Annette Ellis (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to make some fairly brief comments on Indigenous Australians at work: successful initiatives in Indigenous employment, a report by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs. In so doing, I am obviously going to be referring to the fact that Labor members of the committee put in a dissenting report. I want to talk to that point, but I preface those comments by saying very clearly that, in the 11½ years that I have been in this parliament, I have become even more convinced of the value of committee work in the parliament. I am a very strong supporter of the parliamentary committee process. I believe, should I be so bold as to say this, that in fact some of the best work in this parliament can and does occur in those parliamentary committees.

This report, which is the only piece of work done by this committee during this parliamentary term, is, sadly, disappointing. It could have been, and should have been, a major work on Indigenous issues, with particular reference to employment and all of the associated subjects that inevitably are discussed when you talk about Indigenous employment. I find with Indigenous issues generally that it is very difficult to talk about one just policy area because they all become interrelated.

I refer to the minority report, which is at the back of the committee’s report, and to where we quite openly say that it was a bit of a precedent in committee reporting that Labor members of the ATSIA committee were not prepared to endorse the majority report of this inquiry. We were dissenting not because of any strong fundamental disagreement with the few recommendations the report proposed—although we do not necessarily agree with all of them—but because of the report’s failure in our view to come to grips with the gravity of the problem or to suggest policy settings and programs which would have any real prospect of increasing employment.

The deputy chair of the committee, my colleague Dr Carmen Lawrence, has I think already spoken in passing on this in the House at the tabling of the report. She explained very clearly that we tried to have the chairman’s draft of the report as it was initially presented to the committee modified to some degree. We were at first hopeful that that could happen, but sadly that was not the case. The chairman’s draft with some minor alterations, generally speaking, became the report of the committee. Hence the position that we four members of this committee have taken with this dissenting report. It was very difficult for me and my colleagues to make this decision because we have a very strong view—and I do personally—about the potential of work of committees. We made some constructive suggestions along the lines of trying to get some further consideration into the draft report and sadly failed.

We suggested in reporting the results of our inquiry that we should try to get from the evidence the understanding of what economic development settings seem to be successful in generating new opportunities for Indigenous people, what maintains the employment for those already in the workforce, what improves the labour market readiness and what helps overcome the obvious obstacles to Indigenous people when they face attempting to get employment. In particular, we really wanted to see those questions posed but also tested and tested strongly so that we could recognise not only where the successes lay but how we could help guarantee the growth of those successes, and what actually works and does not work.

Some of the things that we were hoping we could test—that we think would be sensible to test—in ascertaining the effectiveness of certain things would be, for instance, ensuring that Indigenous people are involved in the planning and implementation of economic development and employment programs which affect them, or providing financial incentives to employers or including Indigenous employment obligations in government contracts and agreements with the private sector. There is a whole list of possible topics on page 211 that the committee and we have put up, but we would have liked to have seen these things tested and to show where they work and where they do not work, why they do or do not work and where the emphasis should be in the future—for example, whether or not supplementing CDEP programs to provide services in education, health, construction, maintenance and so on works.

I am sorry that that was not the case. I do not wish to be overly critical of the chair or the other members of the committee; it is just that we had different views on how this should and could, in our view, have been taken forward. I think we have to also remember that this inquiry and then this report, at the time that it was published, had a background of the Northern Territory intervention action, where there was a great deal of concentration nationally within the media, politically and in the community on Indigenous issues around the country generally. I just think that maybe we had a great opportunity that we did not take complete and full advantage of with this report.

A great number of individuals came and gave evidence. I want to urge anyone who is interested in these vital issues affecting our Indigenous communities, when they look at this report, to carefully consider the report but also our dissenting report and understand why we have taken the position that we have. It is important that people look at this in context and see where we thought that a little bit better could have been done in relation to the issue.

I want to thank those people who did come forward as individuals—Indigenous people, people in community organisations. Every time I am lucky enough to be involved in work in this parliament which is dealing with Indigenous people I am overwhelmed by their readiness to come forward and talk about their lives, issues and problems—to share it—all with a view to trying to assist us and them to work together to come up with good solutions that we can work on in partnership with them. I am always impressed by their readiness, their sincerity and their wish to participate—given that I am sure this part of our community has been inquired into so many times that they would have every right to wonder why we are walking through their door again. They never stop willingly wanting to participate. I pay regard to all of those individuals and organisations, whether they gave witness and/or whether they made submissions to the inquiry.

I also want to thank my colleagues on the committee. It is always interesting and gratifying, in my opinion, to travel with parliamentary colleagues from whichever part of the House on committee inquiries. I always enjoy it immensely because you really get to know each other and understand each other’s viewpoints. I want to thank all of my colleagues for that. I want to pay regard also to the committee secretariat particularly, in this instance, for their forbearance and for their assistance through this process—a slightly difficult process towards the end. I thank them. As always, we are so well served in this place by the professionalism and sheer hard work of the people who find themselves attached to our parliamentary committees, so I want to thank them as well.

As we are so near an election, who knows what will happen to this report, who knows what will happen to the recommendations, who knows what will happen to the thoughts that we have outlined in our dissenting report; but I would like to think that in the future, no matter where it all ends up, any future programs and incentives and considerations which have an impact on the employment opportunities for our Indigenous communities look at this work and consider all of the aspects as put forward at both ends of this report—that they may even have the time to consider the information in some of the submissions and some of the evidence in the Hansard. In both cases I think they will find a font of information and advice that would be very useful.

See this speech in context