Natasha Griggs (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Lingiari should check the Hansard. If he checks the Hansard, he will actually see that I was not in the chamber and I did not vote to stop him from speaking about Gove. He needs to get his facts right. He is the only one who stopped a Territorian from speaking yesterday. I will repeat what I said yesterday: I want to emphasise my desire and the desire of this government to improve health outcomes and create employment opportunities for Indigenous people.

It is of great concern that, at any one time, there are a large number of people in Solomon who harm themselves through the combined effects of alcohol, poor diet and living rough. The impacts of this spill over into the suburbs of Darwin and Palmerston and seriously strain the resources of police, ambulance services and hospital and community service agencies and, more importantly, manifest themselves in appalling health outcomes for the people concerned. The Closing the Gap report provides a great deal of scrutiny of these health outcomes, but a visit to the waiting room at Royal Darwin Hospital shines a light on many of the issues that the Closing the Gap policy is seeking to address. Indigenous Territorians are overrepresented at the Royal Darwin Hospital and at any given time the main waiting area is host to a significant number of Aboriginal people seeking treatment for a range of injuries and ailments.

Along with the issue of alcohol, Indigenous people have substantially higher smoking rates than non-Indigenous Australians. The impact of this on their health is of course substantial and in many cases irreversible. In conjunction with targeting alcohol, smoking rates among Aboriginal people must also be substantially reduced. Clearly more work needs to be done in lowering the rates of Indigenous smoking, which run at around 52 per cent in the Territory and 48 per cent nationally, as opposed to the non-Indigenous rate of about 18 per cent. Smoking, like alcohol, is intergenerational and the government understands the importance of reducing smoking rates going forward. The Prime Minister's Closing the Gap report says:

Ensuring Indigenous adults are working is critical if Indigenous adults and their families are to enjoy better economic opportunities.

While the primary focus of Closing the Gap is on improving quality-of-life outcomes for Indigenous Australians, the achievement of these targets will have significant flow-on benefits to the national and Territory economies. Figures released recently by Deloitte Access Economics show that, if Indigenous disadvantage were overcome, the Northern Territory economy could grow by as much as 10 per cent and that, nationally, the economy would be $24 billion better off over the course of two decades. Tapping into this latent cohort of society in Solomon will have significant benefits all around.

I welcome the Prime Minister's announcement to report on school attendance in future Closing the Gap reports. As it has been said many times before, if children do not go to school, how can they learn? I am pleased that there will be more emphasis and transparency around school attendance, especially in regional and remote areas. Finally, I want to reiterate my commitment, and that of my community, to closing the gap.

See this speech in context