Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

As I said, Senator Nampijinpa Price has consistently and rightly called for an audit of the programs that are supposedly supporting—we know they're not; the statistics show that—Indigenous Australians. Without such an audit, it is impossible to know what is working, what is failing and where the money is being wasted. Without it, we will keep funding the same old programs year after year, watching the same statistics plateau or worsen and delivering the same regretful speeches to this chamber. What programs deliver results? Which programs are absorbing funding without producing outcomes? Where is the money going? I would have thought, Senator Nampijinpa Price, that these are not unreasonable questions for all Australians to be asking. These are certainly the questions that Australians deserve to have answered. Yet the Albanese government has refused to support, time and time again, such an audit, preferring to announce new initiatives and tout new funding rather than holding itself accountable for what has come before and the abject failure it has been when it comes to changing the lives of Indigenous Australians for the better.

The Northern Territory data in the report is particularly alarming. Of the 15 targets with sufficient data in the Territory, only seven are improving. The Northern Territory, where some of Australia's most disadvantaged communities live, where the gap is the widest and the need is the greatest, is the jurisdiction where the Albanese government has failed most comprehensively. We know that, since the removal of the cashless debit card, conditions in many of these communities have deteriorated markedly. Violence, crime and child neglect, all directly linked to the scourge of alcohol and drugs, are flooding back into communities that had gained some measure of needed protection. The coalition has consistently called for the reinstatement of the cashless debit card. These are not punitive measures; they are protective ones. They give children in these communities the chance to receive the care and the support that every Australian child deserves. Rates of domestic violence and child sexual abuse, in too many communities, remain catastrophically high. The coalition has called for a royal commission into sexual abuse in Indigenous communities. The evidence for such a royal commission is overwhelming, and the government's refusal—in particular, based on the damning statistics that I have read out—to actually support it is, quite frankly, inexcusable.

We have also called for the Native Title Act and the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act to be used to unlock economic development in Indigenous communities. This is an opportunity to unlock multigenerational wealth through mining, pastoral activity and other land uses that drive prosperity.

The coalition has consistently called for a focus on attendance and completion at school. The government will say, 'Well, hey, hold on, the attendance rates are there, because there's an enrolment figure,' but, as Senator Kerrynne Liddle has pointed out time and time again, the mere fact that someone is enrolled does not mean that they attend or, worse, that they actually complete school. Completing school is one of the best ways to improve outcomes for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The failures documented in the Closing the gap report are not simply failures of intent. Ministers and governments across the political spectrum have genuinely wanted to make progress on these issues, but good intentions do not feed a child, they do not house a family and they do not keep a young person out of detention. Outcomes do that. Results do that, and on this the Albanese government has yet again failed miserably. The Albanese government must answer for a fundamental truth: it spent its political energy, its public platform and its moral authority on a referendum that divided this country and ultimately failed, and, after it did so, four of 19 Closing the Gap targets continue to worsen.

All Australians want better outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. All of us want to see the gap in life expectancy closed. We all want children born healthy and given every chance to thrive. We all want communities that are safe, where parents can raise their children free from violence, addiction and despair. But Australians also know, instinctively and correctly, that we cannot keep spending billions of dollars on the same approaches expecting different results, and that is why an independent audit matters, that is why the reinstatement of income management tools matters and that is why a royal commission into child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities matters. We need new thinking, genuine accountability and a laser focus on what works. We need to listen not just to peak bodies and institutional voices in Canberra but to the communities themselves—the parents, grandmothers and community leaders who live these realities each and every day.

We'll come back to this chamber next year. We'll receive another report. The question we must all answer—but, in particular, the Albanese government, which is failing Indigenous Australians—is whether they, and all of us collectively, have done more to deliver, yet again, another regretful speech. The coalition is committed to finding a better way. We believe in closing the gap. We believe that means action, accountability and honesty, not symbolism, not spin and not another four years of the status quo. We owe all Australians and, in particular, the most disadvantaged Indigenous Australians far better than this.