Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Solomon for his ongoing interest in the affairs of Aboriginal Australians, particularly in the Northern Territory. As every member of this House is aware, it has been a very high priority of this government to address the criminal activity that has been occurring in many remote parts of Australia, particularly in Indigenous communities. As such, we committed to a $130 million package at the June summit, which was subsequently committed to and signed off by all the state and territory premiers and chief ministers with the Prime Minister at COAG.

As part of that, we have extended the Central Australia Substance Abuse Intelligence Desk for another 12 months. It has been indicting drugs that have been going to remote communities and destroying young people’s lives. We have also put in a place a sniffer dog team. There is one in Darwin and there will now be one permanently based in Alice Springs. In addition, in a recent visit to Alice Springs, I was unfortunately informed by Northern Territory police officers there that, whilst looking after this very large, remote area, they had no vehicles supplied to them by the Northern Territory Police—which came as somewhat of a surprise. Even though dismayed, I undertook through our department to fund those vehicles immediately so that they could do their work. I have written to the Territory government asking them to, obviously, pick up a necessary component of policing, that being vehicles, throughout the Northern Territory.

Yesterday I announced the appointment of an independent auditor of remote Indigenous communities so that we can better ascertain the real policing needs for those communities, and that person is Mr John Valentin. He is the former Deputy Commissioner for the Northern Territory Police. His appointment has been welcomed by the Australian Police Association, as it has been by many others. His task over the next three months will be to determine what policing levels are needed to ensure the safety and security that most of us enjoy, and all of us deserve, in our communities. It will help us to be able to determine, with state and territory governments, where the $40 million that we have allocated to new police stations and new police houses will be used, so that it is on the best advice that these communities can enjoy a safer future and these young Aboriginal people can have the same sort of future that the rest of us expect throughout Australia.

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