Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to speak to the report Doing time—time for doing. I congratulate and place on the record today my deepest esteem for my parliamentary colleagues on the House Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs who have produced this report, particularly the chair, the member for Blair, the deputy chair, the member for Murray, and all of the other committee members.

It is quite tragic to be standing here today as a long-time member of parliament talking about the same things we were talking about 15 or more years ago. It is a tragedy that we still have to have a report that has to delve into these particular issues of Indigenous youth in the criminal justice system in Australia. It highlights the appalling overrepresentation of Indigenous youth in detention right around this great country of ours. While Indigenous Australians make up only a very small percentage of the population—about 2.5 per cent—25 per cent of prisoners are Indigenous.

Various members before me have spoken about the report, about the 110 submissions that were received and about the very important 40 recommendations that were made to government. My colleagues found during the inquiry that a disproportionately high number of Indigenous young adults are caught up in the criminal justice system. It is an absolute travesty in this day and age that we have this major challenge confronting us here in this place and in communities all around Australia. Indigenous youth are 28 times more likely to offend and be incarcerated today than at any other time since the final report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody was released in 1991. One of my assistants in Queensland at the time worked on that particular report. The devastating stories that she would tell me haunt me to this day. It was her role to assist the commissioner in obtaining evidence. It is sad that we are here 20 years later and we still have this incredible rise in Indigenous youth in detention despite the work of numerous government agencies, hundreds of community organisations, community elders and many other active volunteers.

I had a business life before I came into this place. I taught at a university. One of my saddest regrets when I was teaching students in the business school at the Queensland University of Technology was that I never encountered one student of Indigenous nationality. I would have Chinese students and African students. I would have students from every corner of the globe, but never once did I have the privilege of teaching a student from an Indigenous background. It is really sad when we look at the dropout rates. Many of the speakers today have spoken about the horrific dropout rates and nonattendance at school. There are people who are much more knowledgeable than I about this. One of our whips here, the member for Forrest, has a large Indigenous community. Earlier on we heard from Barry Haase, the member for Durack. He has a large number of Indigenous people in his electorate. We really need to do a lot more here. Education is where it really needs to start.

Just a year or so ago I had an important project in my own business. I had a retail seafood business, and I recognised some outstanding qualities in our assistant manager, who was of Indigenous background. I decided that I would work with her to be the best assistant manager that she could possibly be. But you have to take a holistic approach. There were issues of lack of good nutrition and work standards that we addressed. I think that was probably one of my greatest failings as an employer. While we worked very, very hard to get consistent attendance at work and we worked on some of the social aspects that were affecting her life as well as the nutritional aspects and also the lack of educational opportunities that she had had earlier, I am sad to say that I failed in my quest because it was beyond me. As much as one can help in all of those areas, there are some cultural issues that are stumbling blocks, and we need to address those. They are stopping business people from achieving their best potential. One of my greatest regrets is that we could not go any further there and I sincerely wish her the very best in whatever she endeavours to do in her life. But literacy was clearly an issue with my assistant manager. Whilst literacy issues are higher in Indigenous populations, they will not allow Indigenous people to go on to further education and to be skilled in the best possible way. We need to really work on that.

The report that we are talking about today deals with contact with the criminal justice system. It presents a whole range of problems for Indigenous youth in Australia. The report highlights the sad fact that Indigenous kids are more likely to come into contact with the police and the criminal justice system than non-Indigenous kids. Once you get into that terrible cycle it is hard to break, and it is a self-fulfilling cycle. The report identified a link between the overrepresentation of Indigenous youth in the criminal justice system and social factors. We have to look at these much more seriously. We have to look at educational levels, as I mentioned just earlier. We have to look at levels of alcohol and drug use, hearing loss and all of those self-esteem issues as well. The combination of all of those things in Indigenous youth has led to the outcome of this particular report.

The report also recommended a host of activities designed to address these problems and to reduce the level of incarceration. I note particularly that there is a lack of a holistic approach. Just as I tried to take a holistic approach in my workplace, I think we need to do that. We need to have better pathways for Indigenous people out there in the community. We have to take an absolutely holistic approach if we are to address these issues. The 40 recommendations outline a very clear strategy for improving positive social norms. They look at things like improving education and addressing employment, health issues and housing. The report also outlined the need for improvement in government policy on police education and training. We need to have more Indigenous police officers. I welcome the fact that state governments have increased the number of Indigenous officers, and we in Queensland have led the way there as well.

Indigenous kids aspire to the same things as their non-Indigenous counterparts. They want a good job. They want to feel great about themselves. They want to spend money on things that they see on TV, just like other kids, and they want to spend money on themselves. They get frustrated sometimes at not being able to attain these things by legitimately being employed and sometimes, sadly, they turn to offending. They see that as the only way to address these same aspirations that we all have.

Much has been written and much has been said. Many speakers before me have highlighted this tragedy and many, many millions of dollars have been spent to tackle the problem, and yet the rate of incarceration continues to rise. There appears to be a lot of short-term funding. I am not knocking some of the programs—they are very good programs—but sometimes they do not get to fully achieve their aims because they are such short-term programs.

The report also noted that there is a lack of clear targets and outcomes in programs aimed at reducing youth in detention. I want to take this opportunity to highlight one program that has very clear goals and aims. I want to commend Project 10%, which was launched last month in my electorate of Brisbane. Unfortunately, due to parliamentary commitments in Canberra I was not able to be there, but I really follow the project with interest. While Project 10% was officially launched last month, it is the result of many years of hard work and many dedicated volunteers. Project 10% is a campaign aimed at reducing Indigenous incarceration rates by 10 per cent per year. This project recently won the community partnership awards in the Queensland reconciliation awards. I congratulate them wholeheartedly on this wonderful achievement. I want to thank everyone who is involved in that program. Project 10% was sponsored by McCullough Robertson solicitors and is a collaboration between ANTaR Queensland, Murri Watch and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women's Legal and Advocacy Service, ATSIWLAS. It is a community based project, has clear goals and is served by a group of amazing and willing volunteers. I applaud the work of Project 10%.

I commend this report and its recommendations. It highlights that an incredible amount of work needs to be done in the areas of health, education, the intervention and housing, but it also highlights that we need to really try to reverse the terrible scenario of Indigenous incarceration in our legal system. I thank the committee for their very thorough and dedicated work on this report. I commend the report.

Debate adjourned.

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