Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am here, of course, to replace the member for Lyons, who was next listed to speak but is apparently not in the House this afternoon. One can only wonder why. I am very interested in the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (2008 Budget and Other Measures) Bill 2009 and more particularly the reference at the end of minister’s second reading speech in which she said:

Lastly, the bill makes amendments to implement part of the government’s announced reforms to the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) program, which aim to improve employment participation for Indigenous Australians.

This particular project has been in place for quite a long time and, of course, was implemented for the purpose of giving Aboriginal people some status in society so that they would not be perceived as, to use a common phrase, dole bludgers. It was going to be an opportunity for them to have paid employment equivalent to the unemployment benefits they would otherwise receive. Of course in some very remote communities the tasks undertaken would have been the normal civic tasks of keeping their streets in good order and doing more or less local government jobs. The government have obviously recognised some of the difficulties with this particular scheme and are making some attempts to correct that, although it appears that that proposal is virtually to put new applicants back more or less on welfare payments after 30 June. But they are proposing to retain those who were previously under the CDEP in that scheme which, as I said, gives at least some sort of standing in the community.

But of course as the government discovered—and as the former coalition government must have been becoming aware—the scheme was not being treated properly. I have had Aboriginal people in my office in Albany, particularly qualified young women who had a good education, who were dragged into CDEP and who then said: ‘Where are you sending me? Give me a job to do. Give me a job to do helping out in Aboriginal activities.’ They were told: ‘No, you go up to the so-and-so hall and you sit there until lunchtime. Then you will have done your responsibility and you can go home.’ They were devastated by this. They sincerely believed that they were getting into a government system that gave them some employment and some standing in the community. I want to draw the attention of the House—and I hope the officials present will see that their minister has an answer to this particular circumstance—to the fact that clearly the CDEP expected the participants to do some work.

In the town of Yalgoo, not far from my electorate, as it so happens, Mr Paul Valenzuela took over the local store and the management of the local CDEP program because in the town of Yalgoo nearly all the population are of Aboriginal descent and, in fact, number from 120 to 140 persons from time to time. When he took over the CDEP, the local Aboriginal people arrived on the usual day to collect their fortnightly cheques. Raul, who—as his name indicates—is from South America, asked them what they had done and on what account he should hand over taxpayers’ money. Remember that, as the agent, he was appointed to protect the taxpayers’ dollars. They all said, ‘Oh, no, we never do anything; we just come around and collect the money and go off and play cards and have a few drinks.’ He therefore refused to issue the cheques. This caused a bit of upset, but, when the same people came back a fortnight later, he made it very clear that there was a ‘no work, no pay’ policy. He was threatened et cetera, but he had probably seen worse parts of life than that, and he refused to pay them and suggested where work was readily available in terms of community activities.

After two or three weeks, the local people came back and said that they were prepared to work for their money, as proposed within the CDEP. Raul formed a good relationship with the participants and they all became very willing to do whatever work was required. He gave them a list and away they went and did the work. Some of the work performed included community work within the school and general tidying up of the grounds, the clearing of weeds and litter around the town, cleaning the local nursing post, and painting, cleaning and repairing the local sporting complex. They also built and planted new garden beds for the shire and did any other odd jobs that arose. The majority of the people became content at doing this work, and I am sure they had a lot more pride in themselves accordingly—rather than sitting about with nothing to do—and were proud of what they had achieved. There were one or two who were disgruntled.

Raul worked closely with the local police, the headmistress, the nursing sister and the local town gardener—all of whom speak very highly of his work with the local Aboriginal people. Following the introduction of this program, running it in the proper way, Raul was proud to tell me that he was able to obtain long-term employment for about 10 people. The very epitome of Work for the Dole was to expose people to the workforce and give them a virtual CV so they were attractive to other employers. In a small community the size of Yalgoo, that was a good result. However, Raul’s contract has not been renewed. The CDEP is run by MedAC in Mullewa, and FASHA is the organisation in Geraldton that distributes the funding. Raul asked why his contract was not renewed. He was protecting the Aussie dollar—taxpayers’ dollars—he was undertaking to ensure that the Aboriginal participants did their work properly and he was getting them paid employment so they were no longer a burden to society and had better standing in the community. He asked why, and the MedAC people and the FASHA people said, ‘Oh, we’ve had a couple of complaints.’ He said, ‘Well, if they’re in writing, can I please seem them?’ He was told, ‘Oh, no, they’re not in writing.’ In other words, a couple of people who thought they had a right to be paid for no work have managed to cancel the contract of a top-class operator. And you wonder why CDEP does not work, when people who are prepared to ensure it is working on behalf of the Australian taxpayer are treated in this fashion.

I want to know what he did. There is no evidence that he stole money or did anything wrong. His sin was to make sure that the scheme was administered according to the laws carried in this parliament. I can only ask where else this has happened and why it is that the managers in my electorate—who, of course, are part of the Aboriginal elite—tell people to sit in a hall to qualify for their CDEP. It is an outrage and it is a matter that requires an answer from the minister today. The minister might also answer another question. I wrote to her to draw her attention to the circumstances of the operations of the Yamatji Land and Sea Council in Geraldton and the complaints I received from Aboriginal people about its operations, saying that something should be done about it. My letter was never promptly acknowledged, which is a fundamental courtesy, in my mind, and one I maintained for five years as a minister. I was required to wait, taking phone calls from the Aboriginal people concerned asking me, ‘What are you doing about this, Member of Parliament?’ I could give them no answer for months and then I got an answer which was a waste of time.

You ought to see some of the answers that we are getting to questions on notice from other ministers that just virtually say: ‘I’m not going to tell you.’ If that is the way this parliament is going to proceed, it will be no different to when Paul Keating said, ‘You can only ask me questions two times a week.’ The principle of questions in writing, above all—it is a bit of theatre in this place—is that you can put a question in writing to a minister. You may get no answer or you may get misleading comments. You can ask a supplementary question—’Can you answer this; can you answer that?’—and the answer comes back: ‘No, I can’t. I don’t know what the rest of the world is doing in high-voltage DC transmission.’ That came from the Prime Minister’s office. The Chinese are building a 2,000 kilometre HVDC system at the moment which is a real answer to global warming. I know that is not part of the bill, so I will not proceed on that. The issue I am really touching on is the behaviour of ministers, the arrogance of their answers and, more particularly, how the minister, when having the complaints of Aboriginal people drawn to her attention, gave me an answer which she clearly did not write herself. It was just an excuse for doing nothing. I talked about some of this in my earlier speech today on native title. The biggest problem with native title is administration and, of course, the dysfunctional land and sea councils that are considered representative bodies.

I have never been able to understand why they are the representative body. Why can’t a group of traditional owners—being a small section of the larger area, for instance in the Kimberley—get their own representative and someone who will keep them informed? The reality is that when the ImpEx people offered the Kimberley Land Council a billion dollars in association with the ImpEx proposal, the traditional owners were not told, they were not given the opportunity to say no—and, of course, that was assisted by the negligence of the then WA Labor government. We have seen all that change in a flash with the election of the Barnett government. He just said to them, ‘You will comply with the law.’

The reality with ImpEx is that, when the Japanese company wanted to build their LNG plant on two rocky vacant islands, the land council started flying people at taxpayers’ expense out to those islands every day so that, if anyone flew over during the daylight hours, there were in occupation Aboriginal people who had never been there in 100 years. Why would you do that? Why would you deny a major project when even the local state member of parliament, an Aboriginal lady, had stood up and said, ‘I’ve got 6,000 unemployed Aboriginal people in the Kimberley’—though she might have said 16,000; I will check that figure—’and why aren’t they entitled to a job?’ It was because a group of the Aboriginal elite were listening to other people and telling stories about it.

I want some answers, and I intend to pursue this matter, as to why someone who had cleaned up the CDEP in Yalgoo—and I would suggest that there was a substantial amount of taxpayers’ money involved—has not had his contract continued. And they had better have some arguments that say that there was, for example, some corrupt activity—but that is not the answer he received. The answer he received was, ‘A couple of people didn’t like you; a couple of people objected to you making them do some work under the CDEP,’ when that is exactly what this parliament intended. I will conclude my remarks on that basis, but I will be watching with great interest at the conclusion of this debate to see if the minister honours the parliament with a response. Importantly, she has time to contact the people in Mullewa and the people in Geraldton to find out the reason that they stopped someone who was doing their job properly.

See this speech in context