Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to commend the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition for their fine speeches in parliament in relation to Closing the Gap targets, delivered annually. Across Australia, according to Reconciliation Australia, governments spend about $25 billion a year on programs aimed at closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. But, sadly, the trust between both groups is still too low, and there is still perceived prejudice between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Nearly half of all Australians believe it is harder to achieve success if you are an Indigenous person.

But we have seen some improvements. We have seen betterment of our Indigenous brothers and sisters, but it has been too slow—painfully slow. We have seen reconciliation action plans initiate so many improvements in the lives of people, and I commend those companies—there are currently about 358 organisations with reconciliation action plans. These are focused on employment, Indigenous business and education, and there are even pro bono organisations. There are others concerned with cultural competency. It is known that reconciliation action plans improve the contact between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The attitudes—the pride, the prejudice—will go. And they improve trust. As the Chair of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs in the House of Representatives, along with the deputy chair, the member for Murray, I have written to the presiding officers because there is no reconciliation action plan in this parliament. We are urging the presiding officers to think of a reconciliation action plan for this particular place.

There are a number of other things I want to say, but first I want to mention the fine speech by the former Attorney-General, the member for Barton, and commend him on his 25th Lionel Murphy lecture: 'Vigilance against injustice in the justice system'. As I heard him speaking tonight I recognised the tenor of that speech. I commend to those who may be listening, and to other members, this fantastic speech by the former Attorney-General in relation to the challenges regarding the injustice that is experienced by Indigenous Australians.

When we did the Doing time—time for doing report we discovered, as the member for Barton said, that in the 20 years since the final report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody the condition and situation for Indigenous Australians has got worse. Indigenous juveniles are 28 times as likely to be in detention as non-Indigenous juveniles. Indigenous juveniles make up more than one-half of the detainee population on any given day in Australia. Indigenous young adults are 15 times as likely to be in prison as non-Indigenous young adults. Sadly, the dysfunction continues across generations: poverty, despair and despondency—simply the expectation that as a rite of passage you would visit and live with your parents and grandparents in incarceration premises.

We made many recommendations in our report. These were motivated by the prisoner census data, which show that between 2000 and 2010 the number of Indigenous men and women in custody increased by 55 per cent in the case of men and 47 per cent in the case of women, and also that if you were an Indigenous woman you were 35 times as likely to be hospitalised by partner abuse as a non-Indigenous woman.

We made many recommendations to the government: endorsing justice targets that states and territories in the Commonwealth could come to, supporting an inclusion of safe community building blocks, and also putting serious money towards getting agreement across the jurisdictions for this. We also recognised the social norms that impacted families and communities through mentoring, sport and recreation: the fact that there were fewer people able to be mentors to Indigenous boys particularly; the fact that FASD—foetal alcohol spectrum disorder—was such a curse, particularly in Indigenous communities. I commend to the government the report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs, chaired by the member for Moreton, and its many recommendations in relation to FASD—a report which flowed from our Doing time report from the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs. I commend the many recommendations made. The idea that finally FASD be recognised as a registered disability—that is, a condition for eligibility for support services in health and education systems—is something which needs to be done in this country.

We also need to look at better alternatives to Indigenous young people entering the criminal justice system. We need a more holistic intervention. The New Zealanders had Maori youth courts. We have not got much empirical evidence across the Tasman, but we can certainly see that the anecdotal evidence supports alternative systems for Indigenous people. Sadly—I did not intend to make a political speech here—the Murri courts in my home state of Queensland have been closed down by the LNP state government. This is a terribly retrograde step, a really bad result for the Queensland community, and I think it is going to cost the Queensland community not only in dollars but also in social justice.

We need to make sure that we look at education. One of the things we discovered was that schools which were connected to Indigenous communities did better—their kids did better. A perfect example of that is in my community. We have a very large Indigenous community in Ipswich; we have Indigenous medical centres and schools, but Leichardt State School—Lee Gerchow is the principal there—is probably as well connected to its 25 per cent Indigenous school population as any other school in Ipswich. The school's improved results since its better connection with the Indigenous community are outstanding. We have put a lot of money in there—$723,000 recently for support programs, mentoring and cultural improvements—but that is because the school took the initiative; that is important. We should focus more upon that in our school communities. Simple things like amplification devices in schools—too many Indigenous young people cannot hear properly, and we need to think seriously about that; more school pools and better pools and recreation facilities in Indigenous communities. Things like alternative accommodation—we found that too often Indigenous people had nowhere to go so were kept in detention—and alternatives for bail so that they can get out. We do not have the data collection in this country to see the full extent of the challenges we face. The member for Barton, in his fine speech in the Lionel Murphy lecture, talks about these issues. The government has taken up many of these things that we have recommended, and I urge it to be more vigilant about those sorts of things.

One of the things that our committee has recommended—the government is yet to respond; it is to do with Closing the Gap—deals with a report called Our land our languages. We dealt with what Paul Keating said in his Redfern speech:

… bizarre conceit that this continent had no owners prior to the settlement of Europeans …

Mabo was a very controversial decision on 3 June 1992. At the time of white settlement in this country, there were 250 Indigenous languages; there are now only 18 viable Indigenous languages in this country spoken across all generations. We have not done enough maintenance on the revitalisation of Indigenous languages. There is so much more that we can do.

In our report Our land our languages, we made an number of recommendations, including the recommendation to:

… include in the Closing the Gap framework acknowledgement of the fundamental role and importance of Indigenous languages in preserving heritage and improving outcomes for Indigenous peoples.

We have recommended twice now—twice—a national Indigenous interpreter service. We did it in our Doing time report—it had been done 20 years before in a previous parliamentary report—and we did it again in Our land our languages. We recommended to the government a national interpreter service, and I urge the government to think about this. Too many people go to jail, too many people get poor diagnoses on health outcomes—go to the Northern Territory and you will find this—and too many kids have an inadequate education because we have not got a national interpreter service. We need that, and we have recommended it to the government in the Our land our languages and Doing time reports.

We have, through the Doing time report, come up with another inquiry—it is underway and we are going to report in May—that is, the role of sport in closing the gap. The participation rate in sport for non-Indigenous Australians is 74.3 per cent, while, sadly, it is only 65.5 per cent for Indigenous Australians. The difference is even worse for Indigenous women. The reality is that not enough sporting organisations have reconciliation plans. The evidence we have heard in the public hearings is that the AFL and the NRL are doing a great job; they are doing great work. Some of the sporting organisations, at our public hearings and on the public record, could not even tell us how many Indigenous people play their sports. They could not tick a box; they could not tell us what efforts they were making to help Indigenous young people. There is not enough sporting equipment—not enough barbells and dumbbells, tennis courts, pools, football fields and basketball courts, not enough basketballs and footballs—and sporting organisations just go in there, fly-in fly-out, do a clinic, and then go away and leave these people on their own again.

Not enough effort is being made in sport to close the gap. I look forward to our report and deliberations. I expect it to be a bipartisan report, as were the other two. The member for Murray has been a tremendous advocate in this area; we have worked very closely on this issue. I expect some very strong recommendations from this committee in relation to this issue, but we have a lot to do. It is not just about plucking elite athletes from Far North Queensland and the Northern Territory to go and play in the NRL and the AFL; there is a lot more that we can do.

The member for Dunkley mentioned business. We are doing a lot in helping business. In my area, we have an Indigenous Business Enterprise Centre established with seed funding from DEEWR—federal government funding. We have seen 85 Indigenous people go into full-time work in 18 months in my community; the Ipswich Business Enterprise Centre has an Indigenous focus as well. I want to give an example of a particular individual. I am proud to say I have his painting of honey ants in my electorate office. His name is Robin 'Tallman' Wakkajinda and he is a local artist. He had drug problems and he had alcohol problems. He comes from Gayndah, from the Wakka Wakka Jinda tribe. He is a mentor. This fellow is a fantastic artist. He has turned his life around with the support of the local IBEC. He is a business success. I was pleased to be there with the Mayor of Ipswich, Paul Pisasale, to help open Robin's exhibition of his paintings at the Old Ipswich Courthouse. They are brilliant. I have seen this fellow go around with young Indigenous people in my community. They love him. Sadly, he is disabled in his hand, but he is one of the most brilliant artists you could ever see. His artwork sells for lots of money and he has turned his life around. He is a business success. He has talent, and with the support of great people like Clive Pearce, from the Ipswich Business Enterprise Centre, he has succeeded. This is the sort of help that we can provide.

The funding was given via a flexible funding pool to develop and pilot a unique enterprise program in Ipswich. This is an Australian-first initiative, and that is what we have got to do. I am all for rights, but we have got to have responsibility as well. People have got to pick themselves up. We can give them a helping hand to do that and we have got to get them on their way. We live in a free enterprise economy. People want to develop their talents and their dreams and their potential, and 'Tallman' is a perfect example. If we do this across the country, the member for Dunkley will be proved wrong. We can do it. We should fund it. Have a look at those reports. We should support the likes of the IBEC in Ipswich with additional funding. It is an Australian first. This should be a prototype for Indigenous business enterprise centres across the country. We should do it. I commend the Closing the Gap target. This will help in closing the gap if we do it across the country.

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