Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

That is right. We know that, on the funding for the Aboriginal ranger program for Indigenous engagement, the Northern Territory government did not ask for a large amount of money but suggested in a program submission from Kon Vatskalis, who is the Minister for Primary Industry and Fisheries, that they could do with $12 million. If they got $12 million they could employ a significant number of people across the Northern Territory to act as eyes and ears. He said in a press release on 5 January:

It will provide more jobs ... with the creation of 29 full-time and 14 part-time positions for Indigenous people living in remote areas of the Territory.

We know we have $12 million; that is for the whole coastline. There is 10,000 kilometres of coastline in the Northern Territory alone. Leave aside the Cape York area, the Eastern Cape, the Pilbara and the Kimberley coast—they are not included in that assessment—and $12 million over four years is all that is being provided for Indigenous engagement to assist the Commonwealth in doing the work of observing and then potentially apprehending foreign fishers.

My friend the member for Brisbane has already spoken about the use of defence resources in this effort. I want to emphasise that, if we are fair dinkum about preventing and apprehending illegal fishers and being far more successful, we need to use all of the resources available to us. Frankly, that is not what this bill will do. Not only are the budget measures for Indigenous rangers insufficient but also it has yet to be learnt how they in fact hope to expend them. What we were hoping is that they would engage Indigenous rangers across the coastline and provide them with some resources and training so that they could operate effectively in a coordinated fashion with AFMA, Quarantine, Customs and indeed the Australian Defence Force. That appears not to be the case. We have largely chosen not to provide these community members with much needed employment. Nor have we used their intelligence about their country and their seas. That is a grave disappointment. As the member for Brisbane said, not only do we need our eyes and ears on the land—and I mentioned earlier the issue of people making landfall—but also we need to have a far more extensive deployment at sea. Belatedly, I have come to the view that Coastwatch is the only answer. That is not to say that the Australian Defence Force personnel who are involved in the current mission do not do a good job—they do—but they are severely underresourced, as are the Customs people and the Coastwatch people generally. Labor will support this legislation, but I think it is flawed and the government will not do anything of great substance as a result of it.

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