Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The sum of $534.4 million has been ripped away from Indigenous programs in the government's budget. To make the situation is made worse, the government has provided no details or information. There is a single table on page 185 of Budget Paper No. 2. There is no detail, no explanation, no idea. Weeks later and the government has still been unable to explain the cuts, and service providers, their staff and clients will have to wait six to 12 months in limbo. I trust the parliamentary secretary takes note and that he is more enlightened than the Minister for Indigenous Affairs who claimed in Senate estimates on 30 May 2014 that $½ billion in cuts was merely an efficiency dividend. It was exposed as a feeble and false claim, when the minister's own department was forced to admit during estimates that the money was, in fact, direct cuts to programs. Can the parliamentary secretary confirm one was or the other that these are not efficiency dividends; these are programmatic cuts? If it is, however, an efficiency dividend, can the parliamentary secretary explain why Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are subject to an efficiency dividend of 4.5 per cent, which is much higher than the 2.5 per cent efficiency dividend that this government has applied across departments, agencies and portfolios? What evidence is the parliamentary secretary able to produce to justify the minister's claim that the money is not being taken away from frontline services, as he claimed to David Speers in the Sky News Agenda program on 28 May.

This week the Prisoner Throughcare Program, funded through the NATSIL in New South Wales and the ACT, had its program funding cut by $½ million a year. Workers were told two weeks out that they would lose their jobs. Can the parliamentary secretary explain how this is not a frontline service? Can the parliamentary secretary explain why the government has cut funding for successful programs which help combat recidivism, when Indigenous incarceration rates are much worse than ever before? And the trend is going up. A total of $160 million has been cut from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health programs. Could the minister explain in detail which services are being cut? Could the minister detail what the assumed impact of the Medicare co-payment measure will be on budgets of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community controlled health services? What services will need to be cut if these health services are expected to absorb the costs of the co-payment? Who does the minister or the parliamentary secretary believe could absorb the co-payment for other services directed by the medical practitioner for the patient? Does the parliamentary secretary accept that if the co-payment—described as 'a demand reduction measure' by the Prime Minister—is not absorbed by the health services that many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will choose not to get treatment? What are the estimates of the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who will take this option? Does the parliamentary secretary accept that this is an impairment to Closing the Gap and to addressing chronic disease?

Does the parliamentary secretary consider the COAG Reform Council, which was abolished in the budget, as unnecessary red tape? The council reports independently on progress on Closing the Gap and the National Partnership Agreements. The budget papers suggest that it may become the responsibility of PM&C to report on themselves now that the COAG Reform Council has been axed. Can the parliamentary secretary confirm what or who will be the independent mechanism for monitoring and reporting on inter-governmental action to close the gap? Will these reports be publicly available? Or will this be simply a continuation of the alarming trend in the diminution of transparency and accountability of the government?

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