Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

There is no doubt that in this place there is a very strong bipartisan aspiration for a better future for Indigenous Australians. This report is a very important contribution to our understanding of the current state of play. The concerning aspect of the report that is being debated today is how we have stood still on many indicators for Aboriginal Australians and, in some instances, how far we have gone backwards.

This report is focused on young people and their contact with the criminal justice system. I think it is very revealing to refer directly to the report, where it says:

Tragically, indigenous juveniles and young adults are more likely to be incarcerated today than at any other time since the release of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody final report in 1991.

It goes on to say:

This rise has occurred despite increased funding and the concern and efforts of community members, government officials, non-government organisations and the judiciary around Australia.

Specifically, the detention rate for Indigenous juveniles is 397 per 100,000 people, which is 28 times higher than the rate for non-Indigenous juveniles, which is only 14 per 100,000. The report goes on to say:

In 2007, Indigenous juveniles accounted for 59 percent of the total juvenile detention population.

This is very alarming indeed. It is very alarming to note just how significant this issue has become for young Indigenous Australians.

You can only consider this issue, however, when you look at the reasons behind it and the resultant behaviours. There is a picture that is painted by this report that these very high levels of incarceration reflect other problems—problems related to the breakdown in family relationships and the dysfunction of many family relationships, the lack of significant role models in Indigenous communities, the breakdown in social relationships within the community, health disadvantages and the terrible health statistics that belie the fact that we are a First World country. In fact, shockingly, the health statistics that are revealed indicate that we are on par with many Third World countries when we look to Indigenous health standards. There are issues of education and the fact that we have so many Indigenous Australians who are simply not attending school. There are also issues around housing, employment and economic opportunity.

There is much that is very worthy in the contributions made in this report but the fact remains that for nearly every government department that is involved with the Closing the Gap initiative that has been brought forward by this government there is very little data collection and coordination in the programs that are being put forward. The government is very focused on spending money but it is not particularly focused on the outcomes that are being delivered. It is my view that we must monitor very carefully and closely the outcomes of all programs and analyse the results so that successful programs can be expanded and those that are not successful can be modified or, in some cases, discontinued if they prove not to be worthy.

Noel Pearson, who is a very significant Indigenous leader, has for many, many years been critical in this debate about achieving better outcomes for Indigenous Australians, not only by identifying the problems, but by thinking in a very innovative way about some of the solutions. In doing so, he has challenged the philosophical orthodoxy on which a lot of the programs and government solutions to date have been based. I want specifically to look at education and the school attendance rate for Indigenous children. We know, looking at the figures, that on average attendance is less than 60 per cent and in remote communities it reaches barely 50 per cent. These children are being left behind.

In particular, I turn to the recommendations that this report has made regarding school and community relationships. Recommendation 16—and I do not propose to read all of it—specifically focuses on the importance of flying an Aboriginal and/or a Torres Strait Islander flag alongside the Australian flag within school grounds; learning about Indigenous sites of significance in the local area; incorporating an acknowledgement of country at the start of significant events as well as school assemblies; using local Indigenous language names for school classrooms or sporting houses and teams; celebrating Mabo Day, NAIDOC Week, Reconciliation Week and Harmony Day—it goes on. But what it does not talk about specifically is increasing what are, in my view, core skills of numeracy and literacy and equipping students today with the skills they are going to need to be fully engaged in realising the economic opportunities that are available to them as members of the broader Australian community. I think that this is a significant problem. While the other recommendations I refer to may be very worthy, they are not going to make a significant difference to the educational experiences and outcomes for Indigenous Australians. I think we need to be a lot stronger. Parents need to send their children to school or face income penalties. We know already that many parents are not prosecuted when in fact they do not send their children to school.

Noel Pearson has talked about the success of a number of programs that have been developed in Cape York. He has talked in particular about educational scholarships for students to be educated, sometimes outside the community. The results with those programs and educational scholarships have been quite outstanding, and I think we need to very seriously consider whether this is something that the government should be looking very closely at.

Noel Pearson has also talked, significantly, about mutual obligation, about the culture of personal responsibility and about empowerment for the individual and for the community. I think these are the values that should be the touchstones that shape Indigenous policy now and into the future.

It is very clear that an integrated approach to Indigenous policy is required. We need to look carefully at the way in which schools and education policy interact with broader employment and economic policy and with the health initiatives that are being put forward as well as at the support we provide to families in Indigenous communities. We all want Indigenous children and Indigenous people in this country to be equipped to participate fully in the many opportunities a country like ours has to offer.

We in the coalition have been particularly strong on these issues. While we might not always have been perfect in the response that we provided, we have made and will continue to make the hard decisions, such as the Northern Territory intervention, to tackle problems that we know exist, such as alcohol abuse and gambling. We will also continue to provide support to parents to get children to school and work with families and communities to remove hurdles that prevent school attendance. It is incumbent upon us as members in this place to break the cycle of expectation that young Indigenous people end up in detention and jail. We need to do this by attacking the problems at their core. We must do this together and as a matter of urgency.

See this speech in context