Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Community Services, Indigenous Affairs and the Voluntary Sector) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House:

(1)

calls on the Government to end the permit system preventing access to remote Northern Territory townships;

(2)

calls on the Government to restore the pornography bans put in place by the former Government; and

(3)

urges the Government to not further water-down the Northern Territory intervention.

Over the last few days I have been very lucky to hear two government ministers speak passionately in support of the Northern Territory intervention. I heard the Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy speak with palpable sincerity about the importance of the intervention on the Lateline program on Friday and, when prerecording the SBS Insight program on Saturday night, I heard the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs defend the intervention in a hostile ambience when it would have been easier for her in some respects to have fudged her attitude. I want to congratulate both those government ministers for the strong position that they have taken and to say to the House that the intervention is about upholding the same standards of decency and humanity in Indigenous townships that we would expect in our own suburbs and neighbourhoods.

The important thing is to ensure that nothing we do detracts from that intervention and waters down its impact. I would remind the House of what the most senior Aboriginal person in the federal Labor Party, the former national president, Warren Mundine, said about the permit system:

The permit system didn’t stop crime. In fact, if you look at all of the reports that have come out in the last few years, crime has flourished under the permit system, so it’s a fallacy to say that it helps law-and-order problems. It really embedded these problems because some powerful people were able to get away with things without being watched.

Mr Mundine went on:

If you want to create a real economy you’re going to have to have more commercial activity happening and that happens by allowing people to flow in and out of places.

But it is not just Warren Mundine who is urging the new Labor government here in Canberra to think again about the permit system. The central Northern Territory member of parliament in the Territory legislature, Alison Anderson, said that the permit system:

... has been used as a tool by some people in communities to reject certain people that they disagreed with or don’t want out there.

So here you have two very senior Labor people, of impeccable Labor credentials, who are saying to the new government, ‘Don’t restore the permit system.’ I say to members opposite: please don’t let ideology get in the way of common sense on this issue.

If there is any doubt about just how ideological the new government’s position is on the permit system, I refer to a report in the Northern Territory News last week, where a Territory man who drove a road accident victim to a health clinic was charged by Northern Territory police for entering Aboriginal land without a permit. This is the kind of nonsense that the permit system has permitted.

Let me also talk about the pornography ban which the Howard government sought to enshrine in legislation and which is now being watered down by the incoming government. The Little children are sacred report said:

The issue of children’s and the community’s exposure to pornography was raised regularly in submissions and consultations with the Inquiry. The use of pornography as a way to encourage or prepare children for sex ... has featured heavily in recent prominent cases.

                        …                   …                   …

It was subsequently confirmed at the regional meetings conducted by the Inquiry ... that pornography was a major factor in communities and that it should be stopped.

That is what the report said, and that is what the Howard government sought to do. We even had the new Prime Minister claiming in his booklet on his first 100 days to have introduced legislation to ban R18+ content in Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. Not true! The legislation, as introduced by the government, bans pay TV porn only if there is 35 per cent pornographic content, if the community asks for it and if that request passes a public interest test. Please think again. What earthly good can pay TV porn be doing in these communities? We do not need it. Let us get rid of it. Let us support the intervention by restoring the original legislation on this point.

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