Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) acknowledges the concern of Aboriginal Western Australians about the sustainability of their remote communities in the wake of the withdrawal of municipal and essential services funding and the need to plan for members of those communities after the withdrawal of funding;

(2) recognises that local government authorities have not been consulted in any meaningful way by the Government of Western Australia on this change in responsibility and they are deeply concerned that seven months is not sufficient to make workable alternative arrangements; and

(3) calls on the Australian Government to delay the withdrawal of funding from this program until 1 July 2016.

For more than 35 years the Commonwealth has accepted responsibility for funding critical infrastructure in remote communities through the Municipal and Essential Services Program, known as MUNS. The original purpose of this program was to supplement the efforts of the states, territories and local government to deliver municipal services to Indigenous people, particularly in remote communities where, quite simply, mainstream municipal services were not available. The federal government has now determined that it is simply going to walk away from this responsibility, hand a bucket of short-term funding to a number of the state governments and simply wash its hands of all responsibility.

There is grave disquiet throughout the Pilbara and the Kimberley in Western Australia and to a lesser extent in the Goldfields. Western Australia is the community most affected by this decision. In Western Australia we have around 204 permanent remote Indigenous communities, with a population of over 12,000 people, and 164 of those communities rely on this MUNS funding in many instances to provide the basic services of power, water, rubbish disposal and sewerage.

There has been absolutely no consultation with the Aboriginal communities. The Aboriginal communities are deeply aggrieved by what has happened here—firstly, by the federal government simply walking away from their responsibility and, secondly, by the approach that has been taken by the state government. The state government have taken the equivalent of three years funding for this project. After that all funding will cease. The state government's approach has been very clear. They expect that there will be a significant number of communities that will close. Indeed, it has been suggested that up to 150 communities will close.

This has caused extreme angst throughout the Aboriginal communities and within local government. I want to outline some of the concerns. When this announcement was made and the Premier indicated that up to 150 communities may well close there were lots of protests. The local governments received an email on 25 November saying that the department of local government would be advising that there would be a meeting of local government planning committees on the municipal service implementation. To date—and we are less than five months from D-day—there have been no terms of reference developed, there has been no committee called and no committee has met. So we have got five months before D-day—before these contracts that have been issued by the Commonwealth cease to apply—and there has been nothing put in place.

Of course the Aboriginal communities are distraught. I met this morning with Michelle Nelson-Cox, who chairs the Aboriginal Health Council of Western Australia. She with many senior people across Western Australia, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, recently put a letter in the paper talking about how outrageous it was that there was a suggestion that many of these small communities would be closed down.

The recent debate about funding to local Aboriginal communities does not recognise their importance to Aboriginal people or the cultural asset they are to both the state and the nation. The debate does not recognise the important role Aboriginal people play as custodians of the land and its conservation values. There is no doubt that improvements to services are needed in many communities but, given their importance to the health, the well-being and the continuing culture of Aboriginal people, governments should invest in these communities rather than simply withdraw services.

These concerns are echoed by local government. The Pilbara Regional Council on Friday in a discussion with me said that local government has still not been advised of any formal process to manage the Commonwealth exit from MUNS and is completely in the dark regarding services to be transitioned, time frames for transition and costs for both the transition into the future and community closures. Mixed messages are coming from the state government, and the federal government claim it is no longer their problem. The state government is in chaos on this point. (Time expired)

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