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

As the Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on Violence concluded after a very comprehensive inquiry in 1999:

The people who could have made a difference have failed to intervene to stop innocent women and children from being bashed, raped, mutilated and murdered and exposed to forms of violence that have been allowed to escalate to a level that is now a national disgrace.

That was the call to us from the Indigenous community leaders then. Seven years later, I am sorry to say it is still a national disgrace—indeed it is worse—and we all share responsibility for that state of affairs. There is no point trying to duck it, as the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs tried to do to some extent. I think he should spend a bit more time listening to the member for Gwydir, who seems to have a much better understanding of the complexity of these issues.

Despite these cyclical moral panics with numerous reports, summits, tub-thumping editorials and a succession of shocked ministers, sustained action to address violence in Indigenous communities sadly has not yet been forthcoming, and that is what we are debating today. If the past is any guide—and I hope it is not—the moment the current media focus dims, as it inevitably will, the government will be tempted to go into Rip Van Winkle mode again, leaving the already damaged to fend for themselves. In fact, as we have heard, one of the first acts of this government was to cut $30 million allocated for the modest but promising Indigenous family violence prevention programs as part of the massive cuts to ATSIC’s budget in 1996-97.

What might now be reasonably called the ‘shocked minister syndrome’ must be pretty galling to the many people who have contributed to those many reports and summits—and to the many people who work in this field and have for a long time been urging governments to act—that should have made it impossible for anyone in this place, and indeed in the whole community if they had had their eyes open, to be unaware of the truly dire circumstances in many communities throughout Australia. During the 10 years that this government has been in power, the problem of child abuse and family violence has been examined and reported on many occasions. There is no excuse for ignorance, let alone inaction. There are at least 30 reports—which have been available since that time to any conscientious MP, let alone a minister—which deal in whole or in part with the factors which lead to such violence and which outline the policies which could assist to reduce the pain and suffering which are the daily bread of so many Indigenous people.

The latest shocked minister, who expresses so much surprise at violence in Indigenous communities, has been in this parliament for the decade that the Howard government has been in office and is responsible for Indigenous Affairs. So forgive us if we are little critical that maybe this conversion is a decade too late! And although this minister has been on this planet for 45 years, he appears to have remained ignorant of the dire conditions in many Indigenous communities, although for a time he was the minister responsible for employment services and must have seen some of these problems. But despite his manifest lack of knowledge, he is not embarrassed to proffer instant solutions. As my mother used to say, ‘A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.’

As a previous speaker on our side indicated, it is important that the minister listen to the great many people, especially Indigenous people, who have put a lot of effort and thought into trying to solve these problems. Unfortunately, as we heard from the minister today, in the process of focusing on one area of law enforcement, he appears to be in the process of misdiagnosing the problems and denying his government has any responsibility for the state of affairs that he has so belatedly discovered; it all has to be done to state and territory government law enforcement practices. I say to the minister that responsibility for Indigenous wellbeing is front and centre a Commonwealth responsibility—shared with the states, it is true, but constitutionally and unavoidably a Commonwealth responsibility. It is simply not good enough for the minister to seek to absolve the government by saying:

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

Yes, they are and those governments should ensure proper policing in Indigenous communities, enforcement of liquor licensing laws and child protection. They should ensure that the full force of the law falls on those who inflict serious violence and abuse children. I absolutely agree with that and I do not imagine that anyone in this parliament would not. I have said and written this before, as many other people have, and I underline it again: Indigenous communities have the right to enjoy the same peace and good order as any others in our nation. And there has been serious neglect of law enforcement in Indigenous communities. But surely the minister understands—or I hope he can be made to by his colleagues—that preventing violence and abuse in the first place must be the prime objective for this national government, that seriously tackling these problems needs more than just more police and more arrests—the Indigenous community have had plenty of those—and that dealing with abuse and violence needs a long-term strategy, as the government were clearly advised by their Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report of last year. The report concluded:

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.

That is direct advice to the government. I hope the minister will come to understand that making any progress will require acknowledgment, as the report also pointed out, that crime is strongly related to socioeconomic disadvantage wherever it occurs. In Australia of all countries, knowing as we do the historical basis of European settlement although we might sometimes seek to deny it, we must acknowledge that if people are condemned to live lives of entrenched disadvantage, social breakdown, crime and violence will inevitably result in many cases.

If the answer were really as simple as more and better law enforcement, we could all go home. What is needed is not just law enforcement, although that must be done, but dealing with the root causes which produce the elevated rates of crime and violence in the first place. A decade down the track, I ask the minister why his government has not followed up on the many promises that have already been held out to Indigenous Australians to act to reduce the levels of violence and sexual abuse in their communities. We all agree, or at least I think we do, that after decades of turning a blind eye to violence in Indigenous communities this violence can no longer be tolerated. It has been tolerated for far too long. We have to place the same value on the lives and security of Indigenous women, children and men as we do on those of the rest of the community. But the responses must be carefully designed: they have got to engage the Indigenous communities, they have to be based on evidence of where the problems are most severe and what intervention actually works and they have to be sustained—I underline this—not a reflex response born of the next shocked minister’s panic. Threatening to close down remote communities by the stroke of a pen or to starve them of funds, which currently seems to be the preferred mode, is not a solution either, not least because research from my own state shows that the level of clinically significant emotional and behavioural difficulties amongst children is actually lowest in the most remote communities. The same study shows that alcohol consumption is much lower amongst the young people who live in those outermost communities than it is among those in metropolitan areas or areas surrounding agricultural and mining regions.

And we do not need any more reports. As I have said in another place, there have already been so many that they could wallpaper this House and the Senate as well. There have been at least three major initiatives by this government which have apparently gone nowhere. Minister, sustained action is what is required. Don’t wait for the media circus to move on and then disappear. It is going to require a lot of persistence. Minister, if any progress is 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 that violence. It is not good enough to simply address the consequences. I really need to stress this because, given some of his public utterances, the minister does not seem not to understand this. To understand is not to excuse. To understand is to arm yourself with the necessary tools to intervene successful. No-one is trying to justify the violence. People are simply trying to understand it by examining, for instance, the immediate precipitating causes, by looking at the situational factors, such as alcohol and substance abuse, unemployment and welfare dependency, and by looking at the underlying factors, including historical circumstances. They cannot be denied.

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. As they have done that, the least that we can do is support them. This shift in sentiment was driven largely by women speaking out and refusing to countenance the devastating levels of abuse experienced in many communities. Minister, listen to those women, listen to the people who have been working on this problem for a very long time, sustain the action and you will get unqualified support from the members on this side.

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