Carmen Lawrence (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

One of the first acts of the Howard government was to cut some $30 million allocated to the modest but promising family violence prevention programs for Indigenous people. The money was lost as a result of the massive cuts to ATSIC’s budget in 1996-97. In the last few days we have seen the spectacle of the minister responsible for Indigenous affairs railing against widespread violence against Aboriginal women and children in Indigenous communities—and indeed he should be alarmed. But Minister Brough, who expresses such surprise at violence in Indigenous communities, has been in this parliament for the whole decade that the Howard government has been in office and responsible for Indigenous affairs. And, although he has been on the planet, too, for 45 years, he appears to have remained ignorant of the dire conditions in many Indigenous communities. That is particularly surprising given that he was the minister responsible for employment services for some of that period. I think he must have had his eyes firmly closed and his ears stuffed with cloth—and now he is out there arrogantly proffering instant solutions to the problems that he appears to have so belatedly discovered. What is more, he appears to be in the process now of misdiagnosing the problems and avoiding responsibility.

As my mother would have said, and it applies in spades to this minister, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I offer some free advice to the minister: a little humility goes a long way in this very difficult portfolio. At least he should speak to his own members who represent electorates where Indigenous people live and to the many Indigenous leaders who have been working and pleading for sustained government action to prevent and deal with violence and abuse. Professor Larissa Behrendt, from the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning, said on Lateline last week, ‘We have to be very careful about making knee-jerk reactions.’ After roundtables and COAG meetings and audits and reports and a decade in office, at the very least one of the three ministers who preceded the current minister should have some idea about what should be done. Maybe Minister Brough should talk to them as well. Ministerial thrashing around is not a pretty sight and not at all reassuring.

Nor should he seek to shift the blame. This is front and centre a Commonwealth responsibility—shared with the states, it is true, but constitutionally and unavoidably it is a Commonwealth responsibility. It is simply not good enough for the minister to seek to absolve himself as he did on Tuesday, saying:

... law and order and the criminal justice system have always been the responsibility of the states and territories.

Yes, they have and they are. And those governments should ensure proper policing in Indigenous communities and that the full force of the law falls on those who inflict violence and abuse children. Indigenous communities indeed have a right to enjoy the same peace and good order as any other in our nation. But he surely understands that preventing violence and abuse in the first place has to be a key objective of his government—that seriously tackling these problems needs more than just more police and more arrests. Dealing with abuse and violence needs a long-term strategy, as the minister was advised by his own steering committee for the review of government services in the Overcoming Indigenous disadvantage report of last year. It bluntly said:

Many Indigenous families and communities live under severe social strain due to a range of socioeconomic factors. Alcohol and substance misuse, and overcrowded living conditions are just some of the factors which can lead to child abuse and violence.

Further, it makes the commonsense point—a point that no sensible person would dispute—that crime is strongly related to socioeconomic disadvantage.

In Australia, of all countries, knowing as we do the historical basis of European settlement, we must acknowledge that, if people are condemned to live lives of entrenched disadvantage, then social breakdown, crime and violence will result. Is the answer really as simple as law enforcement, as the Treasurer and Acting Prime Minister insisted yesterday? Is this really the measure of the government’s policy sophistication? The report I referred to—out of the Productivity Commission, it has to be said—described its focus as being:

... on those areas in which governments have the greatest capacity to change things for the better in the short and long term.

It took as its fundamental premise:

... prevention is a far better strategy for reducing disadvantage than ‘fixing up’.

We certainly need an appropriate law response, but we also need that preventive strategy. That comes from the review of the Commonwealth government’s own service provision in this area. It is not just about law enforcement, although that must be done, but about dealing with the root causes which produce the elevated rates of crime and violence in the first place. I know this is a difficult area, Minister, but spare us the posturing. Go and do some homework before you open your mouth again. From listening to the minister’s public statements, it is a fair bet that what he knows about Indigenous law and culture could be written on the back of a postage stamp.

Let me say it clearly for you, Minister, if you are listening, and for the Prime Minister and Treasurer as well: Indigenous law and culture do not condone sexual abuse of children or family violence. That it occurs is a reflection of dysfunction and disorder in toxic communities, as one of the many reports described them—places where traditional authority has broken down, where mental illness and alcohol and substance abuse are rife and where people are exposed to violent and pornographic videos, as has been shown in some recent reports.

The offensive and racist assumption that child abuse and violence are in some way culturally sanctioned cannot be tolerated and should be challenged. Violence cannot be explained away or excused as being the Aboriginal way. As Larissa Behrendt said so clearly:

I grew up in an Aboriginal community and the values that were instilled as part of my culture were values that very much emphasise community, reciprocity, respect for country, respect for kinship and respect for elders.

She went on to say that there was nothing in these values that condoned violence towards Aboriginal women and children.

The fact that some lawyers and defendants have attempted to use caricatures of Indigenous customary law as a defence in cases of rape or assault and the fact that some judges have in their ignorance accepted these pleas do not mean that Indigenous law and culture actually do permit such brutality. In reality, the fact that such views have been endorsed says more about our prejudice than it does about Indigenous law. In 1980, one judge in a Northern Territory case infamously expressed the view that:

Rape is not considered as seriously in Aboriginal communities as it is in the white community.

And further that:

The chastity of women is not as importantly regarded as it is in the white community.

This from the judge! On the contrary, the comprehensive Australian Law Commission report of 1987 on the subject of traditional law identified the major transgressions to Aboriginal law, which notably include homicide, incest, cohabitation with certain kin, abduction or enticement of women, adultery with certain kin, adultery with potential spouses and unauthorised physical assault. Their research also indicated that:

Acts of family violence and child neglect were unacceptable under traditional law.

The problem is not traditional law but the breakdown of traditional law.

I say to the minister: where have you been? Why has your government not followed up on the many promises it has held out to Indigenous Australians to reduce the level of violence and sexual abuse in their communities? We all agree, or at least I hope we do, that after decades of turning a blind eye to violence in Indigenous communities this violence can no longer be tolerated. We have to place the same value on the lives and security of Indigenous women, children and men as we do on those in the rest of the community. But the responses have to be carefully thought through and carefully designed. They must engage Indigenous communities. They cannot be imposed. They must be based on evidence of what works. They must be sustained and not a reflex response borne of the next shocked minister’s panic.

And we do not need any more reports. There have already been so many they could wallpaper the House of Representatives chamber and still have some left for the Senate. Even a brief search through reports to government over the last 15 years turned up 42 reports—30 of them since this government has been in office—and they either dealt wholly or in part with the issue of violence in Indigenous communities. We do not need more reports.

The Howard government has organised at least three major initiatives on family violence in Indigenous communities, each conceived in a similar climate of moral panic: 1999, a roundtable as part of a national strategy under Minister Herron; 2002, a national audit of Indigenous family violence programs and services—never completed, it turns out—under Minister Ruddock; and 2003, a national roundtable on Indigenous family violence and the establishment of a working group to advise the Prime Minister on ways to address family violence. That last one seems to have disappeared without a trace, although there was a down payment, as it was described, of $20 million to address the consequences of violence in Indigenous communities—not a lot given the scale of the problem. It was followed up with some $74 million, which was earmarked in the 2004 budget for the following four years. It would appear, though it is difficult to establish, that no additional funds were appropriated last year or this year despite the scale of the problem. Since the abolition of ATSIC, it is very difficult to trace the movement of funds. We actually have no idea what this money has been spent on, let alone with what effect, except that the government’s own analysis of key indicators suggests that we are going backwards.

I referred earlier to the Productivity Commission’s Steering Committee for the Review of Government Service Provision. Its chairman, Gary Banks, commenting on the analysis of the federal government’s progress in improving key indicators on Indigenous disadvantage, said the results confirmed the pervasiveness of Indigenous disadvantage. He said:

It is distressingly apparent that … in some important respects, the circumstances of Indigenous people appear to have deteriorated or regressed. Worse than that, outcomes in the strategic areas identified as critical to overcoming disadvantage in the long term remain well short of what is needed.

This is the Productivity Commission reporting to this government. Amongst the areas where outcomes have deteriorated, Minister, are victim rates for crime, substantiated child protection notifications and imprisonment rates for both men and women. The committee also reported that many of the indicators have shown little or no movement and that there is now an even larger gap between Indigenous people and the rest of the population on all headline indicators.

If any progress is going to be made in reducing violence and abuse in affected communities—and it is by no means all of them—then it is vital that there be a proper understanding of the causes of such violence. Minister, Prime Minister and Treasurer: to understand is not to excuse. To understand is to arm yourself with the necessary tools to intervene successfully. One suggested framework adopted by many of those who have reported to government is, firstly, to examine the immediate precipitating causes; secondly, to examine situational factors such as alcohol and substance abuse, unemployment and welfare dependency; and, finally, to understand the underlying factors, including the historical circumstances of the Indigenous communities.

After years of silence and shame about acknowledging the problem, Indigenous leaders decided more than a decade ago that the only way to begin the process of reducing violence was to confront it directly, although they were fearful that public scrutiny of the issue might reinforce the existing negative stereotypes that many people held about Indigenous people—and, sadly, I think some of that fear has been realised. This shift in sentiment was driven largely by women speaking out and refusing to countenance the now devastating levels of abuse experienced in many communities. Reports suggest that, no matter who initiates such violence, women are more likely to be injured or suffer more severe injury than men. Women’s shelters, where they exist, are often full to overflowing at the end of the week, when drinking binges occur.

As was made clear in 1999 by the Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on Violence, Indigenous women want the violence to stop and do not accept that it is part of everyday life. The task force described the situation then as having reached crisis point—and it is much worse now—a view that is reinforced by the official statistics on violent assaults, murders and serious injuries. Dealing with such violence is made more difficult, as the authors of that report pointed out, because many non-Indigenous people do not encounter such violence in their own lives and find the current level of violence in Indigenous communities difficult to comprehend. I suspect that this includes policy makers and politicians, who are still not showing the necessary sense of urgency in working to ameliorate such violence. By the way, panic is not synonymous with such determination.

In 1991, Maryanne Sam reported that family violence is widespread in Indigenous communities. It has been drawn to the attention of government for that long. She said:

In fact, it is one of the major causes of family breakdown, along with drugs and alcohol. Our women are suffering serious injuries and are fleeing to refuges and shelters in order to get away from the violence. Outfits are running away from home, often turning to crime, drugs and alcohol, as well as other substance abuse. Our men are drinking more and more, turning to drugs and gambling as a way of coping with the loss of their families and the deterioration of the traditional roles.

This is not, sadly, news. There is abundant evidence that in many communities the situation has deteriorated substantially since Maryanne Sam made those observations. For example, both Sutton and Noel Pearson report that, in many communities, violence has spiralled out of control, reaching what they describe as epidemic proportions. In assessing the causes and cures for such violence, Indigenous leaders have rightly insisted that we have to understand the role played by dispossession, relocation of whole communities and the forced separation of family members in generating the sense of hopelessness which is still palpable in many communities. As the women’s task force argued, ‘the impact of history cannot be isolated in any discussion of its origins and the consequences of such violence in the lives of Indigenous peoples’.

The wilful denial of the importance of such history by the current federal government—we saw it again yesterday—and its repeated refusal to acknowledge the impact of dispossession, cultural fragmentation and marginalisation means the solutions it proposes under the rhetoric of practical reconciliation are unlikely to solve the problem. And the government has conspicuously not solved the problem, because it has been going backwards.

Failure to analyse accurately the causes and contributing factors of violence will mean that the solutions proffered will be at best partial. The contribution of associated social problems—including high unemployment, poor mental health, poverty and low educational attainment—must also be incorporated into the development of strategies and programs. As the women’s task force report illustrated, there are factors present in Indigenous communities that are not present in non-Indigenous communities, particularly dispossession of land and culture, the separation of children from parents over successive generations and the failure of governments to enforce sanctions against violence, to name but a few. For some, the sexual assault of Indigenous children and young people began with white settlement and included the practice of abducting women for sexual exploitation. This means that the intervention strategies must be tailored to the experiences and circumstances of Indigenous communities in all their variety and complexity. One size will not fit all.

In addressing this so-called family violence, it is important always to be aware that it is closely correlated with child abuse. Some surveys indicate that as many as 60 per cent of children of abused mothers are themselves abused by the perpetrator. Children are often the silent victims of family violence, even when they are not themselves the primary victims, as they sometimes are, including of sexual assault. In many communities, they have no choice but to witness the violence and endure the disruption and mental trauma that result. In turn, they do not make very good parents themselves. Poor attendance at school, reduced employment prospects, depression and despair make such children future players in the destructive cycle of abuse and violence. Attention to the special needs of children obviously should feature prominently in violence reduction strategies.

It is obvious to me, and I think to many people who have paid attention, that solutions have to be devised to deal urgently with violence wherever and whenever it occurs. We all agree about that. Different standards of response to violence should not be applied to Indigenous communities. And violence should not be accepted as normal or inevitable just because it occurs between Indigenous people. In addition, the cycle of disadvantage, reinforced as it is with alcohol and substance abuse, has to be broken. Approaches to solving these problems need to encompass measures to help prevent future violence, not just the law and order issues, as well as the rehabilitation of those damaged by violence and assistance for their families and communities. It is complex, not simple.

Critical to the successful design and implementation of such solutions is a sustained commitment from governments—I cannot emphasise that enough. Few programs delivered to Aboriginal communities in this area, or indeed in any others, have enjoyed the focused attention and commitment from governments that are necessary to deliver successful outcomes. The $30 million I mentioned that was cut in 1996 was lost as a result of those massive cuts. Too often resources are short lived or delivered as part of a narrowly conceived pilot, which rarely develops into a fully-fledged program. Bizarrely, given their experimental character, these pilots are often not evaluated at all, so it is difficult to get any idea of whether they have actually been useful. Support for staff is often inadequate and there is, as a result, high turnover. And, of course, there is still a desperate need for greater clarification of Commonwealth-state funding arrangements and responsibilities.

Given the severity and the pervasiveness of violence in Indigenous communities, a high level of coordination between agencies and programs is also essential—health, substance abuse, education, child protection and law enforcement agencies all have to be involved, starting at the top. Sadly, despite the government’s boasts of a quiet revolution, this has not been achieved—just look at Wadeye—and instead duplication, poor coordination and failure to think beyond departmental and jurisdictional boundaries still characterise many of the programs delivered to Indigenous communities. Piecemeal funding decisions—and we are about to see some more, I think—complex accountability requirements and conflicting objectives all contribute to frequent failure and escalate the sense of hopelessness which is all too palpable in many communities. In any case, much of the money ends up in the hands of administrators and consultants, not in the community. Conversely, successes are not disseminated for wider adoption and good practice goes unrecognised and unrewarded.

Perhaps the most important prerequisite to producing sustained improvements in violence levels is the involvement of Indigenous people in decision making at all levels. This depends on effective support for community development and so-called capacity building, including the provision of funds for training Indigenous leaders and staff. It cannot be done without the involvement of Indigenous people. Partnerships between government agencies and Indigenous communities should also be developed, committing all parties to specific actions and responsibilities with agreed and measurable outcomes and performance benchmarks. We need serious efforts from this government, not the shocked response of an apparently naive minister. It is time that we all got involved in solving these problems and stopped trying to shirk responsibility.

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