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

Madam Deputy Speaker, I appreciate that to facilitate the business of the House this matter of public importance might be interrupted at some point. As I am sure most members would be aware, back in June last year the Howard government announced an emergency intervention into the remote Indigenous communities of the Northern Territory. The essential elements of the intervention were: first, a regular and in most cases permanent police presence; second, tight controls on alcohol availability; third, welfare quarantining; fourth, better housing; and, fifth, better governance. These very important and quite far-reaching measures were a response to the Little children are sacred report. The report was a catalyst—but that is not to say that these measures came out of the blue—for implementing new thinking that had been crystallising within the government’s collective mind for months if not years.

Aboriginal communities as permanent welfare villages are doomed to unemployment, substance abuse and domestic violence. That is a simple fact. Communities which are permanent welfare villages are doomed to that fate, regardless of their ethnicity or their culture. Tranquillity had to be restored in the Northern Territory so that the kids could go to school, the adults could go to work and people could be empowered to make real choices in their lives—including the choice to leave if that is what seemed best to them.

The government’s intervention was supported by the then opposition, now government. I should say in this House that it cannot have been entirely easy for the then opposition to support the intervention. The intervention was prominently opposed by some elements of the Labor movement, most notably by the Northern Territory Deputy Chief Minister and most notably here in this parliament by the member for Lingiari, now a minister in the government. These prominent Labor figures said that the intervention was not a measure of support and assistance; it was more like an invasion. But, to the credit of the then opposition leadership, they recognised that an extraordinary situation demanded an extraordinary measure.

The fact that these problems had been present, if less recognised, for years did not justify business as usual. As a result of the intervention, we have seen in the 73 remote townships in the Northern Territory more food being purchased and consumed, better school attendance, less violence, less alcohol abuse, more police in these communities and some 10,000 health checks for individual children of the Territory. Not for a second would any of us suggest that these communities are perfect as a result of the intervention, but certainly they are better.

The problem is that the intervention was always loathed and hated by large swathes of what might be described as the Indigenous policy-making establishment. These are people who have long thought that different standards should be applied to Aboriginal people and their communities. These are influential people, many of whom have been prominent in government and certainly prominent in policy debate over the years, who instinctively think that problems in Aboriginal communities and for Aboriginal people are whitefellas’ fault. Of course, over the years governments have made many mistakes. Individual Australians have made many mistakes. There have been many failures of goodwill; there have been some failures of justice. But, if a crime is committed, that is the responsibility first and foremost of the perpetrator. That is why argument about the events of 1788 and its aftermath, argument about what may or may not have been done better in the distant past, should not have obscured a firm government response to the problems that were most graphically revealed by the Little children are sacred report.

In recent days, we have had a published report of the review board into the intervention. The government released its report a few days ago, and yesterday morning we had on the front page of the Australian quite a detailed article on the original draft report that the government received. The original draft report that the government received some weeks ago expresses the Indigenous policy establishment viewpoint of the intervention. The draft report essentially states two things: first, that the intervention has not worked and, second, that the intervention is racist. Let me quote a section of the original draft report that the government received as it appeared in the Australian under the by-line of Paul Toohey, one of the most perceptive and distinguished journalists in this area:

Claiming that Aborigines felt the intervention was akin to a return to “ration days”, the draft report stated: “These words describe real things. These are expressions of the deep emotional and psychological impacts of the [Northern Territory Emergency Response]. The long-term effects of such impacts can be as potentially damaging as the experience of violence itself.”

So the intervention has not worked and it was almost an act of violence against Northern Territory Indigenous communities.

The draft report, the one that was originally given to the government, also claimed, and again I am quoting from Paul Toohey’s report:

… In every community there is a deep belief that the measures introduced by the Australian Government under the [Northern Territory Emergency Response] were a collective imposition based on race that no government would ever direct at any other group of Australians …

So there we have it: the view, in a nutshell, of the Indigenous policy-making establishment that the intervention, first, has not worked and in fact has harmed remote Indigenous communities, and, second, that it is racist.

I want to say this: I do not object for a moment to the government, having received that report, sending it back to be rewritten. If I had received a report as intemperate and as over-the-top as that, I certainly would have sent it back to be rewritten. I do not object to the minister seeking to have a poor report rewritten at all. What I do object to is any subsequent call that that report is truly independent. And I also object to any subsequent statement that the report has not been interfered with. I think it is important that the minister, when she responds to this MPI, clarifies exactly what has happened to this report. When did she get it? Who read it? Who advised her? How did she respond to it? And what were the outcomes of her instructions, or the instructions of her office or her department? But I have to say that even the rewritten report, as released by the government, is a serious problem because it calls for an end to welfare quarantining.

As members of this House should know, welfare quarantining means that Indigenous people in these remote communities who are receiving government benefits have 50 per cent of that money quarantined to the necessities of life—a perfectly reasonable thing to do, particularly in situations where we had that money regularly spent not on the necessities of life but on booze, cigarettes, gambling and other things. It was a very reasonable thing to do. I should point out that, in response not to the draft report but to the official published report, the Deputy Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Marion Scrymgour, a former ferocious critic of the intervention, has come round. We have seen a very commendable getting of wisdom on the part of the Deputy Chief Minister. I am quoting from the Northern Territory News of earlier this week:

Ms Scrymgour does not want to see it—

that is, the welfare quarantining—

rolled back “in any way”.

Mrs Scrymgour is quoted as saying:

“For a lot of women in those communities they have actually found income management to be a good thing, not a bad thing …

…            …            …

“However, we’ve still got a lot of problems where we have parents who don’t take that responsibility.”

So we have no lesser a person than the Deputy Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, a former ferocious critic of the intervention—including welfare quarantining—now saying that welfare quarantining in its current form must stay as it is. And if it was amended, we would immediately see the humbugging start again. We would immediately see large quantities of money being spent on things which no responsible person could regard as the kind of thing that would benefit the families of those communities. I think it is very, very important that the government makes its intentions clear. What does it propose to do with the recommendation in respect of welfare quarantining in the report that it finally published?

We have already seen the government roll back the intervention in some significant respects. In particular, the government has restored the permit system, even in places such as Hermannsburg, which do not want it. The trouble with ending welfare quarantining and moving to a system as recommended by the report that the government published is that the only people subject to it will be those whose children do not regularly attend school.

I spent three weeks recently, admittedly in a different area in Cape York, in a remote Indigenous community and I can tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that there were lots of parents in that community whose kids attended school with commendable regularity, but that is not to say that there was not money spent on the sorts of things which are not going to help those families. That is why it is critically important that the government commit to keep welfare quarantining in its current form. If the government wants to preserve any bipartisanship in this area it must keep welfare quarantining in its other form. The intervention is working far better than its critics could ever have imagined 12 months ago. It needs to be given time, and the last thing we want is the people who got it wrong for 30 years of Indigenous policy to sabotage this fresh and promising start.

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