Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Greens oppose the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Payment Reform) Bill 2007 and related bills. They are an unprecedented and obnoxious assault on the rights of Indigenous Australians, in the run-up to this election, to advantage the Howard government and to further disadvantage the first Australians. I begin by recognising that this parliament, like everything that we enjoy in this country, is on Aboriginal land. I bring to this Senate a message stick from the Gulkula meeting at Garma in the Northern Territory on 3 and 4 August this year. It is to the Australian parliament. It says:

Stop the legislation. Sit down and talk. No more dispossession.

It comes with the signature of Galarrwuy Yunupingu, and it was brought by Raymattja Marika and Olga Havnen. I seek leave to table this message stick from the Northern Territory Indigenous peoples.

Leave granted.

I thank the Senate. I read from the written message attendant with this stick. It says:

Aboriginal leaders meeting at Garma this weekend have called upon the Prime Minister not to introduce the proposed legislative measures to give affect to this declaration of a national emergency in our communities in the Northern Territory.

The safety and wellbeing of all our children is paramount. We understand the need for tackling violence and abuse in some of our communities. Aboriginal people have led the way in addressing these issues in the absence of government support.

If any measure is expected to achieve the desired outcomes, there must be collaboration with community leaders throughout the Northern Territory. However, the Prime Minister’s unilateral action, without consultation or negotiation with us puts in jeopardy our relationship with the Government. It jeopardises the possibility of achieving any sustainable outcomes. The leaders brought to the Garma meeting messages from communities across the Territory expressing our people’s continuing concerns and alarm at the way in which the Australian Government’s intervention is being used to do much more than the intended protection of our children.

We are at a loss to understand how the removal of the permit system and the introduction of compulsory acquisition of our lands have anything to do with redressing the many complex social issues afflicting our communities. It is more likely that the Governments proposals will open the floodgates to illegal alcohol, drug and pornography dealers and to those who intend to prey on Aboriginal women and children.

We are deeply concerned at the severity and widespread nature of the problems of child sexual abuse and breakdown in our communities. But these are complex matters that occurred due to the neglect of successive governments in Australia that require a long term commitment of resources and political resolve on all our parts if we are to achieve the sustainable, positive changes that are so long over due.

We will continue to work collaboratively with Governments and communities to ensure that children are protected, they are our future and we will not compromise that for them. Above all, the role of our families and the need to strengthen and maintain our families must lie at the heart of any proposed solution. The widespread fear caused by the deployment of Defence Force personnel in our communities will be a long—

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like bus drivers.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are intervening on a message to the Senate from the Indigenous people of the Northern Territory, Senator, and you are out of order.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, on a point of order: is this all contained in the message stick that has been tabled or is this another speech?

Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My understanding is that it accompanies the message stick, but what is your point of order?

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My point of order is that, at the start of his speech, Senator Brown said that this was part of the message stick but it sounds like he is now reading a speech.

The Acting Deputy President:

That is not my understanding. My understanding is that this accompanies the message stick, but Senator Brown can clarify that matter.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. For the information of Senator Joyce, there is an English transcription of the message stick with the message stick which has been tabled. I am now reading from the message to this parliament from the people who provided that message stick at Garma. It continues:

The widespread fear caused by the deployment of Defence Force personnel in our communities will be a long term obstacle to achieving stable, healthy families and communities.

The Governments present intervention is not sustainable and the personnel presently working in our communities will inevitably leave. The impact of this intervention will have serious negative consequences, and one which concerns us most, because of the widespread defamation of all Aboriginal people that has resulted, is that Aboriginal people will lose confidence in any intervention, such as regular visits to medical services.

The Government’s decision to terminate the CDEP and replace it with social security arrangements will affect a majority of those people living on Aboriginal land. The detrimental impact of this new policy will be to force people into townships and communities where Aboriginal housing and services are drastically inadequate and create further dysfunction in those populations. Their policy of making social security entitlements conditional on school attendance and other factors will also contribute to a large transmigration with disastrous potential.

Moreover because the homelands have served as safe havens for families escaping alcohol, drug abuse, criminal behaviour and related dysfunction there will no longer be the option of the protection of their homelands. Thereby, the scale of the problem that concerns us all will accelerate rapidly particularly exposing women and children to greater risk.

We believe that the following steps are a pathway forward in dealing cooperatively with these matters.

And the first of those steps that come with the message stick is ‘Sit down and talk’; the second is ‘Stop the legislation’; and the third is ‘No more dispossession’.

Before dinner I had—

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. I would like Senator Brown to clarify exactly who wrote this message stick and that he stands by exactly what he has put up as a translation.

Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He may deal with that, but that is no point of order. I call Senator Brown.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. I would ask, through you, whether Senator Joyce has been consulting with the Indigenous people and that if he has a different message he bring it before the Senate in this debate before it is guillotined.

Raymond Gaita, the moral philosopher and author, writing in the current Monthly magazine, had this to say:

No plausible description of the plight of the Aboriginal communities can justify the condescension shown to them and their leaders by the lack of consultation and the reckless disregard for the consequences of such dramatic but ill-prepared intervention ...

Could such disrespect be shown to any other community in this country? The answer, I believe, has to be no. If that is true, then it betrays neither cynicism nor insufficient love of country to suspect that, to a significant extent, Aborigines and their culture are still seen from a racist, denigrating perspective. From that perspective, the (sincere) concern for the children is concern for them as the children of a denigrated people, just as it was when children whom we now call the Stolen Generation were taken from their parents.

We have to go back and ask: where did this all come from? And we all know that the horrific prospect of child abuse has causal factors. I simply read from The Angry Australians by Ward McNally. It was published in 1974, and this is from page 45:

Jim Doherty is almost coal black. Self-educated and self-assured. He has worked at a variety of jobs from shearing sheep and fencing station property to driving heavy transports. He is about thirty-three years of age, and says he was born under a mulga bush somewhere near the edge of Tennant Creek.

“I was luckier than most. I found work with white people who treated me decently and encouraged me to learn as much as they could. They taught me lots of things. Most importantly that not all whites are bad, or that all Aborigines respond to opportunity. From the day I was first encouraged to read I have striven to get further up the ladder of education, and to turn back what I learn to my own people in the hope that some of them, too, will resist the yoke of slavery for so long on their necks, and fight for dignity and a place in the Australian way of life. That’s our right, you know. We were here thirty thousand years before your forebears came and raped our women, poisoned our water holes and left poison food for our people to eat and die from”, he told me when I talked with him in the back bar of the Alliance Hotel in Brisbane.

Jim Doherty went on:

“Before I was ten my elder sister was found beaten up and raped. Everyone knew four or five white laborers working near the town had done her over. But as she was a little black girl no-one cared a damn about her. I used to dream about the way she looked when she crawled back to the humpy that night. Now I dream about it no longer. It’s etched into my mind.”

Here we are, 33 years down the line, recognising the distress and hurt in the Indigenous communities where people are housed 10, 20, up to 30 in one house. Let us take note that the World Health Organisation points out that the single biggest factor common to child abuse is overcrowding and ask ourselves: who did that? Who caused that? Why hasn’t that been fixed? Which government has turned its back on that circumstance in this great, wealthy country of ours?

If we then look at the figures of child abuse we find that, for the most recent year of statistics, there were some 34,000 substantiated cases of child harm reported in Australia and that 6,000 of those were in the Indigenous community. So 80 per cent were in the rest of the community. But when I look at this legislation I find that, time and again, a racist approach is taken by the Howard government which focuses right in on the travail of the Indigenous people in the Northern Territory and excludes any focus on similar harm in the rest of the community.

When we look at the coercive powers being given to the Australian Crime Commission through this legislation—extraordinary ASIO-like powers to surveil the community and then coerce, without charge, people to give testimony and to produce goods—we find that it is clear, it is written in the legislation, that when it comes to looking for evidence of violence or child abuse it is on the basis of race. Not the 80 per cent: if you are white you are exempted. But if you are in the black community you are subject to it. And it does not confine itself to the Northern Territory. If you are in Launceston, Perth, Echuca, Palm Island or Redfern and you are black, you are subject to the Australian Crime Commission’s coercive powers. Those powers were never meant for citizens of this country but were meant to protect this country from organised crime dealing in drugs, international transfer of money and white slavery. But, now, we have those coercive powers taken from the mafia, the criminal gangs and the triads into the Indigenous communities of our country, and nowhere else. If you are white you are under it, if you are black you are not. The legislation spells that out absolutely clearly.

I have never seen such racist legislation. I would never have expected that one would see such racist legislation and never could have believed one would see such racist legislation before a parliament this far down from the White Australia policy. It is deplorable. It is disgusting, and it is very political. This is a government which turned its back on the Indigenous people of this country more than a decade ago, but in the run-up to this election—in trouble itself—it has gone for law and order and is compelled by other arguments which the guillotine will fall on before we can put them properly in this chamber.

What is the rationale for taking the land from communities throughout the Northern Territory? What is the rationale for changing the terms of the Constitution? This government and this Prime Minister think they are above the Constitution of this nation of ours so that the just compensation terms of the Constitution are changed to another word—‘reasonable’. According to whose reasoning will this reasonable compensation be given to the unconsulted but insulted Indigenous people of this country?

Peter Andren, the honest, diligent, intelligent and caring member for Calare, who cannot be in this place because of illness, had this to say about these bills last week:

The Howard Government has proved it has no intention of seriously consulting with Aboriginal peoples by ramming 500 pages of legislation through parliament to address the so-called ‘national emergency’ in Aboriginal communities, according to Peter Andren, Member for Calare.

“These bills remove the permit requirement for entry to Aboriginal lands, trample on land rights and effectively paints every Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory as dysfunctional, addled by alcohol and incapable of determining their own lives,” Mr Andren said.

“What’s more they override the Racial Discrimination Act and stand condemned as the most racist legislation introduced into federal parliament since the shameful days of the so-called Aboriginal protectorate acts early last century.

I seek leave to incorporate the rest of that media release.

Leave granted.

The document read as follows:

“When the government didn’t control the Senate in 1997-98 the Native Title legislation was debated over 10 months with several inquiries, 600 amendments moved and 200 accepted, including the government being forced to allow the Racial Discrimination Act to apply. Where is the debate and Racial Discrimination Act now?

“This exploitation of the situation in some Aboriginal communities is a shameful election-year wedge by the Prime Minister.

“Hiding behind a newly discovered election year concern the PM and his lackeys have thrown half a billion dollars at a crisis born generations ago of factors the Prime Minister has never acknowledged as serious.

“As a nation we have never paused long enough to consider the impact of removing people from their land, introducing diseases of Europeanisation, taking children from their parents over many generations and refusing to enact a Treaty recognising the prior and continuing custodianship of this land by Aboriginal peoples.

“The downward spiral of self abuse, child abuse, constantly degraded self-worth, incarceration and failure to be recognized as the first and continuing owners of this land are prime causes of Aboriginal stress and grieving.

“It requires 20 years at least of enlightened, properly informed policy along the lines promoted by Professor Fiona Stanley and Associate Professor Helen Milroy who point to a critical lack of indigenous professionals. They highlight the desperate need for early intervention programs for parents and children and culturally trained teachers, as well as the absolute necessity for permanent on ground medical and mental health services to address intergenerational grief and stress.

“What does this Prime Minister do? He continues his process of eroding self-determination and land rights on top of recent legislation specifically designed ‘to improve access to Aboriginal land for development, especially mining’.

“What has this to do with poor health outcomes and child abuse?” Mr Andren asked.

“If he had any real interest the Prime Minister would investigate the progress being made in restoring pride and purpose in Canadian native communities through a mixture of reparations for their stolen generations which included child abuse by whites, as well as a major national Indigenous Foundation for specific community building projects.

“This is the way forward, and it requires full consultation with and implementation by indigenous communities.

“The reality is there are many, many fine Aboriginal communities around Australia. The Prime Minister has effectively smeared an entire race by this precipitous and arrogant legislative response weeks out from an election.

“If his concerns were genuine he’d consult as widely as possible way beyond any poll.

“A standout and damning feature of this six-week blitz and hasty legislative response are the comments from the authors of the Little Children are Sacred Report who point out there is not a single action taken by this government so far that truly corresponds with any of the 97 recommendations made in the report.

“These bills are the trojan horse for the Prime Minister’s long held ambition – to mainstream and assimilate Australia’s Aboriginal peoples so they become ‘like us’.

“Why would they bother?” Mr Andren said.

What is the government going to do after this putsch on Indigenous Australians in the run-up to this election? What are they going to do with those people who find themselves arraigned into jails, which are already overfull in the Northern Territory, if that is the government’s aim? And from the minister that is what we are going to see: jails with no services to deal with sex offenders—none. There are no education facilities and no adequate facilities to deal with addicts. If you are in Alice Springs and you have a psychological crisis, there is no hospital facility, no ability to fly out, and no jail facility except surveillance. This government says that it has moved the Army and police into Indigenous communities to make things better. What is more, it says that it is going to take the land from the Indigenous people and then give compensation—listen to the minister—in terms of the services it provides. There is no just compensation, as I said a moment ago, other than in the terms this patronising and disgusting government in 2007 would put upon the Indigenous communities without their consultation.

This need not have happened. We had the wit and wisdom in 2007 and the expertise to do as the Indigenous people themselves have called for for decades: to consult and, arm in arm with the Indigenous people, to provide the services, the education facilities, policing and security, the ability to stop the white grog runners and drug runners making money out of Indigenous people in this country. If only it were done in good faith. Instead, we have this disgusting bad faith and political advantage being taken of Indigenous Australians yet again by the Howard government in the run to the election in 2007.

What a shameful process this is. What an inglorious moment in history this is and how badly this will be looked back upon by every single member of this government and this opposition which votes for it. There we have a failure of opposition. It is left to the Greens and the Democrats to come in here and defend decency in this country, to defend the argument that we should not be a racist nation, to look for honour and respect for the First Australians, instead of this indignity, this calumny, this disgusting racism which is built into this legislation. The guillotine will fall but the shadow of this process this week with this government abusing parliament as well as Indigenous Australia will never, ever be eradicated.

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Nearly seven weeks ago Pat Anderson and Rex Wild QC handed down a report as a result of their inquiry into the protection of Aboriginal children from sexual abuse. Infamously now known as the Little children are sacred report, their interim report of October last year stated that ‘sexual abuse of children is not restricted to those of Aboriginal descent, nor committed only by those of Aboriginal descent, nor just to people in the Northern Territory’. The report also reiterated the observation that, given the nature of Aboriginal communities, the classic signs of children likely to suffer neglect or abuse is more apparent.

Dysfunctional families, whether they are Indigenous or non-Indigenous, reflect and encompass problems of alcohol and drug abuse, poverty, lack of housing and unemployment. The first recommendation of their report says:

That Aboriginal child sexual abuse in the Northern Territory be designated as an issue of urgent national significance by both the Australian and Northern Territory Governments.

It further suggests both governments establish a collaborative partnership and commit to genuine consultation with Aboriginal people in designing initiatives for Aboriginal communities. So how is it that an issue of urgent national significance becomes a national emergency and in fact a crisis? How is it that the problems do not just relate to Aboriginal communities, but these bills before us only focus on the Northern Territory? How is it that there are some communities where there are no problems at all but at least 70 of these communities have been targeted purely on their population size? How is it that this federal government has had 11 long years to do something in Aboriginal communities to make a real difference but it has not done so? How is it that this government has been responsible for the oversight of the community known as Mutitjulu, under Parks Australia—hardly a shining example of a community that is coping—yet it believes it can do better in 70 other places in the Northern Territory?

These bills provide for a government response to addressing child abuse of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory by amending existing Commonwealth legislation. Be under no illusion: these bills before the Senate will dramatically and drastically change the lives of Indigenous people in the Northern Territory. The details and aspects of bills we are considering have been presented to the parliament without consultation, without informed consent from either the Indigenous people it will affect or the Northern Territory government. Since the announcement that this government was planning to intervene in more than 70 communities in the Northern Territory, we have struggled to find out the details, the nature and the impact of this measure. Originally, there was concern that health checks for children would be compulsory—that has now changed. People were very unclear, in fact frightened, about the role of the army and NORFORCE and that is slowly changing. Information on these changes has been delivered through press release and media interviews by this government alone.

I spent six weeks travelling throughout the Northern Territory with my colleagues Warren Snowdon and the bush members of the Northern Territory government, especially the Indigenous members, following the announcement of this intervention. I want to spend a minute to pay tribute to those Indigenous members in being prepared to assist, inform and reassure people in their electorates and communities. Certainly their arrival was welcomed—although, bear in mind, it is not their legislation. Their efforts in talking to people in their electorates have been given little thanks or recognition by this government.

Indigenous people affected by this legislation are distressed and stressed about what the implications will mean for them. They do not understand or accept why they have been targeted or why they were not been and told about these changes before they happened. If there was not a national emergency before this government intervened then, let me tell you, out on the ground there is certainly one now.

The Anderson-Wild report contained 97 recommendations. The federal government has acted on only three of these through this legislation. Instead, it gives the Commonwealth minister an unprecedented level of discretion to act with the same powers as the Northern Territory minister when it comes to town camps, to amending Northern Territory legislation, through regulation I might add, and to sacking local government councils. These bills will ensure that every aspect of Aboriginal life will be controlled by the Commonwealth, such as the administration of all Commonwealth and NT programs in these communities, and will be overseen by the minister. Blanket quarantining of Centrelink will be involved in the spending of money, and the leasing of communities will mean that the land will be held by the Commonwealth for at least five years. While we in the Labor Party support the protection of children, this government has failed completely to understand either the underlying causes or the best comprehensive long-term approaches to these solutions. The only sustainable approach is to involve these people in long-term solutions with maximum community input for their ownership, and only then will solutions be sustained, long term and effective.

In an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on 31 July, Fiona Stanley, paediatrician and former Australian of the Year, comments that virtually all populations around the globe with a history of social exclusion and marginalisation have the same types of problems that we see exhibited in Indigenous people in Australia. So why is it that when you look at the evidence of Maori, Canadian and American indigenous people they fare far better? What is it that is different? Why can’t this government ask that simple question? She suggests:

For a start they have specialised, well-funded health services; effective partnerships and involvement of indigenous people; and many more indigenous professionals who are ... advocates for their people.

…            …            …

Treaty negotiations and land rights are linked to outcomes that ensure local resources, employment and community economic opportunities.

But, most importantly, there is a recognition of history and past dispossession that provides for some restorative justice.

What is missing in this package is a lack of social research and compassion. The astonishing lack of discussion, let alone negotiation, has not paved the way to convince me that this government has any intention of providing lifelong skills for Indigenous people, no intention of empowering them or ensuring that, after this emergency is over, the whole exercise will leave these people with the ability to self-determine their future and the skills to do that. The Australian Labor Party has indicated its support for some of these measures, with the key focus being to tackle child abuse and neglect. Of course I, like all of my colleagues, want to see the end of child abuse everywhere, not only in Indigenous communities.

I also believe that this legislation, which purports to tackle sexual abuse in Indigenous communities, must—like any other legislation—comply with the Racial Discrimination Act. This would ensure that the actions of the government do not discriminate on the grounds of race, colour, descent or ethnic origin and are consistent with the previous track record of all federal governments when it comes to responding to Indigenous issues. I do not accept the non-application of part II of the RDA. That eliminates the possibility of the courts fulfilling their normal role, which is to decide whether or not this proposed legislation is a special measure. Before the committee hearing last week, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commissioner said that an essential feature of a special measure is that it is done in consultation with, and is generally with the consent of, the people who are subject to it. The apparent lack of consultation prior to the introduction of these bills is therefore a matter of serious concern. I have noted the comments of HREOC that this could be a special measure. But in order for that to occur, consultation is needed. This government should immediately seek to do so once these bills are passed through this parliament.

As legislators we should be sending a clear message that we have confidence in this plan, confidence that it will be to the benefit of the people in the Northern Territory and confidence that it will achieve results against the aim that has been set for it, which is the protection of our children. In doing so, we must also observe the integrity of the Racial Discrimination Act. This is a basic principle for the opposition, for this country and for the Indigenous community of this country. In fact, this very point was made by former Federal Court magistrate Murray Wilcox, who said on ABC’s AM program last Tuesday:

... the Government is saying this is racially discriminatory legislation but nonetheless it is to be regarded as valid.

That is the reason why we propose an amendment to eliminate such measures that would restrict the role of the courts and of the RDA. We should stand by that legislation. It is an important check and balance on any government. This government should not walk away from its obligations to ensure a healthy and lively debate on this legislation and should not shut down the role of the courts in scrutinising this legislation.

I want to turn to a number of other elements in the legislation. Firstly, this government has failed to demonstrate in any way how proposed changes to the permit system will assist in protecting children. They claim that removal of the permit system that is presently in force will open up communities to more visitors, which somehow will prevent or lessen child abuse. In fact, the Northern Territory police have told us the opposite: they have told us that having this permit system in place has on more than one occasion meant they were able to use the permit system as a means of controlling what occurs on these lands. Where drivers could not produce permits, police were able to stop and search their vehicles and thereby prevent grog and drug runners entering the communities. The removal of the permit system will prevent police from doing this and achieve the opposite of what the government claims: more drug runners and grog runners. In fact, today the Police Federation of Australia said that it is of the view that the Australian government has failed to make the case that there is any connection between the permit system and child sex abuse in Aboriginal communities and that therefore the changes to the permit system are unwarranted. When Minister Brough put out a discussion paper on the possible changes to the permit system, not one Aboriginal community wanted change. But their views are being totally ignored. That is a total lack of respect for Indigenous people.

Labor does and always will support Aboriginal land rights and the act that underpins them. This legislation gives the federal government the leasehold over prescribed areas for five years, but the underlying title stays with the traditional owners, who therefore will ultimately regain control. Their traditional rights to continue to use their land must not be affected. I personally have grave concerns about aspects of this legislation in relation to the compulsory acquisition of the land for five years. I am yet to be convinced that this needs to occur in order for this plan to be implemented.

The legislation also scraps the CDEP, the Community Development Employment Program. While it would be welcome if there were enough real jobs in remote communities for Aboriginal people to occupy, the reality is that this simply is not the case. For many organisations, especially those servicing the most remote organisations—like homeland resource centres—the scrapping of CDEP with the resultant reduction in funding and loss of activity payments will be potentially disastrous to the homelands and the outstation movement. Again, this move will do little to protect children. Indeed, if it forces Aboriginal people to move away from homelands to larger communities with more crowded housing, it may do the opposite.

We had a number of submissions before us last Friday from homelands associations in the Northern Territory. The Laynhapuy, the Marthakal from Elcho Island and Bawanunga all put in submissions. They hold grave concerns about the impact of the abolition of CDEP. They say that the government response could well precipitate the collapse of well-functioning organisations. This is because the precipitous withdrawal of funding will not give them time to plan or structurally adjust. This would create a climate of extreme uncertainty, which makes retention and recruitment of staff and the maintenance of morale extremely difficult. It would also cause uncertainty as to the security of land and assets. The impact and consequences of the removal of CDEP have not been discussed with Indigenous people. Why is it that you can live in Lajamanu and not get access to CDEP from 30 September but travel across the border into WA and still be eligible to work under this scheme? This is not about ensuring Indigenous people get access to employment opportunities but about ensuring that this government gets access to their money. That is the only way their money can be quarantined: through Centrelink rather than through wages. What is fair about quarantining the payments of Indigenous people if they are on Centrelink but not if they are on a wage? The assumption here is that people who are earning a salary know how to or in fact do spend their income appropriately. There is no evidence to suggest that that is a fact.

There are elements of this legislation that are worthy of support, such as the crackdown on pornography. Yet the measures do not go to limiting access to adult channels on Austar and do not go to educating adults in these communities about the appropriate time to watch these adult channels—which is not when children are up and around. As such, you have to ask how effective they will be. I believe that the restrictions on alcohol also warrant consideration, although there are communities that have alcohol management plans in place and these plans should be allowed to remain. That seems unlikely.

This legislation and the process in which it has been developed are far from perfect. Just today I received a letter from the Elliott District Community Government Council. Elliott is a community located 700 kilometres south of Darwin and 780 kilometres north of Alice Springs. It is the largest remote community in the Barkly region. But guess what? It is not one of the 70 communities that have been targeted by this government. The Elliott community have written to say that, while they applaud the federal government’s national response to protect Indigenous children in the Northern Territory and support the proposed initiatives, they are extremely disappointed that the Elliott community has not been considered to be included in the initial emergency response. For some reason the excuse that the government is giving is that it is a town camp. I fail to understand how that can be so, and I will be interested to hear the minister’s response when we ask why Elliott has been left out of this strategy when it has over 650 Indigenous residents.

We can all see that the health and wellbeing of children are of paramount priority and need to be acted upon immediately. While neither side of this house has an unblemished record when it comes to Indigenous affairs, the history books are filled with brash, radical and hurried plans attempting to fix Indigenous disadvantage. Those plans were not given full consideration by parliament, they did not provide for full and proper consultation with Indigenous people and they have failed. We have argued for a review of part 4 of the legislation as well as the section of the legislation that deals with the quarantining of Centrelink payments 12 months following the implementation of this legislation so that we can continue to work to improve existing measures to the benefit of Indigenous people, and to do so in a spirit of consultation with Indigenous people.

On this side of the house, we are committed to examining these measures and, while we believe they need amendment, we are committed to implementing measures which will deal with not only short-term social abuse issues affecting young Indigenous kids, but also which will address the economic and cultural sustainability of Indigenous communities into the future. There are many elements of this legislation that I find personally abhorrent and I have great difficulty in giving it my support. I am not convinced that this legislation will lead to long-term gains. Look at this government’s track record. This government has had 11 long years to commit to fixing the housing crisis in the Northern Territory, but it has not. It could have ensured that we were not the only developed country in the world to still have trachoma in epidemic proportions in our Indigenous people and allocated the $22 million needed to eradicate it, but it has not. It could have ensured that there were adequate facilities in communities for the aged and funding for long-term programs for the youth, but it has not. It could have said ‘sorry’ to the stolen generation and addressed their mental health problems, but it has not done that either. It could have ensured that stolen wages were returned to Indigenous people, but it has failed in that area as well. And it could have guaranteed that reconciliation and recognition of Indigenous people was something they would long be remembered for, but this government will not.

In the year when Indigenous people should be celebrating the 40th anniversary of gaining the vote and being recognised as equal citizens in this country, they are still fighting to educate and inform people about how they live and are urging us to take account of the impact of this legislation, how it will affect them and the consequences it will have. This legislation is ill conceived and ill informed. It takes no account of the views of Indigenous people and assumes that they all need some form of intervention. They do not.

Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand tonight to strongly support the government’s legislation before the Senate, the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Payment Reform) Bill 2007. At the outset, I want to empathise with Senator Crossin, the Labor senator from the Northern Territory, and say that I understand where she is coming from and the motivation she has, which is for the betterment of Indigenous communities and particularly Indigenous children in the Northern Territory. However, on this side of the Senate we do not lack compassion. Senator Crossin has indicated that we lack compassion. I say to Senator Crossin and those on the other side that the whole purpose, in fact the whole foundational philosophy behind this initiative, is driven by compassion—compassion and care for Indigenous communities and specifically for the safety and health of children in the Northern Territory.

It is true that I have learnt a great deal over the last week or so while getting abreast of the concerns that have been raised and getting my head around some of these issues. I want to say to Senator Bob Brown—who has referred to our government as a racist and a disgusting government—that I find those words hurtful and offensive. You are entitled in a democracy to your own views, but one of the key motivations behind this legislation is to ensure that those who are missing out, those who are suffering and those who are combating sexual abuse, particularly kids, are raised up. We want to remove them from the terrible situation in which they live. We need this emergency measure. We know that we have failed in the past. There have been many decades of failure across all levels of government, in particular by state governments. We have failed as a nation and it is time.

I would like to pay tribute right up-front to the Hon. Mal Brough, who is 100 per cent committed to the health and welfare of Indigenous communities in Australia and specifically in the Northern Territory. Minister, thank you and well done for biting the bullet, for leading us and for conveying to us that these people deserve respect and dignity. You want to give those children a chance in life. You want them to be able to achieve their best potential and achieve good health outcomes, education outcomes and social outcomes. You want them to be the best that they can be. That is the desire that Minister Mal Brough has shown us.

The Prime Minister and Minister Brough made that historic announcement on 21 June this year. It was a historic announcement because it was an emergency measure to respond to an emergency situation, and that is what happened. Six weeks prior to that June announcement, the Little children are sacred report, commissioned by the Northern Territory government, confirmed what the Australian government had been saying. It told the government in the clearest possible terms that sexual abuse of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory is serious, widespread and often unreported and that there is a strong association between alcohol abuse and sexual abuse of children. This government has said, ‘Enough is enough; we want to make a difference in the lives of these children in the Northern Territory,’ and that is what they have done. It is motivated by compassion, care and concern and a wish to give respect and dignity to these children so that they have a way through and a chance to make a go in life.

It has been a great honour to chair the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. I want to thank every one of the senators on that committee, including the participating senators, who appeared at the hearing on Friday last. We received a reference on 9 August 2007, and, yes, we had little time—we had one day, and it was a full day. I want to say to the witnesses who presented before that committee: thank you for doing what you could. I thought the submissions were thoughtful, well researched and well prepared. I want to thank all the senators on that committee. In particular, as committee chair, on behalf of the committee I want to thank the secretary of the committee, Jackie Morris, together with Julie Dennett, Tim Watling, Sophie Power, Alice Crowley, Judith Wuest and Michael Masters. What a great team and what a great effort they have undertaken on behalf of our Senate committee to pull together this report. I am proud of the report, which was tabled just a few hours ago in the Senate. I have referred to the various witnesses that appeared before the committee. I want to thank them for their efforts and for their contribution, which has been most valued.

The minister, Mal Brough, has said that the situation we are in at the moment requires urgent and immediate action. That is exactly what has happened. We have already had action on the ground up there with police, health and emergency services personnel. The minister has indicated that he is tremendously encouraged by the support that he has received for this emergency response from the government and from ordinary Australians. I want to take my hat off to the volunteers who have committed their own effort, time and resources to get up to the Northern Territory to make a difference on behalf of all Australians. This includes people from Tasmania like Dr Rob Walters, who gave his time and effort to do that. There are hundreds of people, and maybe more, who are volunteering. On behalf of all of us I say: thank you for that.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How long is he staying?

Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Brown, if you want to make accusations and derogatory comments about the volunteers, stand up and do it in a separate speech. This is my time to make a contribution to this Senate with respect to the importance of the health and safety of the children of the Northern Territory’s Indigenous communities.

We have received 155 submissions as of nine o’clock this morning. It was a short time frame, but we do not live in a perfect world.

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We do not live in a perfect world, and that is why we have done what we can in the time available.

An incident having occurred in the gallery—

Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. I have been sitting here for some time listening to my colleague Senator Barnett make his address. I have referred to the proper standing order with regard to the running commentary in the gallery. I refer you to section 175, ‘the conduct of visitors’. It is quite obvious that there is ongoing noise and disruption. We have three security members up there. I would ask them to take charge of the matter; otherwise we are going to have this running commentary through the address of any government speaker. If nothing else, Mr Acting Deputy President, could you please warn the visitors in the first row on the right of the gallery.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the point of order, I have heard far greater noise from the gallery during first speeches. What a petty point is being taken by the minister. It is not consistent with standing orders. There has been no disruption. The member who is talking has not complained, and the point of order should be ruled out. We are, after all, in a democracy. We are not in some sort of sound bell where nothing from outside penetrates these walls. A little decency and forbearance in these circumstances would go a long way.

Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In terms of decency, I would ask the ladies and gentlemen in the gallery to observe the standing orders of the Senate and to listen to the speakers in silence.

Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. I am quite happy in terms of this being a democracy. We have the right and entitlement to share our views across the chamber. Everybody in this country is entitled to their view and we should vigorously respect each other’s right to express that view. I was not particularly concerned about the interruptions but I do appreciate the willingness of Senator McGauran to indicate that standing orders are important.

Just about all the witnesses in our committee did welcome the intent of the Australian government’s intervention package. Some were strongly supportive of the package and some were strongly against the package. I wanted to refer to a few witnesses in particular. John Moriarty, of the National Indigenous Council, said:

I find this a once in a lifetime opportunity for fighters like me who want Aboriginal rights, and I think it should be supported. We have lost at least two, maybe three, generations in my communities up there in Borroloola.

Dr Moriaty went on to say:

... we have allowed the states to do their thing. I find that this intervention is one of those aspects that will dig deep into the real issues and have Aboriginal people brought into the system.

Mr Wesley Aird, of the National Indigenous Council, told our committee last Friday:

I think the status quo is a result of a failed model in terms of funding and governance systems. I think it is destroying communities and lives. The obvious manifestation of this is child abuse and neglect as well as alcoholism and violence.

He also said:

I support the intervention. I think it is important that it is treated as a package.

Mr Aird went on to say:

I am concerned that the critics of the intervention are losing the real focus here, which is the protection and safety of families and children.

That is the real focus.

The committee also heard that many residents of Alice Springs and Katherine were supportive of the intervention package. The Mayor of Alice Springs Town Council, Councillor Kilgariff, told the committee:

I would like to start by saying that many people in this area have welcomed the federal intervention. They see it as a catalyst for change. Over very many years we have seen a deterioration in the quality of Indigenous lives brought about by many things but I would say principally by alcohol and welfare dependency.

She went on to say:

... I think the intervention is very welcome.

Likewise, the Mayor of Katherine Town Council, Councillor Shepherd, noted that she and most of her community welcomed the government’s intervention.

Yes, many submissions were critical of the haste with which the legislative package had been introduced into parliament and argued that there should have been more consultation—and I note the views Senator Crossin expressed tonight. Magistrate Dr Sue Gordon, Chair of the NIC and also the National Emergency Task Force—someone for whom I have great respect and a very high regard and someone who is demonstrating great leadership in dealing with these important matters—told the committee that consultation in the context of a response to an emergency was necessarily limited, and she drew a parallel with the imperative for governments to act swiftly in the face of other emergencies. She submitted that the protection of children and, indeed, adults in communities who suffer violence and abuse had been completely lost in the public debate and noted that in an emergency like a tsunami or a cyclone governments do not have time to consult people in the initial phases. That was said by Dr Sue Gordon, an authority and someone I have the highest regard for. She put a very persuasive and powerful submission to our committee last Friday.

Chris Ellison (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hear, hear!

Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Ellison. Mr Aird, from the NIC, told the committee:

... there has been so much consultation with Indigenous people over the years on so many topics. I think this one is different because we knew that the abuse and neglect of children was ongoing. So for every day, every week that you were out there consulting—and with some known outcomes, dealing with personalities that you would expect to be consulted—the person who delayed action would knowingly be allowing more abuse, more neglect ...

The time for action is here. The time for an on-the-ground emergency effort is with us.

The protection of children is the top priority. There has been reference to the Racial Discrimination Act and the exclusion from part II of the Racial Discrimination Act, noting that that is limited to the five years. That was discussed at length in the committee hearing. Departmental officials from FaCSIA informed the committee:

The bills make it clear that those measures in relation to the emergency response are special measures, and special measures are based on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which allows concrete measures to ensure the adequate development and protection of individuals. The provisions in the bills are intended to provide a benefit to Indigenous Australians and to secure their adequate advancement and enjoyment of their human rights on the same basis as others.

So that is in fact the direct opposite to what Senator Brown has indicated in terms of our government being racist. The exact opposite is happening. We are trying to lift these Indigenous children and their communities so that they can partake in Australian society in the same way that other Australian men, women and children partake. So with respect to the Racial Discrimination Act, the way the legislation is written is entirely appropriate.

Yes, there have been views put on the permit system. I want to put on the record that there have been both criticisms of and support for the permit system. The Mayor of Alice Springs Town Council said:

... the Alice Springs Town Council has resolved that it does agree with getting rid of the permit system in major communities and on major roads.

That was the view put by the Mayor of Alice Springs Town Council, and I strongly support that. The question has to be asked: why would you want to have a closed community? There needs to be persuasive and overwhelming evidence to support that, and that evidence is not there. A review into the permit system was done last year. Over 100 submissions were made to the government. Interestingly, the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the Northern Territory gave evidence that the group had not even made a submission to that review, on the basis that it considered the issue of permits to be within the expertise of the Northern Territory land councils. The government decided on balance to leave the permit system in place for 99.8 per cent of Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory. The permit system applies to towns, places with roads, shops and public places like other towns. That is how it is planned to work under this legislation. The objective is to provide for strong and safe communities that can thrive and prosper like other smaller communities throughout Australia.

There has been discussion on the changes to the Community Development Employment Program and the income management regime and the funding of the $580 million package. That is the level of commitment being given—$580-odd million—to address these issues. That highlights the priority that this government places on the health and safety of Indigenous children in the Northern Territory. The Mayor of Alice Springs Town Council noted in her evidence:

Eighty-five per cent of police work here in Central Australia is alcohol related ...

The issues relating to alcohol, drugs and pornography were discussed at length.

I just want to comment on the restrictions on pornography. We had submissions from the Festival of Light and the Australian Christian Lobby, and I note that on 10 August this year the Prime Minister announced, with Minister Helen Coonan, new initiatives in relation to the provision of free on-line content filters to Australian families and public libraries, as well as access to internet server provider filtering on request. What an excellent measure! That is something I have been supporting for many years and I am thrilled with that measure. I think it will provide support, encouragement and opportunities for safer protection to be provided to these communities.

I want to talk about monitoring the measures which deal, in the national emergency response, with the possession and supply of X-rated films to assess the effectiveness of those measures in preventing that use of these films in the sexual abuse or sexualisation of children and young people in these prescribed areas. There should be ongoing monitoring to see how that affects these communities—how it benefits them, whether it is working and whether it needs to be extended or not. That is a question that remains open.

Yes, we did make recommendations. It was not just a carte blanche. In fact we made six recommendations, and I just want to touch on those very briefly before my time expires. Firstly, the committee recommended that the operation of the measures implemented by the bills be continuously monitored and publicly reported on annually through the Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage reporting framework. We believe that that is an important framework. The reporting will happen annually. It will be a public document and you will be able to see how the progress is going.

Secondly, the committee recommended that the emergency task force make publicly available its strategic communications plan and its other operational plans, and that that should be done within six months. The longer-term plan should be tabled and made very clear within 12 months, so that the public knows—there is a transparent process—exactly what is going on. Thirdly, we recommended that the whole process be properly reviewed within two years of the commencement. You need a little bit of time for the emergency task force measures to be implemented and to see how they work.

Fourthly, we recommended a very thorough, culturally appropriate public education and information campaign to explain to the people on the ground, particularly in the Indigenous communities, exactly what is going on and who is doing what, when and where, so that they understand how the measures in the bills will impact on them, and what their new responsibilities are. Fifthly, we have asked the government to develop explanatory material with respect to the quantity of alcohol greater than the 1,350 millilitres set out on the bill and the definition of ‘unsatisfactory school attendance’. Finally, we have recommended to the government that it should closely examine the need for additional drug and alcohol rehabilitation services in the Northern Territory and, if necessary, provide additional funding support for those services.

In conclusion, I support the legislation. It is built on compassion and the need for action to provide for the safety, health and welfare for Indigenous children in the Northern Territory.

Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the day that the Prime Minister made the announcement which has resulted in this legislation, I was in the office of Senator Siewert—my Greens colleague from Western Australia. In her office I met a group of Indigenous women from the Northern Territory, who had come to Canberra as part of a national speaking tour to talk about how they did not want a radioactive nuclear waste dump on their homeland. Each of the women in the group was from a different site where the federal government is proposing to build a radioactive nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory.

It was just a few hours after the Prime Minister had made his announcement that I met these women in Senator Siewert’s office and they were all very quiet. I do not know why they were quiet. Maybe they were contemplating the enormity of the announcement that the Prime Minister had just made. Perhaps they were still a little bit in shock. Perhaps they felt disempowered because they did not know what to say or how yet to respond, but one of the women, as she was leaving Senator Siewert’s office, turned to me and said, ‘I’m from the stolen generation.’ She said it as if to offer me an explanation. It was as if she was saying to me, ‘I understand; I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen this firsthand.’

It really struck me and it made me think that I do not want to see future political leaders in this country five, 10 or 20 years from now apologising to Indigenous Australians for the decisions being made here today in the Senate. When governments in the past made decisions to take Indigenous children away from their families they were well intentioned and paternalistic. I do not want to see that again. I do not want future political leaders to be apologising for the decisions that are inherent in this piece of legislation and this proposal by the Prime Minister.

We all want to see an end to young Indigenous children experiencing sexual abuse, in the same way that we want to see an end to all children, whatever country they are from, and whatever nationality they have, experiencing sexual abuse. We all want to see less alcohol abuse, less drug abuse and less violence occurring in Indigenous communities, as in other communities around Australia and around the world. There is a whole raft of people who have been working, for almost their entire lives, to improve the lives of people in the circumstances that some Indigenous communities are experiencing. They have been dedicated to these projects. They are the people that the government should be talking to and listening to in coming up with a proposal about how to tackle the violence, disadvantage and sexual abuse that occurs in some Indigenous communities.

The Prime Minister appears to have made his announcement with no consultation. I think that the very clearest lesson that white Australians can learn from the history of the way in which we have engaged with Indigenous Australians is that you must consult. You must engage in a genuine discussion with Indigenous Australians. If that does not occur, and if Indigenous Australians are not leading that process then whatever you are trying to achieve will not work. The history of Australian governments engaging with Indigenous Australians shows that if you do so without consultation and without genuine engagement you will fail. And that is what we are seeing here again from this government.

There are numerous studies which show us that the best way to deliver services for Indigenous Australians is to have Indigenous Australians leading and driving that process. We have set up Aboriginal medical services and Aboriginal community controlled health organisations in this country because we recognise that is the best way to deliver health outcomes for Indigenous Australians. I was on the Senate inquiry that was looking into the government’s proposal to abolish ATSIC. When the President of the Australian Medical Association, the AMA, appeared before the committee, I asked him for the AMA’s view about how Aboriginal community controlled health organisations worked in terms of being able to deliver health outcomes. He was very glowing in his response. This is what he said:

I think the model that they have there is a model we need in the non-Indigenous delivery of primary care, because they deal with it in a holistic way. They do not deal with it in a symptom way—you come in with a sore threat and they say, ‘Here’s your script; get out’—but they deal with the whole: who are you, who is your family unit and what makes you up? They actually deal with the whole person. They deal with the physical and psychological needs. The way the AMSs [Aboriginal medical services] are structured—

And he said ‘Don’t tell them out there!’ presumably referring to his doctor colleagues—

is probably how we should structure the non-Indigenous ones.

That is, the non-Indigenous medical services. Similar studies about the effective way to deliver health outcomes to Indigenous Australians have come up with the same results in countries all around the world from the United States to Canada and throughout the Pacific. Having visited Aboriginal community controlled health organisations, the outcome of those studies makes perfect sense when you see how Indigenous Australians are driving their own projects to improve their own lot in life. We know that Indigenous Australians are far more likely to access government services, whether it is health care or Centrelink, if they can talk to another Indigenous person. The government has set up some models recognising that this is the way you deliver services.

But not only does the provision of services for Indigenous Australians by other Indigenous Australians deliver better health outcomes it is the very basis of the idea of self-determination. The United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights talks about the importance of self-determination. Australia has signed up to that; countries all around the world have signed up to that. And similarly that commitment to self-determination can be found in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The international community has recognised the importance of self-determination: it is about Indigenous people being able to control and drive their own future in their country.

After the Prime Minister made his announcement about the Northern Territory, I decided that I wanted to go and visit Indigenous organisations in my state of New South Wales that I knew were doing fantastic work to help their communities tackle the problems that they face. I did that because I want to see this issue addressed seriously, and that means needing to learn from the experience that is out there about what works when Indigenous people are leading the way.

I went to visit the Katungul Aboriginal Medical Service in Narooma on the New South Wales south coast. They provide health services for Aboriginal communities from Ulladulla all the way down the south coast, yet they do not receive enough funding from the federal government to be able to employ even one full-time GP. They do not get any money from the federal government or from the state government to ensure that they can provide Indigenous Australians from Ulladulla to the Victorian border with dental care. I met an Aboriginal man who lives near there. He was talking to me about the Indigenous children in his community whose teeth have rotted down to their gums because they have no access to dental services and they have such poor nutrition.

Indigenous communities on the south coast of New South Wales are trying hard to improve their health, but they are not getting the support that they need from the federal government or from the state government. Some of the issues that they face are similar to those horrible stories that we have heard about from communities in the Northern Territory. Indigenous Australians all around this country need support. They need to be able to have access to mental health services, to dental services and to drug and alcohol services that are run by Indigenous communities for Indigenous communities.

I also went up to Lismore in the north of New South Wales where I visited an organisation called Rekindling the Spirit, which is an incredible organisation run by an Indigenous guy who himself was a victim of sexual abuse. He used to work for the Department of Community Services in New South Wales as a child protection officer and he experienced racism from his colleagues who were also child protection officers within that department. But in some ways the Department of Community Services was quite good to him in that they lent him a car. He would then drive around and pick up all the Indigenous men and drop them to the alcoholics anonymous meeting that was happening that night and then drop everybody home again that night—all the people who did not have transport would not have got to the meetings if he had not been doing that. He was working incredible hours until the early hours of the morning to help his community, his Indigenous brothers and sisters, be able to attend those meetings. The next day he would rock up to work again for the New South Wales Department of Community Services. He did that for many years before setting up his own organisation, which is an Indigenous-run centre for Indigenous communities in northern New South Wales. They work with a lot of people who are referred to them, including men who are referred to them from the New South Wales Department of Corrective Services. They are men who may have been perpetrators of violence. The Rekindling the Spirit organisation works with those men to help them deal with their lives, to deal with the problems that they have had in their lives and the violence that they have engaged in. They also work with the families as well as with women and children who have been victims of violence. They have a long-term strategy of dealing with the cycles of violence that exist, because they work with both the victims and perpetrators of that violence.

After visiting Rekindling the Spirit I went to Southern Cross University, which is also located in Lismore, where I met up with a class of masters students who are studying a degree in Indigenous studies. It is a unique course operating at Southern Cross University and is being run by Professor Judy Atkinson. I know they are keen to see it expanded and run elsewhere. I was sitting in a room of masters students—they were predominantly Indigenous and all were women—and they went around the room telling me who they were and what their experiences were. After they had done that, I realised that I was sitting in a room of about 12 Indigenous women who had each been working for about 30 years on child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities. This was a room of experts, and I wished that it had been the Prime Minister and the Indigenous Affairs minister sitting and hearing the stories from each of these women about the work that they have been doing for their entire working lives with Indigenous communities to tackle sexual and family violence occurring in those communities.

There were two women from the Kimberley area, and Professor Judy Atkinson said to me that the program that they were running to tackle sexual violence in their community was the best program that she had seen anywhere in the world to tackle Indigenous violence in a community. I asked her what made it the best program available, and she said that it was because the program dealt with the issue of violence and sexual abuse of children by working with the whole community. It did not work with the model that we see in Western medicine of one-on-one counselling; it was about working with the whole of the community so that the community together could work on that issue.

It is the same thing about Indigenous communities being able to be the providers of the answers to the problems that some Indigenous communities in Australia face. Self-determination is the approach that we find in successful Indigenous programs. I want to stand here today to vote on a piece of legislation that recognises the great work that is being done by Indigenous people, often women, in their community to tackle the problems that they face. It did not take me very long in the six weeks since the Prime Minister made this announcement to visit a raft of Indigenous organisations in New South Wales run by Indigenous men and women who are doing great work for their community. They are the ones we should be listening to and supporting. I would love to be asked to vote on a piece of legislation which is about supporting those people to achieve the fantastic outcomes that they have been able to achieve in their communities and allowing them to drive the process. I want to vote for a bit of legislation that ensures that the Lapa Bummers, which is a youth group in La Perouse in Sydney, gets the funding that it needs to be able to continue to do the work that it is doing.

I met a 24-year-old guy at La Perouse, who is the acting CEO of the land council there. He told me that when he grew up in La Perouse there was no youth group. So many of the young Indigenous boys that he grew up with lost their way because there was no support, and he talked to me about the stark difference that he has seen amongst the young boys in the La Perouse Indigenous community because of the presence of the youth centre. That youth centre and the programs that it is running are being replicated by Indigenous communities right around Australia, but their funding from the federal government runs out next year. I think it would be disastrous if they were not able to continue to do their work, which has become a model for youth programs in Indigenous committees right around Australia, because they were not able to get the funding that they need to be able to continue and to make a difference to the lives of young Indigenous men living in La Perouse.

I want to see this government supporting programs like the Blackout Violence program. It is run by the Mudgin-Gal Aboriginal Women’s Corporation and the Wirringa Baiya women’s legal centre, which are based in Redfern and in Marrickville in Sydney. They came together as a result of some sexual violence that had been occurring in Redfern in the Block and they put together a program to address this issue. The women organised a rally and then they put together their program Blackout Violence. They launched it at the New South Wales Aboriginal rugby league knockout in Redfern, where all the communities come together. Players from 85 rugby league teams went out onto the field wearing purple arm bands to show their opposition to family violence and to sexual assault against women. I want to see the federal government supporting programs like that.

It has not taken me long to find many, and I know there are many more, fantastic Indigenous groups, not only in my state of New South Wales but all around the country, who are doing really amazing work to tackle the problems that the government talks about wanting to address. They are the experts; they are the people who have lived with and had experience of those things. They know what works and they are the people who should be driving this process. If we really want change and if we really want to ensure that young, Indigenous Australians do not experience violence, sexual abuse and drug and alcohol abuse, then we need to adopt the programs that have worked in Indigenous communities around the country. The people who have been running those programs are Indigenous Australians, so they need to drive this process and they need to be given the opportunity to be supported for the fantastic work that they are doing.

I think about the women whom I met in Rachel Siewert’s office on the day that the Prime Minister made this announcement. Those women come from communities where this government wants to dump radioactive nuclear waste. Their job to protect their land and to ensure that their land does not become a radioactive nuclear waste dump has been made harder by this legislation. They should be able to have a say in determining the future of their land and what happens on their land, and this legislation takes that right from them away. It is paternalistic. It may be well intentioned, but the same motivator—well-intentioned paternalism—led governments before this one to make the decision to take Aboriginal children away from their parents. I do not want a debate occurring in here in however many years time about the need to apologise to Indigenous Australians for well-intentioned paternalistic decision-making by this government. I want to see us support positive Indigenous initiatives that are already occurring in this country. That is what the Greens wish we were able to stand here and support. They are the stories that I think are important to tell here, because there are answers out there and we should be following those answers and supporting the Indigenous women and others who are doing fantastic work in their community to truly address, in a long-term sense, the issues that the government says it wants to address by this legislation.

Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the federal government’s response to the Little children are sacred report. I think it is a sad reflection that the kinds of problems referred to in this report exist in modern day Australia. But exist they do, and it is better that the existence of these problems be acknowledged and action taken to overcome them in a decisive and very public way rather than for these issues to remain concealed and unaddressed any longer.

It has to be conceded that quite often these problems are long term, deep-seated and culturally based and that it has been difficult to take the initiative needed to address these issues because of misguided concern about not offending Indigenous cultural mores. However, I believe that Indigenous culture has been used to throw a cloak over these problems and that, in this day and age, it is time for this cloak to be removed and for the Indigenous people of Australia as a whole to be brought into the world of contemporary Australia.

Our society does not condone the abuse of children in any way whatsoever, and the children of Indigenous Australians, as much as any other child in our community, have every right to live normal, happy lives and to grow up with the expectation of participating in the benefits of living in this great country. Some people have criticised the government’s recent action in the Northern Territory as having only a short-term focus. This is simply not true. The government’s strategy has three components: firstly, a stabilisation phase, which is occurring at the present time; secondly, the normalisation of services and infrastructure; and, thirdly, longer term support based on the norms and choices that apply to all the people of Australia.

The federal government has appointed a task force to address the issues which have been raised in the Northern Territory. This task force is led, as has been said, by Dr Sue Gordon, who is a very distinguished Indigenous lady who was formerly a magistrate in Western Australia. I must say that I have a great deal of respect for Sue Gordon, who, as it happens, I knew when she lived in Port Hedland, as I did at that time. I am sure that under her leadership and guidance the task force will operate to the highest standards and will achieve the goals which have been set for it. Still, I think we have to look at the issues involved in what is occurring in the Northern Territory in a very broad perspective and not expect too much too soon, because these issues are very deep-seated and reflect the adverse conditions of life which have existed in some Indigenous communities over a very long period of time.

Having lived in the Pilbara region of Western Australia for some 22 years, it seems to me that these problems of abuse largely occur because Indigenous people feel isolated from mainstream Australia and feel a sense of hopelessness and alienation because they do not see a place for themselves in the world of modern Australia. In the case of Aborigines living in regional towns, who are often from the generation who came into the towns after equal pay awards were made on stations, the problem they face is not having sufficient education in terms of literacy and job skill education to enable them to find work in mainstream Australian communities. Similar factors apply to Indigenous people living in remote and isolated communities, engendering in them, in many cases, a sense of alienation and hopelessness about their lives and their place in the world of modern Australia.

Indigenous people living in isolated communities know that the world they see on television and in their nearest town is not the world of their communities. As I said, I believe this leads to a sense of hopelessness which, in turn, is manifested in excessive drinking and various social problems, including abuse of children. I give an example of the kind of anger this sense of alienation breeds: about eight years ago, the people from the Balgo community out on the Northern Territory border in Western Australia came into the town of Halls Creek en masse and, after sitting in a park for some hours but not drinking, the men walked down to the main street of Halls Creek and trashed offices and shops along the street, beginning with the police station and then the Shell roadhouse and so on. Balgo is notorious, of course, because of the high incidence of glue sniffing, alcoholism and youth suicides which occur there. It is probably one of the worst communities that any Australian could possibly imagine as a place to live in. As I said, these Indigenous people who live in these sorts of communities have a sense of alienation because there is nothing for them to do with their lives in the East Kimberley. That in turn leads to excessive drinking and to various forms of abuse, and that is the core problem we need to address as citizens of Australia.

I believe that one of our most important long-term goals must be to provide Indigenous people with not only basic education in terms of literacy and numeracy but also job skill education so that they do have the ability to engage in useful work, the dignity of being in charge of their lives and a sense of fulfilment. It has long been my view that education, particularly job skill education, is the key to the door of the world for the Indigenous people of Australia.

One positive initiative that has been undertaken by the Minerals Council of Australia is their Indigenous employment program. This program provides Indigenous people with the opportunity to acquire skills enabling them to work in the mining industry. And, of course, these skills are transferable to other areas. The Argyle Diamond Mine south of Kununurra is particularly worthy of mention because over 20 per cent of the workforce is Indigenous. I would like to congratulate the Argyle Diamond Mine and its parent company Rio Tinto on their Indigenous training and employment program because they are setting a high standard in practise for others to follow and not just talk about.

Obviously, however, not all Indigenous people can work in mines, but there are many other alternatives that can be considered. These include working in shops and offices in towns and, more importantly as far as Indigenous people in remote areas are concerned, in tourism ventures as guides in national parks or in Indigenous arts and craft centres. These considerations should apply not only to Indigenous people in remote areas but also to Indigenous people living within our towns and cities. For example, about eight years ago when I was driving through the Kimberley a member of my staff noted that there were very few Indigenous people working in the stores or roadhouses along the way. My staff member had worked on a functional literacy program for African-Americans in Los Angeles and, after leaving my office and going to the Red Cross, set up a program called First Steps, which trained Aboriginal teenagers in metropolitan Perth high schools to prepare themselves for after-school jobs. The Red Cross ran that program and it had great success in giving Indigenous teenagers in Perth the confidence to believe that they could successfully work in mainstream situations. Unfortunately, the Red Cross did not continue with the First Step program, but it was a very successful initiative and one that I would have thought the federal government could consider taking over and applying around this country.

I would add that these jobs were not subsidised in any way and the focus of the training given to the young people was all about presenting themselves well at interviews, turning up on time for work and being neatly dressed. The failures that occurred turned out to be largely due to the kinds of social problems that the government’s Northern Territory strategy is setting out to address. For example, teenagers who had sleepless nights because they were frightened of drunken relatives did not turn up for work in the morning because they had no clean clothes or breakfast and accordingly felt what Aborigines describe as ‘shame’. These have been the secret problems faced by Aboriginal kids and underlie not only erratic work performances but also school truancy.

Having said that, in the context of this debate it is very important that Indigenous people not be demonised in general by the actions of a few. There are many Indigenous families within our cities, towns and remote communities who live as ordinary members of their societies in normal, happy family relationships. I think it is also important to understand that Indigenous people in general have similar aspirations to the wider Australian community.

Not long after I went to the Pilbara—quite a long time ago now, I must say; in the seventies—I was invited to an Aboriginal bush meeting. Such meetings were held about once every three months on the banks of a river where about 300 or 400 people would gather over three days to discuss issues of interest to them. The first bush meeting I was invited to was held on the banks of the Coongan River near Marble Bar, and I was a little surprised when I first arrived to see the chief Aborigine of the Pilbara, whose name I cannot mention since he is now deceased, sitting at the head table wearing a big white stetson on his head over his mane of white hair and at tables on either side of him sat his advisers and lawyers from Perth and Canberra.

I rapidly came to understand that these people were not naive about our society and their aspirations were much the same as all Australians in wanting better housing, health services and education. Most importantly, I discovered that they regarded grog as the biggest problem their societies faced. In fact many of the Aboriginal communities in the north of WA are dry and those who break the rules and bring alcohol into their communities are often punished severely. As I said, I believe it is important to understand that our Indigenous people, as a group, are not alcoholic child abusers and that, more than anything else, the minority who do fit into this category need a sense of purpose and meaning in their lives and to feel included in mainstream Australian society.

In conclusion, I congratulate the government on its initiative. I believe the road ahead will be a long one but at least a beginning has been made. I believe the bold initiative the government is taking in seeking to tackle the problems identified by the Little children are sacred report and in addressing the factors that underlie those problems will transform the place of our Indigenous people in this society and will make an enormous difference thereby.

Steve Fielding (Victoria, Family First Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government’s emergency response bills are a response to problems of child sexual abuse confirmed in the Little children are sacred report. The legislation is a sweeping and far-reaching response to a terrible problem and it goes more broadly to address Aboriginal disadvantage. It relies on a momentum powered by widespread revulsion across the Australian community at numerous cases of child abuse. The Little children are sacred report found evidence of child sexual abuse in every one of the 45 communities visited. Family First wants this momentum used to achieve a better life for Indigenous people in the Northern Territory, a life that is free of child abuse and free of alcohol abuse and illegal drugs, a life that offers hope of an escape from poverty through good education, health care and housing.

This is an emergency, and Family First does not want to have any child living in an abusive situation for one more night. But this legislation is also a radical change in policy direction that will have long-term implications for Aboriginal people and their communities. Family First is concerned at the speed at which the legislation is expected to be passed, given that it was introduced just last week. Yes, this is an emergency. Yes, we need to act quickly. But this is 500 pages of complex legislation on a complex issue that deserves Senate scrutiny. I know Senate committee inquiries can be uncomfortable for governments, but they are useful for picking up problems with policy or legislation, allowing community input and allowing some adjustment before the parliament votes.

Family First is pleased the government has recognised there is a role for the Senate in examining and reviewing the package of bills, though the inquiry was very, very short and rushed. Family First acknowledges that most of the elements of the bills were announced by the government weeks ago and that there has been some time to debate the intent, if not the detail, of the legislation.

The concern is that this legislation will alienate some Aboriginal people and increase the gulf between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Last week I spoke to a delegation of Aboriginal people from the Gulkula Leaders Forum, who oppose much of the legislation. I have considered their comments and the written material they provided, as well as written material from other groups. Their reaction to the legislation is understandable. This is a radical plan. I can understand not supporting major change that upturns the way your community operates but, at the moment, the choice is either more of the same or the government’s sweeping and far-reaching proposal for change.

Aboriginal people all have families and many have children. Of course they love and want to care for and nurture their kids. The disagreement is about how best to achieve that. Family First believes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, like all Australians, have rights and responsibilities. Indigenous Australians have the right to good education, housing and health care, but they also have a responsibility to make sure their children go to school, their homes are well maintained and they look after their family’s health.

In March my wife, Susan, and I made a trip to the Northern Territory. Neither of us had been to Darwin or Katherine before. We went to see firsthand some of the Indigenous communities. We went to see and hear for ourselves the stories of people, to try to understand the real problem. This trip was about helping us to be better informed. Living in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, we had not been confronted with Aboriginal poverty and disadvantage. Like many, we have not grown up with Aborigines in our community.

Our trip was deeply depressing and disturbing. We walked away stunned and shocked by the problems facing the Aboriginal community and that kids were growing up in such an environment. As we listened to men and women, Aborigines and white people alike, tell us their stories, our disbelief only grew. How could this be so? How could a community of people live like this? How could we all, black and white, have allowed the situation to reach this level of hopelessness? As we listened, the depth of the problem began in surface. We began to see the complexities.

What struck and alarmed us was the sense that no-one had the answer; no-one really had the solution. There was a defeatism that hung over every conversation. Everyone could tell you about the problems: the police called to the domestic disputes fuelled by alcohol; the paramedics called to patch up those who injure themselves on the roadside because they are blind drunk; the school teachers who cannot teach children who do not turn up; the welfare agencies that have turned away alcoholics who want to detox, because they have no funding. Most of all, we heard about the children. We were told about the kids who see their parents and the communities awash with alcohol, the kids who are on the receiving end of drunken behaviour, the kids who are not kept safe and who grow up as victims and often become abusers.

Every conversation we had ended up being about grog. In both Katherine and Darwin there were Aboriginal people drinking alcohol to excess. We could see that much for ourselves. Aboriginal people walked, some staggered, around the streets with bottles in their hands. There was such a sense of aimlessness. There was drinking in car parks, under the trees in the parks, in the doorways of shops. Australia has a huge binge drinking problem in the broader community, but what we saw in the Aboriginal community is much worse. Yet the sheer acceptance of the alcohol problem by most in the community was staggering. In Katherine it seemed to us that this was ‘the way it was’. The term ‘dry community’ seemed farcical when, outside the gates of these communities, you would see dozens of empty tinnies littering the entrance before you drive in.

We visited a couple of communities to see how people lived. The houses seemed derelict; vandalised, graffitied, burnt, damaged, some almost destroyed. It was like driving through a war zone. We knew we should not stare but we were stunned. Who would want to live in these houses? They were like squats. There was an air of dejection; what was the point? The enormity of the problems that we saw was overwhelming. The Aboriginal people and the welfare workers who are trying to make a difference all sounded tired and worn out. We admired them for their dedication, but they were battle weary, some close to burn-out. We heard some success stories, but they were all on such a small scale. Why couldn’t they be replicated a hundredfold? We were told the government departments were part of the problem because of lack of care, lack of action, lack of funds.

What affected us was our absolute powerlessness to help these people and the abject failure of current government policy and of Australia. We were horrified that many of the next generation were being condemned to an endless cycle of abuse. As parents, we were outraged. If the adults could not be helped, or would not help themselves, these kids faced a desperate future. And we were ashamed. I reckon most people would be ashamed too once they actually see the situation for themselves. These are our fellow Australians living in these conditions.

Standing around blaming governments, state or federal, suddenly seemed a total waste of time. Whether the Prime Minister should have acted years ago is a moot point. He did not, but neither did previous prime ministers nor chief ministers. It is fruitless and time-wasting to ask the question at this point: why was nothing done earlier? These questions can be asked after we have rescued the children. And they should be asked, but not now. Every minute we waste arguing, we lose the chance to intervene and rescue a child and give them back a future. Aboriginal leader and commentator Noel Pearson hit the nail on the head when he said that we cannot let children be abused tonight or next Wednesday or the following Wednesday night or the one after.

We left the Northern Territory depressed and demoralised and with the same sense of despair that no doubt many feel. Yet we also felt that, just because there was no obvious or simplistic solution to the underlying and complex cultural problems that many Aboriginal people live with, that is not a reason to do nothing. We did not return home with any answers. We came home with a sense of disgrace. Our generation must be a part of the solution. Ignorance is no longer an excuse.

I do not want to give the impression that governments are responsible for everything. Clearly, Aboriginal people and their communities have to bear some responsibility too. But they need a helping hand and the hand being offered to them at the moment is not one that works. Noel Pearson argues that once you acknowledge the reality that so many Indigenous communities are dysfunctional, suffering from alcohol abuse and violence you have to take immediate action. Pearson said in the Australian:

There is no time to waste when children and adults are not living in safe environments ... [there has to be a] primary focus on safety and the restoration of social order by increasing police services and controlling the ‘rivers of grog’.

Family First supports the proposed increased controls on the movement of alcohol around the Northern Territory. Controlling the alcohol problem and providing police to improve the security of people in Aboriginal communities is a basic first step.

Family First also supports the ban on X-rated and unclassified pornography. I still remember an article by award-winning journalist Caroline Overington about pornography in Aboriginal communities. Overington wrote of Judy Atkinson, head of the College of Indigenous Australian Peoples at Southern Cross University, saying that Aboriginal communities were ‘saturated with pornography’. Atkinson had seen men, she said:

... ‘uncles’ watching hard-core, violent pornographic movies while three and four-year-olds in nappies played in the dust around their feet.

Again, pornography is a problem in the wider community, but not to the extent of these accounts where some children are brought up to regard this material as normal. Family First notes that all government-funded computers will have special pornography restrictions. That is important, but it is also an irony given that federal parliament does not place the same restrictions on the computers of its members and senators.

Family First is concerned about the blanket approach of some of the measures in the government bills where Aboriginal people will have part of their welfare payments quarantined whether they are doing the right thing or not. Such an approach risks demoralising rather than encouraging people to find their way out of welfare. Family First also acknowledges that there were many CDEP projects run well and successfully and is concerned they are being shut down and hard work not acknowledged because of the failure of other projects where they were little more than sit down money. Family First thinks that Aboriginal housing does need urgent attention and a different system in place whereby housing is properly maintained over time.

Family First understands that abolishing the permit system for Indigenous townships will be a concern for some Indigenous people, but towns should be public areas. Permits isolate some Australian communities by saying that only some people can enter. Permits have not protected communities from child abuse, alcohol or drugs. But given the haste of this legislation, Family First also wants a Senate inquiry into the legislation to start one year after proclamation and to report back six months later on whether the legislation is proceeding as expected. This is too short a time to assess outcomes but enough time to point to any adjustments that are needed.

These bills should be the first step in a long-term commitment to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians. Family First will support the government’s emergency response. We cannot as Australians continue to allow this situation to continue. Family First has reservations about some of the changes, but all change is difficult and uncertain and we owe it to the children of Aboriginal communities to try to give them a better future.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In rising to support this bill, like so many of my colleagues I do so with a deep concern for the welfare and safety not only of Aboriginal children but of all children in our great country. I also support it mindful of the fact that there are those in our community who regard politicians as all talk and no action. That is simply not the case with this government or with Minister Brough. Tonight I recognise the support of the Labor Party and Family First for the bill and the urgent need for the changes that this bill makes.

I have to contrast this with the zealotry of the Greens, who have advocated all manner of drastic and dramatic action and extremism in all manner of things. They have talked about extreme action for greenhouse gas emissions and crazy drug policies but, when it comes to the things that really matter, the protection of our sacred children, they just want more talk. Last week I heard Senator Siewert talk about how abhorrent this bill is but I heard very little about the abhorrence of the ongoing child abuse in some of these communities that this bill seeks to redress. The Greens have called for an injection of funds to redress Aboriginal disadvantage but they do not support a $500 million program to save those who cannot save themselves.

Let us be frank about this: the self-determination of Aboriginal communities simply has not worked. Self-determination was designed to defeat the cult of victimisation afflicting Aboriginal Australia. It has failed despite Senator Bob Brown’s earlier assertions that Aboriginal people have done a good job of managing for themselves with little government support. In fact, almost every latte-sipping leftie has had a go at supporting the self-determination of Aboriginal people.

John Ah Kit, the Northern Territory Aboriginal affairs minister, stated in 2002 that the most important objective was to restore to Aboriginal people the power to make their own decisions about their way of life. Former Senator Aden Ridgeway was reported in The Age newspaper blaming poverty, health, education and nutrition problems as a failure to acknowledge Indigenous rights. Sadly, even in the face of the growing failure of self-determination, Senator Kim Carr referred to this process as a ‘powerful force for community and economic development’. I am sure Senator Carr would not approve of how Aboriginal communities have developed in the Northern Territory. Rivers of grog, pornography and substance abuse have all contributed to the current malaise.

But the time for talk is over. The federal government has to act and it has to act now because the Northern Territory government has simply failed to do so over many years. It has had many reports and, in the face of very vocal criticism by the minister for Indigenous affairs, Mal Brough, it has simply failed to act. This fact was recognised by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Senator Chris Evans, in his myth-busting speech delivered for the Canberra South Branch of the ALP last year in which he acknowledged that law and order issues in many Indigenous communities require urgent attention. Whilst not specifically acknowledging the complete failure of the Northern Territory Labor government, he called upon the federal government to play a greater role in this area. Where the Northern Territory government has failed, this federal government is taking on the role of protecting children in Indigenous communities.

We are not going to allow others to hide behind customary law, which permits young girls to be promised in marriage and raped as a right. This is not right; it is simply wrong. In this case, the government’s action speaks louder than the hot air of those who oppose this bill for some twisted and kooky extreme mantra. There is a national emergency confronting the welfare of Aboriginal children, and the well-meaning intentions of the past have become a trap rather than a solution. Values, virtues and societal norms have broken down in a slurry of alcohol, pornography, lawlessness and excuses. The time for self-serving excuses is over. Breaking the cycle requires dramatic action and drastic changes—a fact supported by many Indigenous people.

After many years of calls for self-determination and independent government systems, sovereignty and self-government we now have a clear call for change. Noel Pearson has called for an ‘immediate dismantling of the welfare paradigm and an end to permissive policy’. He went on to state:

Our outrageous social problems and our current widespread unemployability followed passive welfare

Evelyn Scott has said that welfare has almost totally destroyed Aboriginal Culture. She said:

People are off their faces and wives get bashed up because they are drunk and ... you know the interference of children. It all happens.

So what has this government done? We are prepared to quarantine some of the welfare moneys to prevent them using it in socially irresponsible ways. This includes alcohol restrictions and a ban on the possession and dissemination of prohibited pornographic material. It will be no surprise that the usual hysterical suspects have described this as a land grab. They have described this bill as racist, discriminatory and abhorrent. There is no land grab. The underlying ownership of land by the traditional owners will be preserved. People will not be removed from their land. Land is not being stolen; it is being leased for fair and just compensation in accordance with our wonderful Constitution. We need the leases to ensure access to land and assets to repair and rebuild dysfunctional communities. We need to deal with town camps as normal suburbs rather than second-rate ghettos—and this legislation allows that. This bill also endorses the COAG agreements that customary law or cultural practise excuses do not excuse violence or sexual abuse’ and it will make sure it does not happen in the Northern Territory.

In concluding, I want to put on the record that mainstream Australia supports this emergency response. Sure, there are some fringe groups and extremists who will shout very loudly—they make the most noise—but ordinary Australians know in their hearts that something is wrong and something needs to happen. The Australian public want to see real change and improve the lot of their fellow Australians. It is regrettable that we are forced to take this position by the inactivity of the Territory government, but the time for talk is over. The time for action is now. Australia’s children are sacred, and it is the responsibility of all of us to protect them from a clear and present danger to their health and wellbeing.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Racial discrimination has no place in modern Australia. That is why the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Payment Reform) Bill 2007 and the related bills should be vigorously opposed. For all that Senator Bernardi just contributed, he did not address a justification for racial discrimination—because there is none. The legislation before us exempts the government of Australia from the provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act to facilitate a land grab. It betrays Aboriginal people and betrays all of those Australians who cheered for Eddie Mabo, who marched around the nation for reconciliation, who are profoundly sorry for creating a stolen generation of Aboriginal people and who still desperately want a fair and just Australia. It goes to the heart of our values. Aboriginal disadvantage is not new. I am shocked that Senator Bernardi and Senator Fielding stood up in here and told us how surprised they were by how bad things are. Two years ago, I stood in here and opposed the tax cuts, saying that if in a time of wealth we cannot address the issue of Aboriginal disadvantage then when will we ever be able to do so? And what happened? Family First voted for the tax cuts; the coalition supported major tax cuts. That is the situation that we are facing. This is not new.

You do not have to exempt the government from the provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act to commit to long-term funding for health, education and housing. The fact that the coalition has not done so for a decade in office tells us of a failure of long-term commitment and long-term planning. ANU Professor Mick Dodson—one of those people Senator Bernardi would describe as having some sort of kooky idea—wrote this last week:

None of us is in any doubt that we have to intervene to make children safe. We have a responsibility to do this, so does government. But we must draw the line on responses that involve racial discrimination.

We are told we need to take people’s land from them and remove their right to control access to that land in the name of stopping abuse—yet we know in our heart of hearts that this has nothing to do with the issue of child abuse. Deep down we know it is something else.

Abuse is all around us. We need to desperately do something about it when it’s our kids who are being abused. We all know that. It’s a given.

But, we now have draft legislation which uses a form of abuse in the name of stopping abuse. What an abuse of process this is. It is an assault on democracy and an abuse of decency. We are asked to accept abusive government behaviour in our name to stop abuse. We are asked to believe these are ‘special measures’ so we can be comforted that they comply with the Racial Discrimination Act. We are told we need to accept this so that country can meet its international obligations. We are asked to accept that just to be absolutely sure our government needs to ‘dis-apply’ the RDA.

He went on to say:

I’m at a loss as to what to do. I’ve been fighting racial discrimination all my life. I’ve run out of ideas.

But I know that no Australian should accept that racial discrimination is necessary in any context. It is too high a principle to set aside—as sacred as the rule of law itself. It is not excusable in any situation and is even more troubling when we know what needs to be done to make children safe and it doesn’t involve racial discrimination.

I believe that for his relentless campaign against Aboriginal culture and land rights and his obsessive desire to ‘normalise’ Indigenous people the Prime Minister, John Howard, deserves to be cast out of office. But those in the Labor Party who vote for this legislation do not deserve office either. For political expediency and because of a lack of courage they are prepared to dispossess the most vulnerable Australians—just as they were prepared to see the refugees on the Tampa rejected and sent away. They are prepared to disappoint a nation which knows that it can be better than what it has become after a decade of the Howard government. The Labor Party is also prepared to facilitate the champagne corks popping at the Institute of Public Affairs, the Centre of Policy Studies, the Centre for Independent Studies, the Australian Institute of Public Policy, the HR Nicholls Society and the Australian lecture society, which have been relentless in promoting this new right agenda for the past 25 years, as Senator Rod Kemp, one of their apparatchiks can well attest.

We are dealing here with the politics of race in Australia and how Prime Minister Howard has systematically over 11 years destroyed and dismantled every effort to achieve justice and reconciliation with Australia’s Indigenous people. We have only had legislation to outlaw racial discrimination in Australia since 1975. It is a relatively short period against a background of nearly 200 years of a White Australia policy and a Constitution without a bill of rights. Such a bill would have outlawed the ability to discriminate on the basis of race. I heard Senator Bernardi talk about the wonderful Constitution. I wonder if he would support a bill of rights in Australia. We did not have one when the Constitution was drawn up because it would not have allowed for discrimination against Kanak people and Indigenous people.

This legislation is the most recent in a list of calculated moves driven and supported by Hugh Morgan, Ray Evans and their associates in the mining industry from 1983 onward and furthered through the right-wing think tanks that I mentioned before : to wind back and eventually stop the land rights movement; to take back Indigenous land and free it up for mining, exploration and nuclear waste dumps; and to end affirmative action for Indigenous people. As Yvonne Margarula of the Mirrar people of Kakadu said, ‘None of the promises last but the problems do’.

Prime Minister Howard and Hugh Morgan understand as well as anyone that language, culture and land are inseparable for Indigenous people. What makes this so heinous is that this coalition government, led by Prime Minister Howard, is prepared to stoop so low as to use the issue of child abuse—about which all decent people, regardless of race or creed, care deeply—to fulfil its own long-held aim of destroying Aboriginal land rights, self-determination and reconciliation. It is a ruthless ideological agenda and it is the Howard government’s final bid, in its death throes, to take away Aboriginal self-determination and land rights. It would be bad enough if it were the paternalistic racism that Senator Fielding was giving such a clear example of—he assumes that white people have the right to interfere in the lives of Aboriginal people for their own good and have the power to define that good. But it is not even paternalistic racism.

The Howard government has shown precious little concern for the health and well-being of Aboriginal communities or the maintenance of their cultural traditions or languages during its 11 years of office. It slashed $400 million from the Indigenous budget in its very first budget when it took office in 1996. How about that, Senator Bernardi and those in the opposition standing up with their desperate concern about emergency in Indigenous communities? The Howard government took away that support the minute it got into office.

In this last budget, what did you take away? Not only did you slash Indigenous affairs funding but you took away the funding for the maintenance of Aboriginal languages. You know exactly what you are doing with this legislation and it has nothing to do with addressing child abuse.

It is impossible to see this legislation in isolation. It is entirely consistent with a decade of presenting narrow sectional and ideological interests and the values that sustain them as national values, the national interest, as common sense and as not open to question or review. Remember the Prime Minister’s tolerance for Hansonism and the racism that she espoused? Remember that he cast his support for her as freedom of speech when no-one was denying her freedom of speech? What people wanted was condemnation of her views, not her right to hold or articulate them. Prime Minister Howard has ruthlessly and consistently accused his opponents in the environment, social justice, women’s and civil rights movements of political correctness, acting in a political manner and advocating sectional interests rather than those of the nation, when it is the absolute reverse. It is he and his ministers who have championed sectional interests at the expense of the national interest and they continue to do so.

The new right, to which he subscribes, is concerned with wealth creation rather than wealth redistribution. It is philosophically opposed to attempts to redress the position of socially and economically disadvantaged groups through publicly funded programs of affirmative action. That is why it is so preposterous to imagine that this intervention is about affirmative action for Indigenous people. To assist Indigenous people, you need to consult them. You need to put in place long-term resourcing and long-term commitment, not hidden surveillance cameras under the auspices of the National Crime Commission. Prime Minister Howard’s time in office has been radical and that is why no-one should believe him when he argues that this legislation is affirmative action to address child abuse.

What about his response to Mabo? What about his 10 point plan in response to Wik and his Native Title Amendment Bill, which was described as the last drink at the poison waterhole for Indigenous people? That was in 1998. What about his threat to go to a double dissolution race election? He would have been quite happy to do that in 1998-99. He tore down the reconciliation process and undermined the reconciliation report that was timed to coincide with the Centenary of Federation. He refused to apologise to the stolen generation. He has promoted Geoffrey Blainey and his ridicule of the so-called black armband view of history. His new laws, brought in only last year, allow his ministers to approve a nuclear waste dump without the consent of the traditional owners of the land and, what is even worse, deny Indigenous owners their natural justice and procedural fairness. Where does that leave the benevolence that is supposedly behind this legislation? This government is prepared to legislate to take away Indigenous people’s rights to procedural fairness. It is prepared to take away all of their rights in the name of mining, exploration, uranium, pastoral interests or whatever else the government wants to do. Go back to Hugh Morgan in 1983 and you will see where this agenda first reared its fairly ugly head.

This Prime Minister has in a decade overturned the values of the welfare state—the notion that governments distribute the common wealth for the common good through public health, public education or welfare assistance programs—and has instead implemented a policy agenda which maximises private and individual wealth accumulation at the expense of the common good. He champions tax cuts which make the rich richer and which see no money remaining for increased pensions, public dentistry, public health, public education, environmental protection or environmental water flows. He has overseen a radical reduction in government activities through the freeing of labour markets and the sale of public assets to private corporations. He champions deregulation, privatisation, the domination of market forces and the end of trade union power. It is all one agenda. This is not isolated. This is not a response to one report. This is a ruthlessly perpetrated agenda with a window of opportunity in mind in the last few weeks of this appalling government.

The Prime Minister has been backed by the conservative think tanks, which recognised that you had to inject ideas into public discussion, package them, send the DVDs to the media and echo your views through historians like Geoffrey Blainey and Keith Windschuttle. Their budgets all came from the business community. There was a large amount of money to campaign against land rights and union power. Those people talked about equal rights for all Australians and not special rights for some—meaning Indigenous people or the disadvantaged—but they wanted their own sectional rights protected. But they are not rights; they are subsidies, incentives and gifts. We see to this day that the rich get richer through sectional interest targeted assistance at the expense of people who really need it.

They attack the ABC for bias. The Prime Minister took up the cudgels by attacking intellectuals and those who formed the policy rationale for the welfare state. With his ministers he has co-opted the national symbols, citing Gallipoli to justify the Iraq war, and is trying to excuse members of the armed forces, saying they were letting off steam when dressed in Ku Klux Klan regalia. Never forget that that organisation is a white supremacist organisation based on fundamentalist Christianity from the Deep South of the USA—where fundamentalist Christianity still promotes a literal reading of the Bible and the bigotry that has come to encompass that agenda. It should not be forgotten that while this government was in office the Dalai Lama was not welcomed into this parliament by the Prime Minister. Instead, they brought out from America a TV evangelical, Cindy Jacobs, who said that she channels God and that God hates Victoria because of its anti-vilification laws that make vilifying Muslims a crime. People in this parliament, elected members, sat there and listened to it. It was not reported in the media that that is the sort of thing that is hosted under the auspices of the family values that this government supposedly holds and perpetrates. It is in this light that we should look at this government’s legislation.

What has clearly been shown by one of the authors of the Little children are sacred report, Pat Anderson, is that not a single action that the Commonwealth has taken so far corresponds with a single recommendation. There is no relationship between their emergency powers and what is in that report. She says:

We did want to bring it to the government’s attention, but not in the way it has been responded to by the federal government.

We wrote the recommendations in such a way that they appeared so reasonable that you would feel any government would be absolutely unreasonable not to begin implementing what they said.

She went on to say:

They behaved as though we all have done nothing and we don't know anything and we have all been sitting on our hands.

We have heard that here tonight from people who have taken so little interest in this issue over so long that they have failed to recognise the huge efforts being made in Indigenous communities to address the problems that they face. The first recommendation of the report referred to:

... the critical importance of governments committing to genuine consultation with Aboriginal people in designing initiatives for Aboriginal communities, whether these be in remote, regional or urban settings.

This is a classic case of people telling Aboriginal communities what is good for them, not consulting Aboriginal communities or working in partnership with them.

Whenever you look at any analysis of what the government is doing you see this disgraceful use of the issue of child abuse—which, I might add, is rampant in the white community. If you go to the court lists in country New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania or anywhere else, you will find that child abuse is high up as an issue in that community. So too will you find that alcohol related violence, death by negligent driving and so on are just as rampant in the white community as in the Northern Territory. We support using the surplus, the wealth of this country, to assist those in need. We have argued it, and we voted against the tax cuts so that that money could be allocated over a long period of time, with a long commitment—not a quick six-month intervention designed purely for political purposes and to advance the agenda of sectional interests in this country which want to take back Aboriginal land.

I want to note that I heard today from Senator Brandis an absolute rant about the fact that Australian literature is not being taught in schools. If Australian literature is not being taught in schools it is because for years of conservative government, under Menzies and subsequently, English literature was promoted in Australian schools. It was the people who Senator Brandis despises, the intellectuals, who argued strongly for the incorporation of Indigenous culture, language and poetry into Australian school curricula. Have a look at who is teaching the stolen generation, who is providing students with access to those reports. It is the supposedly valueless public schools. Those public schools have strong values.

I would like to conclude by saying that I have not given up on the aspirations of Oodgeroo Noonuccal, who said:

Look up, my people, The dawn is breaking, The world is waking, To a new bright day, When none defame us, Nor colour shame us, Nor sneer dismay.

…            …            …

To our father’s fathers The pain, the sorrow; To our children’s children The glad tomorrow.

I want to give heart to Indigenous people and tell them that there are people in this parliament who will stand with them and will speak the truth about the agenda that has been perpetrated in Australia under the Howard government to dispossess and demoralise Indigenous people.

An incident having occurred in the gallery—

Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remind people in the gallery about it being disorderly to make comment and also to put up signs. I remind the security attendants that they should take note of that as people come in.

Linda Kirk (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the government’s legislative package, the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Payment Reform) Bill 2007 and related bills, to combat child abuse in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. In late June, when the government announced its intention to introduce a package of legislation to protect Indigenous children in the Northern Territory, the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Kevin Rudd, was quick to offer Labor’s in-principle bipartisan support for such measures. We said at the time, and we maintain, that the test for whether the government’s package of laws should be passed should depend on whether they will improve the safety and security of Indigenous children.

Despite the gesture of goodwill on the part of the opposition, the government, I am sad to say, has not responded in kind. Last week the shadow minister for Indigenous affairs and reconciliation, Jenny Macklin, was given a copy of the five bills the day before they were introduced into the House of Representatives. In fact, the House of Representatives began debating these bills last week before some members had even had a chance to look at them. When the bills were introduced into the Senate last week they were fairly quickly referred to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, of which I am a member. The committee was set aside just one day of hearings, last Friday, in order to hear submissions from witnesses. The timetable for reporting was such that we were to report the following working day—namely, yesterday, Monday. We had one day to consider 500 pages of legislation. I would like to take the opportunity to commend the witnesses who appeared before the committee last Friday and congratulate them on the submissions and comments they made on this legislative package when they had only a few days to digest and understand a very complex range of legislative measures.

The government has shown its contempt for this parliament in the manner in which it has sought to introduce this package of bills and in its insistence that the legislation be passed through both houses within a week of its introduction. Child sexual abuse is a very significant problem in Indigenous communities, but the seriousness of this problem, as we have heard emphasised here in people’s speeches, does not justify the manner in which this government has sought to ram these bills through the parliament without giving members, senators, the public and, in particular, the Indigenous communities of the Northern Territory adequate time for scrutiny of the legislation and to allow feedback about its potential impact on Indigenous communities.

In doing this, the government has ignored the No. 1 recommendation of the Little children are sacred report—a report that I will speak about in detail in a moment. This was the report which, of course, sparked the unprecedented intervention that the bills will authorise. The No. 1 recommendation of the Little children are sacred report was that any action must be taken in genuine consultation with Indigenous people. Dealing with this legislation in the manner in which the government has is not the way to gain the support and the trust of Indigenous communities, nor does it allow for a proper assessment of whether the measures are likely to make a positive contribution to addressing the problem of child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities.

Before I discuss in detail the measures contained in the legislation, I would like to make some comments about the report that spurred the government to action; namely, the Little children are sacred report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal children from Sexual Abuse, which was co-chaired by Rex Wild QC and Pat Anderson. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Rex Wild and Pat Anderson and the board of inquiry for their 317-page report. This report was the result of a nine-month inquiry. It is thorough and well considered, and its recommendations should have been given—indeed, still should be given—serious consideration. The inquiry was wide-ranging. It covered 35,000 kilometres by air and motor vehicle, with 45 community visits and more than 260 meetings conducted. The inquiry found evidence of child sexual abuse in all of the communities that it visited. It confirmed that sexual abuse of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory is common, widespread and grossly underreported.

The inquiry also nominated reasons for the high incidence of this appalling form of abuse in Indigenous communities. The report’s authors say:

However, we quickly became aware—as all the inquiries before us and the experts in the field already knew—that the incidence of child sexual abuse, whether in Aboriginal or so-called mainstream communities, is often directly related to other breakdowns in society. Put simply, the cumulative effects of poor health, alcohol, drug abuse, gambling, pornography, unemployment, poor education and housing and general disempowerment lead inexorably to family and other violence and then on to sexual abuse of men and women and, finally, of children.

The title of the report was carefully chosen. It reflects the fact that, in traditional Aboriginal culture, little children are seen as sacred—child abuse is not tolerated. The overwhelming majority of Aboriginal mothers and grandmothers and indeed fathers and grandfathers—like the overwhelming majority of non-Aboriginal parents and grandparents—want to protect children from abuse. We know that child abuse happens everywhere in Australia. We also know that the number of child abuse notifications and substantiations right across Australia are rising significantly. There has been a 40 per cent increase in the past five years in the number of children removed from their family homes by authorities.

In my capacity as convenor of the cross-parliamentary group, Parliamentarians Against Child Abuse, I have spoken to child protection specialists about all aspects of child abuse and how it should be tackled. What the experts have been saying for years—and what the Little children are sacred report makes clear—is that there is a strong correlation between rates of child abuse within a community and the level of social dysfunction within that community. Preventing child abuse before it happens requires that we strengthen the capacity of families and communities to protect and nurture children—and it is no different in Indigenous communities. On this score, there is a long way to go. Numerous reports over the past 30 years, and particularly over the past decade, have documented the problems of alcohol and other substance abuse, violence against women and children, problems of substandard housing and overcrowding, unemployment, poor health and poor education outcomes within Indigenous communities.

Governments across Australia—both Labor and Liberal—at the Commonwealth and the state levels have failed to address these problems for years. Despite commissioning report after report, successive governments have done little more than leave these reports on the shelves to gather dust. I agree with Ms Jenny Macklin, who said in the House of Representatives last week:

But to lament that action should have been taken sooner does not lessen the imperative to act now ...

The Little children are sacred report contains 97 recommendations, and I would suggest that all senators and members take the opportunity to look closely at the report. I would like to say a lot more about the numerous recommendations made by the Little children are sacred report but, given the time, I will now move on and look more closely at the legislative measures that we have before us here today.

As I indicated at the outset, Labor has said that, in the interests of children and women in Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, it will support the government’s measures. A number of the measures in the government’s package seek to address the problems that are identified in the Little children are sacred report as contributing to child sexual abuse, particularly the measures related to alcohol restrictions. The Little children are sacred report found a strong association between alcohol misuse and the sexual abuse of children. The bans on pornography were also identified in the Little children are sacred report as being necessary in order to prevent the widespread exposure of children to pornography.

In the time that remains to me today I would like to focus on a matter that was raised during the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs inquiry and has been the subject of a number of speakers’ comments here today—that is, the ‘compliance’, if that is how you want to describe it, of this legislation with the Racial Discrimination Act. As I said, a number of witnesses before the Senate inquiry and some who made written submissions raised the question as to whether the legislation is contrary to the Racial Discrimination Act—a Commonwealth act of parliament—and Australia’s international obligations not to discriminate on the basis of race.

The Racial Discrimination Act is a very important legacy of previous Labor governments and it protects against racial discrimination, whether it be by legislative, administrative or other means. On the face of it the legislative package that we have before us today is contrary to section 9 of the Racial Discrimination Act because it discriminates on the basis of race. However, the bills provide that the Racial Discrimination Act will be suspended in its operation for the purposes of the legislation. For example, section 132(2) of the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill 2007 provides that the provisions of the act and any acts done under it are excluded from the operation of part II of the RDA.

The Law Council of Australia, in its submission to us, was extremely critical of this aspect of the legislation. The Law Council said:

The Law Council considers the inclusion in legislation proposed to be enacted by the Australian Parliament in 2007 of a provision specifically excluding the operation of the RDA to be utterly unacceptable. Such an extraordinary development places Australia in direct and unashamed contravention of its obligations under relevant international instruments, most relevantly the United Nations Charter and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (“CERD”).

In Labor’s view, this exemption from the act is inappropriate and, what is more, is unnecessary if the provisions of the bill are special measures for the purposes of the Racial Discrimination Act. It is for this reason that Labor opposes the inclusion of that provision in this bill.

I will turn now to the special measures. The general prohibition against racial discrimination in the Racial Discrimination Act is accompanied by a provision that recognises that special measures can be legitimate and consistent with the RDA where they are implemented to promote the position of members of a particular race when that race is disadvantaged. Special measures are quite often referred to as positive discrimination measures or affirmative action. Accepted special measures have been policies or actions by organisations or governments which recognise that the past or present disadvantage suffered by certain groups based on their race has affected their access to equality of opportunity and basic human rights.

The bills before us today declare that the measures in their legislation are, for the purposes of the RDA, special measures. I mention, for example, section 132 (1) of the Northern Territory Emergency Response Bill. The central issue here is whether, in fact, the measures meet the definition of ‘special measures’. The way that the bills are drafted indicates that it is not intended that there be any judicial scrutiny of the question as to whether or not these measures qualify as a special measure for the purposes of the RDA. In fact, the matter appears to be pre-empted with the declaration that they are special measures—in other words, they are deemed to be so. It appears that, as a consequence, whether or not these laws are in fact special measures for the purposes of the Racial Discrimination Act is irrelevant. This is reinforced by subsection (2) which seeks to exclude part II of the RDA.

But I still think it is important to consider whether these matters meet the requirements of a ‘special measure’. In making this assessment courts have looked at both the benefits of a measure and any costs or disadvantage borne by the beneficiaries of the measure. If there is, in fact, no benefit conferred by the legislation then the measures will be regarded as inconsistent with the character of a special measure as recognised by the Racial Discrimination Act and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

In the present case there are difficult issues of fact which arise, and close scrutiny of the arrangement and its impact is necessary. For example, in this present context the rights of children and the rights of adult individuals who will be subject to these measures may differ—indeed, they may well conflict. For this reason there are complex issues in relation to consent to special measures. The government has assured Labor that these laws are intended to be special measures because they are designed to protect especially vulnerable children, to help rid Aboriginal communities of the scourge of alcohol abuse and to provide much needed infrastructure and housing improvements to remote Aboriginal communities.

In its submission to the Senate committee inquiry last week, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission emphasised that, while it is appropriate to consider the effect of a legislative package as a whole when determining whether or not a measure is a special measure, you still need to look at the parts of the legislation in order to determine whether or not those parts are appropriate and adapted to the stated legislative purpose, which in this case is child protection. There remain serious questions as to whether or not a number of the measures, particularly the compulsory acquisition of property in circumstances where the lease has not been requested from the land owners, and also the changes to the permit system, can be taken to be special measures in the manner that I have described.

One of the essential features of a special measure is that it is done in consultation and, generally, with the consent of the people who are subject to it. As HREOC said in its submission:

Measures taken with neither consultation nor consent cannot meaningfully be said to be for the ‘advancement’ of a group of people, as is required by the definition of special measures.

The commission went on to say:

To take any other approach contemplates a paternalism that considers the views of a group as to their wellbeing irrelevant.

I have said here today that the absence of consultation with Indigenous communities about these measures is a fundamental flaw in this process. It could even be that it is fatal to their categorisation as a special measure. HREOC emphasised this in its submission to the Senate inquiry. They made clear that there should have been comprehensive consultation beforehand and significant input from the communities concerned, and this clearly has not happened.

It is interesting to compare what has gone on in the past week in relation to this legislation with the introduction of the Native Title Act in 1993, in which Indigenous leaders were actively involved in the negotiations surrounding its introduction. That contributed significantly to the finding that the measures under that act are special measures.

Debate interrupted.