Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the shadow Indigenous affairs spokesperson, the member for Blair, for his series of questions in relation to the Indigenous Advancement Strategy and some of the decisions which the government has made this year and last year.

I first address the point that he made right at the beginning and which the member for Blair has been making incorrectly for some time: that we cut half a billion dollars out of the Indigenous-specific programs last year. There was not half a billion dollars. Yes, there were savings made in last year's budget from Indigenous-specific programs across the forward estimates. There were savings across every single department in large part because we were trying to get control of the enormous debt and deficit legacy which we were left by the former government.

What the savings represents, though—to put this into context—were savings of $247 million, from memory, over four years, which out of $30 billion spent on Indigenous people across the nation per annum, according to the Productivity Commission, represents a savings of about 0.2 per cent. I know that the opposition has said a lot about this particular savings, but my point to them is that, if money were the answer, we would have closed the gap, a long time ago. Indeed, we have had an 80 per cent real increase in Indigenous funding over the last decade. Today about $44,000 per Indigenous person is spent across the nation. In remote communities it would be close to double that figure. Money is not the answer. Money is important; of course it is. But if it is just more money that led to closing of the gap then that gap would have been closed some time ago.

What have we done in relation to the Indigenous Advancement Strategy? There was a series of questions which the member for Blair asked in relation to that. As he would know, we have gone through a very significant process in relation to the Indigenous-specific programs. When we came to office there were 150 Indigenous-specific programs across multiple departments. The first step that Tony Abbott decided as the new Prime Minister was to incorporate all of those programs into the Prime Minister's department. That gives it coordination. That gives Indigenous affairs clout. It gives Indigenous affairs a much higher political priority than it has ever had. The second thing that the government has done is amalgamate those 150 programs into five broad, flexible programs largely oriented around the government's priorities, of which everybody knows our top three priorities are, of course, getting kids to school, adults to work and communities safe.

It has been, as you would imagine, quite a significant process to amalgamate those 150 programs into five, but it enables us to be more flexible in relation to the provision of funding and allows local regions and local community leaders and organisations to also be more flexible in terms of the type of applications that they might want to put in against the national priorities which we have set. We have gone through this process. Yes, there were many thousands of applications for the money. In total, 996 organisations have been funded to deliver funding to over 1,350 projects. That is what has occurred in the first round of the IAS funding.

As we have gone along, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs said that there would be a first round of funding and there will be subsequent rounds. Many were given the decision, 'You have not quite been granted funding, but please come back to us and address these couple of issues, and you may well get funding.' That is the process which is going through at the moment, again to try to provide that nuance and flexibility to be able to assess the outcomes on the ground. And in some instances, the outcomes are not being delivered, and where those outcomes are not being delivered, those organisations are not getting further funding. I do not think the taxpayers expect us to continue funding when outcomes have not been delivered.

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