Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Prime Minister for Social Inclusion) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I want to speak about the important social inclusion agenda that is part of the new Labor government. I want to remind people of something that Hugh Mackay wrote not too long ago:

In the past few years, many Australians have simply lost interest in the political process. Their response to their sense of powerlessness was not to take to the streets in angry demonstrations, but to turn away from the issues of the day and take refuge in their own local, immediate, personal concerns.

He wrote:

As a nation, we took our eye off the big picture; our focus turned inward; we became self-absorbed.

A few things have happened since Hugh Mackay wrote that, most importantly the election of the Labor government on 24 November last year. In the Governor-General’s speech today he gave impetus to the social inclusion agenda of the Rudd government and tonight, as the Parliamentary Secretary for Social Inclusion and the Voluntary Sector, I want to elaborate a little bit on that agenda and what it really means for people who are suffering from entrenched disadvantage in Australia.

A social inclusion agenda is about making a tangible difference to people who face barriers to participation in aspects of Australian life that most of us take for granted. That is about work or education, but it is also about engagement with family and friends and the local and broader communities. Social inclusion recognises that there are complex reasons that prevent people from participating. These might be poverty, education and literacy, access to transport and housing, disability, drug and alcohol problems, chronic ill health or mental illness. It may be the circumstances of older Australians, people living in rural, remote or even growing regions or those who have recently come to Australia. All of them face particular barriers to participation in work and in their communities. Our national social inclusion strategy is about finding innovative ways to remove barriers to participation in the nation’s social, economic and civic life, as one means to address entrenched and localised disadvantage in Australia.

We have heard a lot in recent years about the term ‘whole of government’. It has become a commonplace term. It is thrown around all the time in public policy, but what it means in the social inclusion context is both common sense and radical. It is about realising that people’s lives are not easily segmented by government department. Social inclusion demands a whole-of-government strategy because the people who face the most significant barriers to participation in our society do not fit neatly into a category. The barriers that they face fall within the jurisdiction of more than one department, and of course they are interconnected. They affect each other and how any one person might access the services they need to find a path out of disadvantage.

Social inclusion is about realising that, if we want to make our country a fair place to live and for everyone to have an opportunity to live a happy and fulfilling life, we need to look at wider issues than just poverty. What better example do we have than what we heard about Kim Beazley Sr in the condolence debate this afternoon. He was propagating this agenda all those years ago. This is a burning issue—it is alive for the Labor Party; it is certainly alive for the Labor government—and it is one that I hope to champion throughout my career as parliamentary secretary.

But there are other people who are championing such an approach. An extraordinary thing happened that really takes us back to Hugh Mackay’s comments about people waking up, engaging again in the big picture and focusing much more on the kind of country that they want Australia to be. That occurred last year in a campaign that was run by GetUp! Action for Australia. It developed a ‘People’s agenda for the new parliament’, and what great hope we as a Labor government provide to the 32,500 people who participated in this extraordinary and unprecedented exercise in real democracy on Tuesday, 11 December last year. Thousands of people met all around Australia in informal gatherings—‘vision get-togethers’, they were called. People who shared a postcode met at their local club or in lounge rooms around the country to decide their priorities for the recently elected parliament, and they have come up with some extraordinary priorities.

Significantly, these people want the country to become environmentally sustainable and they want to combat climate change. They want the country to have high-quality primary, secondary and tertiary public education and they want us to respect the rights and improve the living standards of Indigenous Australians. Those three top priorities of the GetUp! campaign were reflected accurately in the Governor-General’s address this afternoon and have been reflected in all of the messages that the Prime Minister has given to the nation since his election.

In terms of the issue of social inclusion, which I am responsible for and intimately engaged with, the GetUp! campaign demanded that the national government address the issue of entrenched poverty. Their fifth priority was combating entrenched poverty and narrowing the divide between the rich and the poor. This is the very important message to this parliament from 32,500 ordinary, engaged Australians who for the last 10 years have not wanted to be part of a political process but have found a way of doing it by connecting locally in their communities:

We need the political will and vision to address the issue of entrenched poverty which stretches over many different issue areas, some of them covered in this Agenda. That national vision must address both the causes and the symptoms of inequality. We want affordable housing to be a focus, especially for the homeless, low-income earners and renters. A culture that enshrines human rights as a prism to view all policy areas through should begin to alleviate the conditions producing poverty and widening the gap. Access to the system must be improved for rural and Indigenous communities.

The message is that our social inclusion agenda has to be seen in terms of ‘the measure of the failure of our economic systems’. They also tell us:

Poverty is the single most preventable factor in inequities in health and access to education and living opportunities. Take care of this one and there will be a marked influence on aboriginal health, educational opportunities, social cohesion ...

The ‘People’s agenda’ is a stunning document that brings us back to the fundamental concerns of ordinary Australians. It takes us to the issues of Iraq. It takes us back to the issues of protecting our human rights and our civil liberties. It focuses on preventative health care. These are the big picture agenda issues that were outlined by both the Governor-General this afternoon and the Prime Minister in his addresses to the nation. And, of course, it goes to the issue of our relationship with Indigenous Australians. And what better indicator could there be than the welcome to country ceremony that marked the beginning of the 42nd Parliament and of course the sorry debate that we are going to have tomorrow.

I was heartened this morning at the ecumenical service that also marked the beginning of the 42nd Parliament to have proudly stood with over 100 senators and members of parliament and their families, members of the diplomatic corps, members of the Canberra community and many schoolchildren today, who have taken great hope and enthusiasm from the direction of the Rudd Labor government. I am proud to be part of it.