Damian Hale (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In making my contribution to this debate I commend the member for Flinders and support his comments on Indigenous ranger programs. The Caring for our Country program and the Green Corps traineeships have been well supported by Indigenous people in my electorate. Our government will continue to support these programs. I think Indigenous people have an innate sense of the environment and the land and it is important that they are given opportunities to work in this space.

I strongly support the Prime Minister’s ministerial statement made on 11 February on the Closing the gap report. The government’s policy on Indigenous affairs has focused on closing the substantial gap that exists between the socioeconomic outcomes for Indigenous and for non-Indigenous Australians. Two years ago, on 13 February 2008, the Prime Minister made a formal apology in the parliament, on behalf of the government, the parliament and the people of Australia, to the Indigenous people of Australia, particularly to the stolen generation. At the time, he said:

Today’s apology, however inadequate, is aimed at righting past wrongs. It is also aimed at building a bridge between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians—a bridge based on real respect rather than a thinly veiled contempt. Our challenge for the future is to now cross that bridge and, in doing so, to embrace the new partnership between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians … the core of this partnership for the future is the closing of the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians …

On that day the Prime Minister pledged to lead a new national effort to close the gap in life expectancy and life opportunities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. For the first time, a bipartisan commitment to closing that gap was made. We acknowledged the failure of successive governments to deliver to many Indigenous communities. Together we demonstrated that closing the gap is a national priority that should be above partisan politics and together we recognised that closing the gap would take not a parliamentary term but possibly a generation or even beyond a generation, as has been pointed out many times in this place.

When we came into government the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians’ life expectancy at birth was an estimated 17 years. Indigenous children in many parts of Australia were 3.6 times more likely to die before they reached the age of five than non-Indigenous Australians. Almost one in 10 dwellings in remote and very remote Indigenous communities was in need of major repair or replacement.

I would like to put on record again my support for the commitment to closing the gap. It is a shared commitment by both sides of parliament and it is led by the government from the Prime Minister down. Jenny Macklin, as the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, has a tremendous amount of work to do and is working very hard in trying to deliver programs into remote communities and facing the challenges that these programs in their delivery often have. The programs being delivered by the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, in the education and employment area, helped by the Minister for Employment Participation, Senator Mark Arbib, are having real results on the ground. We have the commitment by the Minister for Health and Ageing, Nicola Roxon, to closing the gap in health outcomes. A 17-year gap in life expectancy is something that we as a country cannot be proud of and it is something that we need to address. Certainly as a Territorian, as someone who has lived amongst Indigenous people all my life and as someone who has five Indigenous children, it is an issue that is close to my heart. I have buried many friends. I have just celebrated my 40th birthday and I have a number of friends who passed away before they reached the age of 40, a lot of them from generic heart disease or problems that might have been caused either through gingivitis as a child or through rheumatic fever.

This morning, I had the pleasure of meeting with the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, and with Luke Bowen, Chief Executive Officer of the Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association. He presented Minister Burke with a framed picture depicting a program which our government is funding, a program delivering Northern Territory wide Indigenous employment, aiming to facilitate the employment of Indigenous people in meaningful jobs in the pastoral sector and to provide along the way mentoring and industry-driven training in areas such as low-stress stock handling, certificate levels I to IV agricultural and beef cattle, welding, smart train transport and safe use of chemicals, weed eradication programs, numeracy and literacy, first aid, machinery and vehicle skills. I commend that program and also the employers who have taken on Indigenous workers.

The government can do only so much in putting money forward but at the end of the day that money makes up a small amount of the cost involved. So I commend the pastoral industry, the Cattlemen’s Association and the cattlemen of the Northern Territory who have a long history of working with Indigenous people. There are some great stories out of the north, from pioneering days, of some fantastic Indigenous and full-blood Aboriginal cattle handlers. They had a very good sense for working with animals. These programs need to be supported by government but they would not get off the ground and they would not get results if it were not for the private sector. Many of these people, in employing Indigenous people in the cattle industry, are doing so out of their own pocket. They are also developing very good workers and very good human beings at the same time.

This program saw 45 participants advanced through 2009 to be ready for the 2010 season, along with the new crop of trainees in March. This program has been able to ensure maximum flexibility and delivery of mentoring support beyond year 1, giving participants the best opportunity to stay in employment and become valuable industry members—an example of practical partnerships achieving real results. Indigenous school retention rates, from start of high school to year 12, have risen from 30.7 per cent in 1995 to 46.5 per cent in 2008, a 6.4 per cent increase.

I want to mention briefly the Clontarf Academy. I know that Gerard Neesham, the founder of Clontarf, was in Canberra earlier in the week. Clontarf is a school based sports academy tackling poor attendance and outcomes among Indigenous students through sport and recreation with some great results, including school attendance rates of more than 80 per cent and improved academic performance. I was out at Casuarina High School recently and presented some flags from my office—an Australian flag, a Thursday Island flag and the Aboriginal flag—to the boys of Clontarf. By the end of this month, 2,300 students in 36 schools across three states will be signed up. Clontarf is one of the academies funded through the Australian government’s Sporting Chance Program to support Indigenous students’ engagement with school. Overall the program has achieved an average attendance rate of 79 per cent, six percentage points above average rates for all Indigenous students. I was very excited when I heard the Prime Minister announce that an additional 17 sports academies will be established across Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Victoria. Ten of those are new academies and they will be focused on girls.

I know that an academy will be established at the Palmerston High School, in my electorate of Solomon. As well, the Clontarf Foundation will operate seven new football academies: at Jabiru and Gunbalanya, in the Northern Territory, and at Bairnsdale, Warrnambool, Swan Hill, Robinvale and Mildura, in Victoria. Certainly, I commend Gerard Neesham, Andrea Goddard and the other staff, as well as the staff at the schools in my electorate. They have been doing a fantastic job in working predominantly with the urban Aboriginal youth and are now setting up academies for girls. We know that the girls are at risk a little earlier in life than the boys, and addressing what is going on with the girls is long overdue.

In the health space in my electorate we are fortunate to have had a commitment from the federal government, through Minister Roxon, to a doctors college in Darwin. In training our doctors in Darwin I believe that some 40 spots will be at the facility, starting next year. We will have 40 doctors graduating by 2015, and that will alleviate a lot of the problems we have with retention and recruitment of doctors in the Darwin area. Many of these people are local people. That is a $30 million commitment by the federal government. A lot of our problems are around Indigenous health. There is a commitment from the Commonwealth to the Menzies School of Health for further research in blood borne diseases, in particular, that affect Indigenous communities. This is the Commonwealth government doing something practical to make sure that we research things properly and then have the conduit joining research to the policies being implemented by the government.

Minister Roxon has also committed to a 50-bed hostel at the RDH. Very often a lot of our Indigenous brothers and sisters come in from communities and are admitted to hospital. But, when they have left hospital and may have a week to two weeks of outpatient type services to be accessed, often they will go and live with family or, if they cannot get a bed, will live rough or live in the ‘long grass’, as we say. Having this hostel will mean that people can be housed properly in a safe, clean environment, which will not only aid their recovery but also take the pressure off family, so that families that are in a routine, with kids going to school, kids going to bed early at night and kids eating good food, are not impacted at all by visitors from communities. Committing to a hostel on the campus of the Royal Darwin Hospital, in my electorate, is another great initiative by the Rudd Labor government.

Finally, I want to turn to oncology services. It has been a long time coming but I had a great deal of pleasure recently to open the new oncology unit with the Prime Minister. A lot of our Indigenous people just will not go away to have treatment for cancer. To our great shame up there, often they would decide to stay home instead of fighting cancer away from family and friends. Having an oncology unit in Darwin will make it easier and better for them to have treatment in Darwin and, hopefully, to beat the dreaded cancer.

In his statement the Prime Minister asked Indigenous leaders in families and communities and across the nation to step up and take responsibility for restoring strong social norms in their own communities, and that is happening all round the country. There are too many examples and not enough time to go through them all but I will say, as has the Prime Minister, that there are many Indigenous people around Australia who do not make the headlines but who are quietly making a difference, making fundamental changes in their own communities.

As Australians we need to be committed to closing the gap. It is as simple as that. As a nation we can never really hold our heads up high until we have achieved this. Ninety-one per cent of non-Indigenous Australians and 100 per cent of Indigenous Australians surveyed by Reconciliation Australia said that the relationship between the two peoples is important to this country. Ten years ago, in May, 250,000 Australians walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge, and 750,000 people around the country, in support of reconciliation. Ten years along, there remains a long journey ahead of us to lift Indigenous outcomes in health, housing, schools and jobs. But as a government and as a people we can now see a path ahead and we are determined to move forward—not like the past, where it was non-Indigenous Australians seeking to lead Indigenous Australians, but instead walking together: First Australians alongside all Australians, towards a stronger and fairer Australian nation.

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