David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

For this MPI, I would just like to place on record that I fully support the Closing the Gap process. The coalition fully supports the Closing the Gap process. From the Prime Minister down, there is enormous commitment, which is long lasting and not a blow-in event. There is a long personal commitment by the PM to this process.

We all want to improve the health and life expectancy of our Aboriginal citizens, but with a 10-year gap it is closing slowly. That is a cause of great disappointment, particularly with last year's figures, but we need to take a reality check. It will take a generation. It is not going to happen over a year or two. A lot of these health figures will persist, because there is a lot of disease in existence already. You only have to look at diabetes and renal failure amongst central Australian Aboriginals.

The other reality check that I call on the House to make is that the federal government cannot do it all. We can do what we can do, and the current coalition government is committing an awful lot of taxpayers' dollars to it, but it goes beyond money being spent. It has to be spent well, spent effectively and not wasted. This year alone, there is $1.4 billion allocated to Indigenous health strategy out of $3.1 billion over the term of this government. There is a total of $4.9 billion in the Indigenous Advancement Strategy and, in this first funding round, $860 million.

So not only should communities and individuals buy into the process; if a problem exists now with a lot of diseases like diabetes that are caused by obesity, we need a change in behaviour, and that does not happen overnight. It is going to have to start at a very early age, by keeping families together; developing parenting skills; dietary change; school attendance; a long-term commitment to nutrition; avoidance of smoking over a lifetime; and avoiding solvent abuse, which unfortunately is too common among youth in some of these communities. Diabesity—diabetes caused by obesity—is a massive problem across all of Australia but is particularly evident amongst Aboriginal citizens.

Not only should governments buy into this but there are community groups that buy into it. There are a few in the Lyne electorate and around Australia that have a great track record. One of them that has worked well in Queensland, the Northern Territory, Western Australia and parts of New South Wales is the Clontarf Foundation. It uses sport as an Indigenous behaviour change encouragement principle, rather than the 'big stick' principle. It gets young Aboriginal men into school around sport. School attendance rates go up. School completion rates go up. Incarceration rates amongst the cohort that has been through Clontarf Foundation schools drops. Employment and training completion rates are higher than for those that have not been to it. So I thoroughly encourage those sorts of programs.

The Smith Family partners with families and mentors children to complete school. Things like that do not just happen in one year or two years; it takes a whole generation. There is in Taree a group that is trying to get a wraparound centre up and running so that we can train any families that are struggling with family and nutrition skills and health in little babies so that we get them even into preschool, because if they go to preschool for a year they do better at school. Again, a wraparound centre in Taree would be an excellent outcome, and I will continue to fight, with Rosemary Sinclair and others in the Taree community, to get that achieved. Just in this last funding round, $8.5 million over three years was announced to continue and increase the funding of the Biripi Aboriginal Medical Centre and $11.3 million for the Durri.

In terms of the constitutional change, there is a desire amongst both sides to get this issue resolved, but we need to know exactly whether it is a change to the preamble, removal of offending parts or just a separate mention to protect the identity and heritage. (Time expired)

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