for this trauma. It's about self-medicating. It's about coping. Many First Nations people have turned to alcohol because they have no other option. Some live remotely with no services or a lack of services available to them—or there are very long wait lists even if there is a service. Maybe, like many in this country, they simply do not have the money to see a professional to discuss what trauma is and the trauma that is being passed down on to us specifically through the generations since colonisation in this country. It is the truth-telling that I spoke about in this very chamber yesterday.

In fact, it's scientifically proven: it's called epigenetics. People need to be informed that this trauma spans over many generations in our communities. At its heart, that is exactly what is happening in Alice Springs and in the Northern Territory. It's the impact of colonisation that First Nations people carry with them every single day. It is the pain and it is the heartache. You see it on the faces of First Nations senators in this chamber, in fact—all of us—because, let me tell you, that weight gets enormously heavy. And, seeing the way our people are treated in this country, it gets even heavier. We carry that weight every day. We are constantly dealing with family members, friends, cousins, aunts and uncles that find themselves in vicious and oppressive cycles of incarceration as the end result of that. Let me tell you, that gets enormously heavy.

So if you want to talk about how we solve the issue in the long term—because that's what we're here for; we're here for the long game—progress with all three elements of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Build more public and affordable housing—the state of housing across this country and in remote Australia is disastrous. It's atrocious for a G20 country. Address the cost-of-living crisis. Raise the income support above the poverty line. My colleague in this chamber, Senator Rice, will tell you more and more about that. Raise the age of criminal responsibility in this country and stop incarcerating our babies. Implement the recommendations from the Bringing them home report and the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. After 40 years, we are begging you to do this. Improve access to education and make it culturally appropriate. Make it bilingual, for God's sake. In some places, English is the third or fourth language. Improve mental health care and put it into Medicare. Fix the Medicare system more broadly, so that we have access to health services. Invest in justice reinvestment initiatives—and I'm talking about stopping funding for prisons; I'm not talking about shifting it for coordination. Stop funding the industry that is incarcerating people in this country. Progress the standalone First Nations plan to end violence against women and children that is designed and implemented by our women. That's not under a gender-equality framework; it's under our women and by our women. Fund First-Nations-led organisations who are on the ground in communities creating culturally safe places so our women can escape, be safe and also commence their healing journey.

Basically, this just means ensuring that people have their basic needs met and that their human rights are upheld in this country. The solutions are right here in front of you: it's changing the legislation and the regime that my people have lived in under this country. Whilst I hear members in this place talk about how bad the crisis is and I see the clickbait that's happening, we need to stop talking about the need for bans and interventions. I'm hearing crickets—crickets!—about long-term solutions to address the real cause behind this crisis. No-one is talking about that. Banning alcohol is merely a bandaid solution. It may work in the short term, but you can't have these bans in place forever. That will not actually address the underlying causes; we will continue not seeing primary prevention and it will not cease the intergenerational trauma. This look of 'intervention 2.0' will not solve these issues in the long term. So stop doing that.

This is a humanitarian crisis that began over 200 years ago. This is a crisis that stems from our denial of basic human rights in this country—housing, employment, education, health care, land and country. It's our self-determination, our connection to that country, our culture, our lore and our kinship, and being able to practice all of those. This bill's top-down approach fundamentally ignores the generational trauma—it's all absent from that. Dispossession, trauma and the oppression that are at the heart of this crisis continue to be the ongoing oppression that First Nations people face each and every day in this country.

We need this government to help us commit to long-term solutions that are self-determined, that are holistic and that are created by community, for community and with community, and with governments walking beside them. And this place needs to support those solutions. The government needs to invest in growing First Nations health and wellbeing—in our workforce, in particular—and capacity-building within communities for those prevention and health promotion programs, our mental health services, and, most importantly, our healing spaces. Communities are more than capable of taking the lead, but we have to let them. They know what's needed in their communities and we must stop doing the top-down approach: we have to start supporting and empowering them.

Our communities need access to culturally appropriate child care, education and employment, and chances to connect with their mob—to learn about and practice their culture, and to get back on country. They could learn about their role in the oldest continuing culture in the world. Let's just let that sink in for a minute, because I don't think that when everybody in this chamber stands every morning they actually realise that's what they're acknowledging: the oldest continuing living culture in the world—the power, strength and resilience that's in our blood. We have survived what has happened in this country. But we also need to heal, and it's not going to happen overnight.

I support all three elements of the Uluru Statement from the Heart: treaty, truth-telling and Voice. They will progress the healing process in this nation. We need to understand that those long-term solutions have been talked about for generations. There was the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody—and we have our own commissioner sitting here in the chamber, Senator Dodson. There was the Bringing them home report, that sat on the shelves of governments from both sides of this chamber for decades, collecting dust. First Nations people in this country—if you haven't looked it up—are hurting. There is the pain that you see on their faces and also the strength—because we are strong. We can't continue to hurt people through developing legislation in this place; this bill does nothing except provide a bandaid solution that won't address 200-plus years of trauma, which in fact have led us to the place where we are right now.

I want to finish with a final message. There's a wonderful lady from a remote community called Warakurna. Her name is Aunty Daisy Ward. Aunty Daisy came to see me in my electorate office in Perth, and she told me what's happening in her community of Warakurna and in surrounding communities—Blackstone, Jameson and others. Aunty Daisy's message to me was that she wanted me to come and sit in her country, on the women's law grounds of her country, not just to speak but to listen—and, importantly, for them to be heard. She wanted me to listen to the stories of what women and children are enduring there and also to the solutions that she has, which are long term. She reached across the table, grabbed my hand and said: 'I want you to walk with me on this journey. I don't want you to go back to parliament and make the legislation or laws in this country that override my law, where you can't sit on my country, you can't listen to my story, you can't come and hear the pain in my heart and you can't help me to heal—because that's what I need you to do. And I need you to take this message back to the parliament, that we want ministers, we want parliamentarians, not coming in and telling us what to do but coming and sitting and listening to our culture, listening to our law, listening to our strength and to our solutions for us.'

I take that message from Aunty Daisy very seriously because she is a law woman in her country. She is a survivor of violence. She is a survivor of the stolen generation. But she doesn't see herself as just a survivor. She sees herself as a change maker. She has the ability to come and sit with me and talk to me about what's important. But she also wants to elevate the voices of women in her community. So she wants to take me by the hand and take me back into that community to learn that each community is different, that each person is different and that we cannot, in this place, continue to have a top-down approach which oppresses people in this country. And that's what this bill will do.