Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It may be useful to evoke the memory of eye surgeon Fred Hollows and his outstanding remarks in the mid-seventies that brought through the mainstream media to the rest of Australia a realisation of the true conditions on Aboriginal communities. From Hollows we learnt that solutions to the Indigenous crisis as he saw it lay not purely in white Australia, but Indigenous people had to lead. Then, of course, a generation later it was the former Minister for Families and Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, who, through the Northern Territory emergency response in June last year, for the first time broke a generational fixation—a left-wing ideology—that believed that only Indigenous Australia had the solution to Indigenous problems.

From that intervention onwards it was clear that so many of the challenges that are superimposed onto Indigenous Australia will require a combined effort to fix—and that is the essence of the intervention. Although the minister has already departed from the chamber, let it be recorded in Hansard that that spiral bound, rote-read speech, presumably prepared by someone else, was utterly lacking, utterly devoid of passion or life. What she had in that 15 minutes was an opportunity to defend the intervention and to make it absolutely clear that she would rebuff page 23 of the report that she received a few weeks ago. Covered in the minister’s own liquid paper, sneaking through, were those five recommendations upon which this matter of public importance is based. Those recommendations bring to an end income quarantining and make it, as it was so euphemistically referred to in the report, ‘voluntary’ for those who wanted to remain on it and compulsory only for those enrolled to attend school or for infant health. By implication, income quarantining is removed where chronic alcoholism, violence, abuse of tenancy agreements, destruction of housing, antisocial behaviour and so on are involved. That is what is written in the report that has been tabled by the minister. She had an opportunity today and we got nothing less, as I have said, than a bland, anodyne response to the report.

Let us remember some history, because they have been in government only nine months. Across the aisle was a Prime Minister falling over himself to apologise who then, to make it look like the sleeves were being rolled up, announced some teachers the next day. Since then, what have we seen in Indigenous communities? Virtually nothing. The Indigenous field has been left vacant for nine months. Let us remember that, with this review in place, it has almost been used as an excuse to do nothing. It has been an excuse to not take those rough edges off the intervention, to not support it where it needed support and to not give additional resources where they may have been required. It has just been fine to add an additional 100 teachers. We could have done so much better than the 18 alcohol inspectors. We could have done even better than the 11,000 that have currently had child health checks. There is so much more that could have been done and so much more that additional resources could have been used for. What we have had is the excuse that, because this intervention is under review, it has to be in some black box and not reinforced and not supported.

Judge not then on their absence from the field but on the legislation they have been moving at the same time. This is a government that has sought to change the rules on pornography, that has sought to change and soften the rules on the broadcasting of 18+ subscription television into Indigenous communities and that has sought to provide loopholes so that, if you have a boot full of pornographic DVD material, you can simply say, ‘I am moving through a prescribed area’, and not be intercepted. The very point of the intervention was the damage, as Sue Gordon and many others have pointed out, that alcohol, kava and pornography do. We have a minister that can read a speech like the one that preceded me only to then further relax permits, the broadcasting of pornography and the availability of pornographic DVDs in the very communities where we are trying to break that dysfunctional cycle. It has been referred to before as a horrid, dysfunctional cycle of ‘piss, petrol, poker and potato chips’.

This is the first time that we have had coherent voices of mums who finally have shopping trolleys full of food and of children who finally have food in their bellies. Yet we have this unbroken nexus supported by the other side of this chamber that allows that ongoing relationship between big men, chronic alcoholism and opposition to the intervention. I have been given 15 minutes to support the intervention and the principles on which it is based. I do not care which side of government came up with this intervention, but let us remember how weak the support for it was. It was there but it was weak and through gritted teeth from the current Prime Minister when it was announced. It may run deeply against the grain of left-wing ideology. As Marcia Langton pointed out today in the Australian, it goes against those human rights advocates who are caught up in 50-year-old abstractions about the sanctity of the individual compared to collective social rights. We need to move away from that and remember what the intervention is based upon. It is based upon the children. As Sue Gordon has said, whatever breach there might have been of human rights, it is no match for what has been neglected by successive governments and the damage that has occurred to children. That is why the intervention is in place, and that kind of support was absent from the minister.

We need to remember that income management simply ensures that 50 per cent of income is spent on clothing and food. I do not see that as some sort of human rights violation, and please forgive me if it is. I do not see support for children to attend school as some sort of human rights violation. Remember that we are operating in an environment of territory and state governments, many of whose education departments have railed against encouraging attendance at schools and have railed against providing school attendance data to Centrelink because of privacy concerns. These are education departments that do not back up the very principals who want to ensure improved attendance at schools. The principal are not supported by their own department. That is where this debate was as recently as 12 months ago and it took the former coalition government to change that, to break that and to connect school attendance to Centrelink for the first time. It was such a novel concept. We regard it as almost normal now, but it had not happened for a generation.

The intervention is about health; it is about health checks. My urging to the minister is: do not lose the nerve now. You have a report that provides an out but do not lose the nerve, because this intervention is about providing housing that is not destroyed and tenancy agreements that are respected. Do not lose the nerve. It may well be about changing land tenure agreements that some academics can twist as being some human rights violation—do not lose the nerve. It is about delivering housing stock where it is needed most. It is about providing meaningful employment and meaningful on-the-job training. That means reforming CDEP, not protecting it in its current form and waiting another year. We do not have a year to lose. Do not lose the nerve. Of course, most importantly of all, it is about an opportunity to break the cycle of antisocial behaviour that comes with chronic alcoholism. The women of the communities are speaking but they have so often been liquid papered out of this report by the selective choice of the individual who wrote this report. The very people who were the architects of this intervention have been ignored in the report. Was the well-known Bill Glasson, who played such an important role and who is also an eye surgeon, consulted about the minister’s report? In the entire review, Dr Bill Glasson was not even consulted. I remember those words spoken in the House of Commons by Churchill that:

The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences.

That period was last year. We have another similar moment appearing right now, with a minister who can go soft on this intervention and follow the recommendations that that minister allowed not to be liquid papered out—they remain in the report as an escape clause for this government when the timing is right. Let us remember what this intervention was all about: bringing the Little children are sacred report to life so that it did not remain an ignored and dusty report with recommendations that were never acted upon. They were acted upon last year; it was a changing and defining moment for Indigenous Australia and, as a matter of public importance, I urge the government to retain all those elements of the intervention.

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