Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In noting the document entitled Closing the gap, I remain really pessimistic. I do not see a lot of evidence of the gap closing. And that really concerns me because my heart goes out to Indigenous Australia, looking at the severe disadvantage that exists in those communities. We have got to do more. A million words have been spoken about this. A million words have been written about it. All sorts of groups have had views—the do-gooders and the radicals; the Indigenous themselves—and little changes.

In my electorate I have Palm Island, an Indigenous community of about 4,000 people. If we do not do something, along the lines of what I am going to articulate to the parliament this afternoon, soon, Palm Island is going to be the same as it is now in another hundred years—and that is unacceptable. There are all these high-minded ideas and so on, but nothing changes.

I have always said that the ‘three Ls’ are important. They are, firstly, leadership from Indigenous Australians, and the will to follow leadership in the community; secondly, respect for law, order and governance—and that covers a plethora of things, from respect for the law and the police and so on to issues of domestic violence, and nepotism in how councils run these places; and, thirdly, land ownership. Until those three things are addressed, nothing is going to change; it just isn’t.

But I want to go one step further and tell the parliament how things can change. It is one of the very great privileges of members of parliament that you can travel. In the latter part of last year I drove the Plenty Highway. The Plenty Highway goes from Alice Springs over to Winton in Queensland, right across the centre of Australia—640 kilometres of dirt; you do not go to sleep, I can tell you! But along the way there are Indigenous communities in the middle of nowhere. I was travelling with Senator Ian Macdonald and we were promoting the great Outback Way, taking tourists from Townsville through to Perth, straight across the centre of Australia, and this was part of the great Outback Way.

We called in to an Indigenous community for breakfast, because we had started in Alice Springs early in the morning. As I said, this was in the middle of nowhere. We found this takeaway place in the back of the community. My instant instinct was to think, ‘This community is clean and tidy—looks right.’ When we found the takeaway it was a white woman who was running the thing, but all of her labour was Indigenous. The takeaway shop, kitchen, whatever, was as clean as a new pin. The way the shop operated was like you would see a shop operating anywhere that had good customer service. The prices were good, too, and the quality of the food was fantastic.

I said to this lady, ‘How long have you been working in Indigenous Australia?’ She said, ‘All my life. I wouldn’t live anywhere else.’ I said, ‘I am a member of parliament; you are a person who has lived in Indigenous communities all your life. You see the tremendous disadvantage and problems in Indigenous communities—what is the solution?’ She said, ‘It’s easy, but nobody listens.’ It was only two sentences, and it was pretty confronting. She went on, ‘Forget the current generation; you’ll never change them.’ That was a bit confronting! She said, ‘Get to the kids—get them to school, keep them at school and educate them.’ And further, ‘That will change Indigenous Australia for the better, forever. It’s long term, it’ll be generational, but you’ve got to start somewhere.’

I have a feeling deep down that she is right because, when you talk to principals in Indigenous schools, they will tell you the same thing. They will tell you how important it is for Indigenous students to go to school and to stay at school. In addition to all of the things that the parliament does for Indigenous Australia, perhaps we need to do much more in relation to getting the kids to go to school and to stay at school. Indigenous Australians are just as capable as any other Australian at succeeding in and contributing to life. If you go to the James Cook Medical School in Townsville you will see that, in every medical school intake, there are four Indigenous students. None of them fail. They make fantastic doctors. They go out into their own community and look after it. They can do it. All of us in our time have met really capable and impressive Indigenous leaders. But there can be more of them and there has to be more of them. I charge the parliament to think about what I have said today. I charge the parliament to think a little bit longer term, to strip away all of those who would say that this is racially discriminatory or that we should be able to make our own decisions, and to actually do something. Deputy Speaker, we can close the gap.

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