Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I participate in this debate as someone from a metropolitan area, but also as someone who is proud to represent one of the largest Aboriginal populations in an urban environment in the country, in Chifley, which sits in Darug land but has become home to people of all different nations within the lands of the Darug. Whenever these types of discussions come before parliament, I will instantly want to be involved because of the fact that I represent so many but also the fact that I feel strongly about the types of issues that I believe prevent people in my area from reaching their full potential. I note here the presence of the member for Hasluck, who, along with other members, visited the area of Chifley earlier this year as the chair of the committee investigating the recognition of our first peoples in the nation's Constitution.

I want to deal with some of the things the previous speaker, the member for Fisher, touched upon, because, as much as this has an impact on, or is a focus on, remote communities, what happens is that people from other lands move into an urban setting. The issues, I feel, are bound by a common thread across a number of areas, be they education, which in some cases, if it is not strong enough, prevents people being able to exercise their economic opportunities and progress in their own way, being able to draw off a basis of skills. There are other issues as well, such as the support services that are required to help people maintain their potential.

The types of things we are concerned about are often in terms of when the Abbott government cut the IAS—the Indigenous Advancement Strategy. Suggestions were being put forward that this was being done for improvements or to cut out waste and inefficiencies—nearly half a billion in funding has been cut. If we are serious on a whole range of areas in dealing with the type of things that have prompted some of the comments that have been extended in this debate you cannot do it by sheer will alone. You need to have the resources to back it up, which is why I feel strongly when, for example, people rightly say, 'unfair, debacle, lack of consultation' as being the themes that have come out in the way that the Indigenous Advancement Strategy has been managed, and the way that the funding has been cut. You cannot do a serious job on this strategy if you are cutting the funding in the way it is being done. Critical front-line services have been held in limbo since the last budget—not this budget the last budget. There are organisations that are trying to negotiate new funding contracts more than a year since the actual strategy itself was implemented.

Withdrawing federal funding for municipal and essential services in remote communities is not only concerning for those areas. But, from my perspective, I worry about the downstream impact, particularly when 500 of the 964 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations that received funding see the way the program is being managed. A new mandatory incorporation requirement will see 56 of the successful organisations receiving more than $500,000 being required to incorporate rather than to opt to incorporate. There has been a lack of consultation and engagement with communities about the strategy as a whole.

In my area I have seen, for example, some of the biggest organisations that would have benefitted from this funding—for instance, the Butucarbin Aboriginal Corporation. It has been around for nearly 25 years, managing nearly 13,000 cases. Through a combination of IAS and funding cuts they are at risk of losing their continuation of funding. They have only been guaranteed funding for the next year, into 2016, and they have recently faced substantial cuts and threats to their services from the state government as well.

Organisations like Learning Ground, in Bidwill, also have a high proportion of young people from Aboriginal backgrounds and face their funding being cut. We have those funding cuts plus the Gonski arrangements, which would have directed higher levels of funding to my area, taking into account young Aboriginal people going into the schools there. When you see all the cuts that are happening, how do you skill people up, how do you prepare them for work, how do you prepare them for proper engagement in communities?

Where I do have economic growth that is happening within the electorate itself, and where we are working to get people involved, you cannot do these things just by wishing them to occur. They need to have support, they need to have the funding and they need to have a commitment that backs that up to ensure that people can do the best in areas like mine and in areas that are the subject of this resolution.

See this speech in context