Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to participate in this debate on the appropriation bills to give some colour to an issue that is extremely topical right now. The Australian government’s overall Indigenous-specific expenditure in this budget is expected to increase to $3.367 billion. That is up from the $3.1 billion announced in the 2005-06 budget. I mention this in my opening remarks because it raises the question: if so much money is being spent on so few people and so many programs that are intended to create so much wellbeing, why do we currently have such a major problem? And a major problem we indeed have; there seems to be very little doubt about that. The following may be extreme views perhaps but they are ones that are generally running through some correspondence from my electorate. One writer from Kununurra writes to me:

Dear Sir ...

Kununurra, and indeed the whole of the Kimberley region, has some of the kindest, most caring people I have ever had the pleasure to meet. The community as a whole is a wonderful place to be a part of.

Our Toadbusters are doing a great job and are to be highly commended for their diligent effort in trying to stop this horror from becoming a part of our lifestyle.

However folks, we have a far greater problem on our hands and right here on our doorsteps and unlike the dreaded canetoad it can be stopped.

I’m speaking of our small dark-skinned children who are allowed to wander the streets at night, are allowed to commit crimes and are hungry, some are drunk and/or drugged, afraid to go home at night because their ‘big people’ (I won’t call them adults) are usually stoned out of their minds, can’t or won’t look after these small kiddies and have been known to sexually abuse them.

Halls Creek is not the only town with problems.

We have a Government funded bus service in town that picks up drunks, takes them back to secure, safe accommodation, feeds them, bathes them, gives them a clean bed to sleep in for the night, breakfast, sends them off in the morning, so they ... can repeat the process the next evening. This service costs approximately $750,000 per annum.

What about the kids!!!!

The Police have their hands tied because of the age of these kiddies, the local tradesmen can’t leave their unfinished houses without worrying what will be broken, stolen or worse when they return and if you are unlucky enough to come across some of these little gangs, you can expect nothing short of foul language, spitting and much more.

These children are aged from three, four to about ten or twelve.

What’s the answer?

Dare I say we put them all in a large bus and take them away from their “families” to a safe place where they can be taught their own proud heritage, have some decent elder people look after them, care for them, teach them to grow up into their full potential and become what they can and should be ... not the next generation of drunken, drugged slobs that we see all too often in our parks.

Stolen generation!!!! You bet!!! Let’s get our priorities right folks, sure the canetoad fight is important, but our kids need our help more.

Another perspective comes from a writer in Kalgoorlie, who says:

Dear Barry,

I thank you for the flyer that I received in my letterbox the other day.

I just had to add a bit more. First, I want to tell you how fed up I am with the antisocial behaviour in and around this great town of ours. I have been in Kalgoorlie for eighteen years now and everyone talks about the problems it brings, but no one has the guts to stop it. Get the lazy sods off the streets (black, white or brindle) and make them work for the dole. Make them cut lawns at schools & parks, pick up rubbish around town and make them help out in local council projects such as the new golf course. Then you won’t find people sleeping, crapping, fighting and urinating all over this great town. I personally have seen this, including drunks having sex in the street like dogs, in broad daylight I might add. You won’t find this problem in Singapore.

I could go all day reading similar pieces of correspondence. All the activities that those pieces of correspondence report are an insult to us all. I have raised the issue before today, saying to a group that we have heard much this week about embarrassment and shame. We in this place ought to be experiencing that embarrassment and shame, because this situation has existed since we condemned people to be corralled into communities. When I say ‘we condemned’, I mean that we allowed people to fight to go back to reside on-country without our considering for a moment whether or not such action would be sustainable. Modern society requires of its participants some contribution to that society and, if we are to hold our heads high as a nation in relation to our Indigenous people, we have to make sure that they are cared for in a sustainable manner and given every opportunity to be part of the society that supports them. Corralling people, especially children, into communities and preventing them from getting meaningful employment in the future is not acceptable.

We have at present, as a result of some of the recent, highly emotive publicity about issues that, as I said, are well known to all of us that live out there in real Australia, a knee-jerk reaction whereby everyone is wanting to add their piece to the perceived solution. I suggest that the solution already exists. All that is required is that we request of governments collectively that the law as it stands be put into effect and given its full force. Let the states enforce the laws that pertain to child welfare. They are numerous and they should provide protection for children. Do they actually provide protection and the manpower required to provide a service across my state for communities of Indigenous people? No, they do not, because somehow the state treats the communities as requiring fewer child welfare services within the state.

We have horrendous crime statistics for my communities. Do we have a police presence that prevents the perpetration of crime or apprehends all the perpetrators of crime? No, we do not. Why? Is it because they are somehow lesser citizens of this country? The question is a worthy one, and I would suggest that, for too many of the people that control the state budgets that provide services, those communities and the people within them are out of sight and out of mind. I suggest that the managers of the areas responsible for the compilation of budgets to provide state services to the people in those communities, who deserve those services, do not want to rock the boat. They want to simply stay where they are and keep the position they are occupying. They know damn well that, if they were to put in a request for a 300 per cent increase in their budget so that they could do something effective for the people that they are responsible for, their budget would be knocked on the head or, worse still, they might lose their cushy situation and be sent further afield.

It is time that the people with paid responsibility for community populations started doing their job and took the hard decisions—the unpopular decisions—to provide a service that will mean that these Indigenous people have a future. Right now they do not have a future. I speak generally, of course, as there are many exceptions of which we can be very proud. But in the main the Indigenous populations that occupy communities across remote Australia do not have a future.

One of the obstacles that get in the way of their future is the multitude of city based do-gooders who would rather push money at the problem in an effort to get a good night’s sleep and assuage their consciences perhaps. This results in a promotion of ‘culture’ and in people who know nothing about Aboriginal culture—except that they might have seen a dot painting that they believe to be part of Aboriginal culture, erroneously—believing that the romantic experience of the ‘noble savage’ should be restored. It is simply unsustainable and inappropriate in this century, and those who would promote culture over practicality do a disservice to these people. We have heard a great deal in the last week about how crimes of sexual abuse and domestic violence generally are forgiven in the name of ‘cultural appropriateness’. It is paramount to genocide, I believe, to do so. Those persons responsible for putting the resources on the ground to provide the services to uphold the law as it stands today need to do their job and stand up and be counted.

One of the major deterrents to Indigenous people having a real future as part of this modern society in this great nation is that they are basically ill equipped for employment. Certainly some of my communities, as I said, are located in areas where there simply is no employment and where there certainly is going to be no opportunity for a real career path. This requires that we take some hard decisions and decide whether all of these communities are sustainable.

In the majority of collective communities in what we would call Western society, there is a resource that can be mined or a natural feature like a harbour that provides income or there is a critical mass of population where services sustain the community. If Indigenous communities on analysis can prove to have a commercial justification for being where they are, then they ought to be funded and funded more so. But the question has not been asked and the situation has not been analysed, because the location of these Indigenous communities has been based in the past simply on a cultural want to go back and be connected with country. I have no objection to that, but the taxpayers of Australia should not be forking out to promote a position that cannot in the long term be sustained and that will deny young children the self-esteem that comes with education and employment.

I take you back to the education system. The education system today is fine. We have great teachers working in communities and providing in the main a state based education system. But their students do not attend anywhere near enough to get the most basic education and move on into secondary education and then possibly tertiary or real job training. The reason that they do not get a primary education is that culture gets in the way. Whenever anyone passes away across the vast 2.3 million square kilometres of my electorate in Western Australia, the word goes out by electronic means and the huge extended family cling to the idea that they must now up stakes, take the funeral allowance and go to that particular ceremony. The kids go out of school with them and they may not come back for three months. The kids will not get enrolled and educated in the area they go to during that time; they will simply miss out on education.

If and when they return to their community and are enrolled back in the school, they will be so far behind that they are shamed and, because they are shamed, they will not participate. They then want to stay away from school, stay away from the lessons and the education they provide, because they have missed out on school. That process goes on and on and on. By the time the years of primary school are finished, that child so often is nowhere near prepared to take up a secondary education and then a meaningful job training position. How on earth can you have a proud, straight-living community if there is no self-esteem that comes through employment, and how can you get employment if there has been no satisfactory education process?

The other issue that so frequently gets in the way of good education is poor nutrition and poor sleep habits, and all that comes from the current state of affairs that is a totally broken-down community from a societal perspective. Most recently our minister responsible for Indigenous affairs, Mr Mal Brough, proposed that a personalised card would assist in the identification of those on welfare and receiving welfare payments. I would take the issue much further. It may be unpopular across broader Australia, but for those Indigenous communities that are suffering every social ill today there would at least be a partial solution to be found in making sure that the small children and the grannies that care for them at least were not malnourished. Early death occurs too often because the grannies are beaten and robbed of their cash and can no longer provide the only care sometimes available for those infants within the community.

What I propose is that any personally identified credit card or identification card would be encoded not with a value of money but with a volumed entitlement that gave consideration to the difference between the value of a lettuce in Perth—perhaps a dollar—versus the value of a lettuce in Marble Bar or out in the desert, at $5. It would acknowledge the entitlement of every person—depending on the size of family, which would be recorded—and entitle the holder of the card to a volume of dairy products, dry goods, meat and vegetables on a regular basis that, through a decoding system, could be then ferried back for payment through a Commonwealth government system.

Most critics of this proposition, which I have on occasion mooted, say not only that it is too complex but also that it is racist. If I could get some of those who would be responsible for introducing such a package to give real attention to it, it could quite justifiably be applied to all who are on welfare across the nation. That certainly would not be a racist proposition.

For too long, too many people have hidden behind the fear of being badged as politically incorrect or, worse still, racist. This has been used as an excuse by magistrates and judges not to punish appropriately the perpetrators of horrendous crimes in Aboriginal communities. If anyone needs to have those crimes spelt out, suffice it to say that these crimes, if perpetrated in white communities, would not be tolerated for a moment. The whole community would be up in arms and insist that the law enforcement agencies bring the perpetrators to justice. But these crimes have been swept under the carpet and apologised for in the past because of culture—‘the traditional appropriateness of rape and domestic abuse’. These acts are crimes and there are laws that deal with these crimes. All we need to do is make sure we recognise those acts as crimes and provide the resources to apprehend and punish the perpetrators. It is not a complex business.

The worst thing we can possibly do, given the latest spate of publicity on this issue, is to give yet another knee-jerk reaction. I find it embarrassing enough to suddenly recognise that the population of Australia has not understood or cared enough to find out what has been going on in these communities over the last 100-plus years. It would be an absolutely unbearable embarrassment if Australia collectively were to give yet another knee-jerk reaction and simply throw more money at this problem. We need to analyse and further understand the problem. We need Indigenous communities themselves to seriously analyse the appropriateness of the existence and location of their communities.

If the existence of a community cannot be justified on the basis of being sustainable through employment—I mean real jobs, not the rotten and debilitating CDEP—then it should be funded through a bottom-up process whereby members of the community themselves sustain the community. The communities that should be funded by the federal government are those that are sustainable in an economic sense—those that provide satisfaction, real jobs and an existence that can be sustained. We are presently a little more aware of the problem. It is up to Australians collectively to get out from under the shadow of accusations of racism, to avoid political correctness and to contribute to the solution—and not keep mouthing on and contributing to the problem.

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