Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is an absolute waste—but that is closing the gap!—because they cannot afford to put a renal nurse in there to look after these people in their home communities.

I talked about $22 million to fix six communities where 40-year-old seawalls have started to deteriorate to a point where every year houses are getting washed out. There is sewage, the water systems are being contaminated and kids are getting diarrhoea, Japanese encephalitis and the like. We are faced with the challenge. If nothing is done these people will have to be forcefully removed from their communities and we will have to find somewhere else for them to live. They are not going to like that. These people are standing on the edge of Saibai and watching their cemetery washed into the sea; about a third of it has already been washed into the sea. And they still will not spend the money to fix these walls. That is not closing the gap.

Take funding for even simple programs, like the $250,000 to Apunipima Cape York Health Council. They wanted the money, and we actually committed it at the last election. This was funding to pick up people from remote communities who desperately needed help in the medical system in Cairns because the services were not available in their remote communities, provide a bus service, take them to their medical appointments and then back to the bus. It would have cost $250,000 to run this service for a year. These people have not got the money to come down; if they do get down, they spend their money on taxi fares, run out of money and cannot get back, so they end up on the streets. They cannot afford to do it. These are the sorts of things to talk about: funding Apunipima to bring these people safely to their appointments to get treated for medical conditions. Many of them will not even come out of the communities because they know they cannot get back. That is closing the gap!

We have the Bushlight program up there. I had a look at that recently. It is an absolutely sensational program, a highly successful program. It is putting in alternative power. We are talking about carbon trading and the greenhouse effect. Here we have a group, the Centre for Appropriate Technology, that has been going in and putting in hybrid green systems at remote outstations. I have 12 of them in Cape York. People are escaping from mainstream communities into these outstations so that they can have a much better quality of life—and, of course, get away from the grog, the violence and all the rest of it. They are looking to expand that program significantly. Funding that is closing the gap. But no hope—at this stage there is no commitment for that money whatsoever.

Douglas House, the Aborigines and Islanders Alcohol Relief Service in Cairns, has 20 beds. People enter voluntarily and pay for themselves to stay there for alcohol rehabilitation. The Rose Collis Haven in Mareeba has another 22 beds. They were defunded by this federal Labor government. They are sitting empty at the moment. While we have alcoholics sleeping in the streets, these purpose-built places are sitting empty. That is not closing the gap. At Rose Collis Haven a year or so ago they had just completed a 20-bed Indigenous aged-care facility—brand, spanking new and not a bed has ever been slept in. The only things living in those rooms are the spiders and cobwebs. That is not closing the gap, I have got to tell you. It is unbelievable that that type of attitude exists.

We talk about putting your hand on your heart and saying, ‘We are committed to Indigenous people,’ yet all of the initiatives put up by Indigenous people to have real impacts and make positive changes in their lives—whether it be education, health, opportunity for private enterprise, or whether it be an opportunity just to build a better community—get knocked back every time. This federal government is only interested in pouring bucketloads of money in, getting recognised for the amount of money they spend, while they are feeding self-serving bureaucracies that have absolutely no interest of making sure that the programs are economically or socially successful. I fear that the reason for this is that as these communities start to get economically or socially successful or independent, these bureaucracies would lose the opportunity for this government funding. So while they have them totally reliant, they are quite happy. While you have governments feeding the self-serving bureaucracies, they can claim that they have that commitment because they are pouring bucketloads of money into it, but at the end of the day the people out there in the communities continue to suffer and to be totally frustrated by the fact that no matter what they put up, they are totally ignored. I think that it is an absolute tragedy, and I think this government needs to hang its head in shame and start looking seriously at making some real difference to these communities. At this stage the problem is only getting worse.

Debate (on motion by Mr Stephen Jones) adjourned.

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