Mal Brough (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

At the outset I commend both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition on their addresses to the parliament yesterday and their quite clearly genuine commitment to this process. I would like to also reiterate, make very clear and put on the public record in this place my strong and unequivocal support for appropriate recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in our Constitution. My hope and wish is that the Australian public come together as one and celebrate the 40,000 years of Indigenous heritage on this land.

I also want to acknowledge, I guess, a journey that I have been on. I have always been one who very much believes in practical steps to overcome practical problems, and I will delve into those a little more in a moment. I felt—and I think that perhaps I was correct in this—that the weight was too much on symbolism. Whilst important measures such as walking across the Harbour Bridge were powerful measures of symbolism, they certainly did not help a child hurt in a town camp in Alice Springs tonight or at any other time. But I have come to realise that they are important. They are not a solution—and those Australians who perhaps have thought they were enough are wrong—but they should not be derided or belittled. Hence I think that the contribution that both the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister made yesterday, in committing both sides of the parliament to ensuring that there is appropriate recognition, is a major step forward. It allows us to get on with the business of helping our fellow Australians, regardless of the colour of their skin, to prosper in this wealthy nation of ours.

An enormous amount of time and effort has been expended in the last little while on education, and that is appropriate. I had the privilege of running a national charity called Bluearth in my absence from this place. We worked with black and white right across this country, from the most remote parts of Australia to the capital cities. It was a human movements program that built resilience and respect and taught people how to have confidence in themselves and accept challenges. It helped kids to go to school, to stay at school, to be connected and to enjoy their school experience. We have heard the Prime Minister and others—including, for argument's sake, the member for Blair, the shadow minister, just now—using words and phrases such as 'hopes', 'dreams' and 'aspirations'. We heard the member for Blair say how the Labor Party in their last term instigated a program of early childhood learning. All of these things are positive. But they are missing a crucial element that no-one is talking about.

I would like everyone in this place and anyone who listens to this today to consider this circumstance. I am a father and now a grandfather. You say to your children: 'An education is important. It equips you for life. It gives you a great array of opportunities that may not be there if you do not study, if you do not get decent grades, if you don't get a tertiary education or a vocational education.' But why do we do that? We want to get those things so that we can have personal self-esteem; so that we can contribute to our own wellbeing and the wellbeing of our family; so that we can aspire to own our own home, or at least to live in a rented place that we choose to have; or perhaps so that we can own our own business, small or large.

Now let me put you into the circumstances of the people at Billiluna or Wadeye—or at Aurukun, as was spoken about yesterday. You can go and do your early years education. You can learn a passion for reading, and that is wonderful. You can go into primary school and high school. But, if you actually aspire to remain in the community that you love, were brought up in and have a connection with through your Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander heritage, you cannot have anything but a limited public-sector job. There are no private sector jobs. I think this is something that is so foreign to most Australians that they do not understand that it comes down to land tenure issues.

Unless we are going to grapple with those issues that allow microbusinesses to commence and with what makes Australia great—which is for people to be able to become educated, to fight for themselves, to become independent, to start their own business or to work as an apprentice and get a job, and then to make their own way in the world—those opportunities will not exist, as they do not exist now in hundreds and hundreds of communities throughout Australia. For instance, Wadeye is a community of 3,000 people. There are no commercial bakers. There is no commercial real estate agent. There are no commercial restaurants. There are no commercial businesses, full stop. So where are the microbusiness opportunities? Where are the apprenticeship opportunities? Yes, there are opportunities for Landcare, for government jobs, or for working in government-funded aged care or child care. But, if we relied upon those opportunities in mainstream society, most young Australians would never get a chance.

So I am very much confronting the parliament with the reality that what we have done is to lock over 150,000 Australians out of our economy. We tell them to love their land, to respect their people, to want to be part of their community, to grow their community and to get an education, but we then deny them the rights that the rest of us have: to aspire to own a home in their own community, to invest through their own hard work and the sweat of their brow in their own community, and to have a job or, better still, to start their own business. They simply cannot do it. So, until we confront the reality that the hopes and the aspirations cannot be realised in these communities, we are actually setting people up for failure, or we are saying to them: 'Leave the place that you are connected with.' These are the hard realities. These are the harsh realities. But these are the missing elements that we are not confronting.

There are a myriad of things which all good members in this place will touch on in this debate: heartfelt, needed, committed—it is all there. But we need to actually grapple with decisions that were taken in good faith. I take you to the APY lands and the celebration that that community had when they won the right to have inalienable freehold on a piece of land bigger than the Northern Territory. They thought that was going to help them reach their hopes and aspirations, but it has not, because no-one can own the land—it is owned collectively, so there can be no value for an individual that comes out of the land, and therefore banks will not invest in them. So we trap people. We trap people in a false dream, and then we wonder why, at 13, 14 and 15, young people leave the education system—because, if they have seen someone that has aspired to and gone through to year 12, they do not see them getting anywhere; they cannot see the connection, unless they have moved away.

So I ask parliamentarians collectively to open their eyes, their ears and their minds to the need for us to have an honest dialogue with these communities. When you go there, which I have done as much if not more than any person in this place, as a parliamentarian and in post-parliamentary life, what you will hear is: 'We want to work. We want a job. We want our own home.' But the understanding that that is simply not a reality in their communities is lacking.

I put the challenge out there: recognise that free enterprise is essential—that the people of Aurukun, Willunga, Wadeye, Mimili, Balgo and myriads of other communities will not have the chances enjoyed by other young Australians who get a preschool education and can aspire to live in their own communities. Let us start that dialogue and let us be honest with people now. The challenge is long, but we should never put it off to the next generation. More can be done and should be done today to make sure that justice reigns supreme in this nation for all of us.

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