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

Before the member for Makin leaves, I want to preface my comments by stating that I do not doubt for a moment the genuine nature of his intent and nor that of the member who has just spoken. I do very much, though, want to draw his attention first of all to the comment he made about deaths in custody. It is really important that we do not continue to permeate and repeat misconceptions. The fact is that the royal commission on deaths in custody established very early on in the piece that there were no extra numbers or an additional percentage of Indigenous deaths in custody when compared with non-Indigenous. What should have been in the report is how we stop all deaths in custody. I will just leave that there.

As far as these other issues are concerned, I want to deal specifically with the provision of services in remote communities. I dealt with this as a minister. We looked at the time as to why the Commonwealth was involved in the provision of water, sewerage, electricity and rubbish collection. We are not in any other municipality, yet we are there. No-one could find, historically, through the department how the Commonwealth became involved. It is important we understand. The best we could come up with is that you had Commonwealth members of parliament across the political spectrum over a period of time lamenting the fact that state and territory governments had not done enough to look after and provide provision of services which is their responsibility through local governments. So, bit by bit, the Commonwealth became involved. Back when I was the minister, we started this process—I am not sure whether my predecessors had or not—but I know for a fact that the member for Jagajaga, who succeeded me as the minister, continued to try to find an answer to ensure that both Commonwealth and state were not involved in an area which is and should be simple to administer. That is why there have been arrangements made with South Australia, Queensland and WA, which is underway.

I make it very clear that no-one is suggesting that communities be closed down by the Commonwealth; quite the contrary. But unfortunately the member for Makin again repeated a statement we hear all the time: this is people's land; this is their homeland. This is a very emotive term: homeland. It brings to the mind that this is where me and my family and my ancestors were all brought up, but if you go to places in the Tanami Desert you will find that these communities were established in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Why? Because they were trying to remove the trouble, the problem, out of the bigger towns such as Kununurra and push them further afield. It was not because of care, love or affection; it was to get them out of sight and out of mind. We should not run away from the cold, hard reality that that is where those communities came from.

The member opposite talks about the deplorable level of health in the Indigenous communities—putting more money back into places which do not have an economic basis, where no-one can have a job, where you say to a child, 'Go to school, get an education and maybe even go on to university, but don't ever aspire to work in this community. Don't ever aspire to have a business in this community. You won't get an apprenticeship in this community, because the land tenure doesn't allow it.' So we actually set people up for failure. I repeat this message time and time again, because, until we are honest enough as politicians who sit on both sides of this chamber to have that conversation with people and say, 'Education does not leave you to being able to be self-sufficient in your own community you choose to live in,' we are living a lie and we are denying them the rights that every other Australian has.

The most disturbing comment I have heard in this debate today was from the person who has instigated this, the member for Makin. I know he does not mean ill by these comments, but he says that the concerns are that these people—Aboriginal Australians—will move from those communities to be fringe dwellers or long-grass dwellers, that they will clog up the jails and they will clog up the court system. That aspiration, that concern which looks like an aspiration, is where we go so horribly wrong. I aspire these people to do as Noel Pearson says: be able to live and hang onto their language—it is their right and their responsibility to do so, as so many other communities in Australia do—but also to have the rights and responsibilities to fend for themselves, to protect their families and to be safe. You do not do that by shutting down a community or by funding a community that is dysfunctional and having people living in the long grass around Tennant Creek, Alice Springs or any other place. When we do that, you, the members of the Labor Party and we the members of the Liberal Party, fail. So what we should do is look at this in a far more serious faction, community by community, seek out the answers with them—they are there—and take them on the journey with us. Debates about money miss the point. This is about people: people's past and people's future.

See this speech in context