Kerrynne Liddle (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

Well, my thoughts and prayers are with Kumanjayi's family, her local community, residents of Alice Springs, police, those people who I know searched and searched and searched hoping for a better outcome. It's quite incredible, getting messages of where people were walking, hoping for a better outcome.

You know, I recognise and acknowledge the vigils that were held throughout the country—in Alice Springs, in other places, in places where they have probably never, ever been to a town camp. Well, I've got an interesting lens on this one, because I also, along with Senator Nampijinpa Price, grew up in Alice Springs. I've got family in town camps. I'm a regular visitor to town camps. I've got friends there. I was also the shadow minister for child protection, the shadow minister for Indigenous Australians, the shadow minister for prevention of family violence and the shadow minister for social services. You know, it was just devastating, like all Australians, to watch this play out. You didn't actually have to be there, though, to know what was happening, to read between the lines of the images. But it didn't matter, because, even if you were living in the inner suburbs of Sydney, you were devastated by what you were seeing, hearing and reading.

People should be able to protect their children. There is a consequence, a tragic consequence, when somebody dies from violence. As a person who has lost a sibling to that kind of violence, that pain stays with you forever. It doesn't disappear. It has a long, ongoing, forever harm. What's harder is when people know that they're at risk and they spend their lives trying to work out how to keep people safe. There's a trauma attached to that. There's a trauma in seeking help, worrying whether just the simple act of seeking help is actually going to draw attention to you, whether that help is going to come, and wondering whether you'll have to do it all again tomorrow.

We need to intervene to make sure that people don't have to keep calling, they don't have to keep looking, they don't have to keep searching, and we need to be courageous about doing that. Nothing about doing this condolence motion today is good—none of it—and none of it will make it better for anyone unless we're courageous in here. We are legislators. We hold the policies that demand accountability. It is our job in this place not to simply put a condolence message together but to actually say, 'We're going to put the things in place that are going to make a difference, and we're going to follow the trickle-down of that right to the very end.'

In a town camp, you walk into it. You know, it's like a gated community only the gate is open. White people aren't welcome. There's a single provider of services to that community. I call that a monopoly. I don't like that. The doors haven't even got handles on them, let alone a lock. The ridiculous thing about this is that some of those houses have walls but inside those walls there's no sink, no stove and no working toilet. We have to get real. Building more houses—building more walls to hide that—is not the answer. We need to make sure that children are going to school, that people are going to work and that people get the opportunity to do the things that they aspire to, like every other Australian. That's what's important. That's what facilitates change, not sitting around, going from a cradle to a coffin and being sad about that. We have to be courageous enough to intervene. Whether it is a five-year-old little girl or little boy, or a 50-year-old person who is dealing with the consequences of violence every day, we have to be brave enough in here to intervene. We have to demand greater accountability—and there is nothing political about that. That is our job.