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

I thank Mr Ramsey, the member for Grey, for his questions. I also thank him for his significant commitment to his constituents who include many Aboriginal people in some of the more remote places of Australia. Like the member for Parkes, who was speaking beforehand, the member for Grey has a very genuine fair dinkum commitment to the advancement of Aboriginal people more generally. I know that one of the things he had been pressing for for some time was the Port Augusta rehab facility, and it is absolutely terrific to see that the funding has been delivered for that. I commend him for the work that he had done there. I would also make note of and commend former minister Jenny Macklin for some of the income management trials which she oversaw when she was the minister, which included a very small trial in Ceduna as well.

The member for Grey has particularly asked me about the Forrest report, the status update on that and how that might relate to his electorate. I can report that out of the 27 recommendations of the Forrest report the government has decided to move forward on 26 of those 27 recommendations. The one which we are not moving forward on is the one recommending a tax-free status business. In part, we agreed with the sentiment in that recommendation, but it is a very difficult one to implement. Each of the others we are working through. We know that some of those have already been announced and implemented. One of the most significant ones which will impact on the ground, including in the member for Grey's electorate, includes some of the demand-driven measures. By that I mean an increased employment target for the Australian Public Service and putting some pressure on the larger companies in Australia for them to do a bit more in terms of their Indigenous employment. Most significantly, I think, is that for the first time in Australian political history we will be introducing a procurement target for Australian government procurement dollars. We have set ourselves a target of three per cent of our procurement contracts by 2020. This is new for Australia but it is not a new idea. It is in fact an idea taken from the United States, who introduced something similar under President Nixon back in 1969, and Canada, who introduced a similar concept back in 1996. In each of those two countries it had a very significant impact of creating social uplift for minority groups. We are hoping, and we believe, that this important procurement measure will have the same impact for Australia, and I hope that there are many Indigenous enterprises in the member for Grey's electorate that will be beneficiaries of that particular measure.

Of some of the other Forrest report recommendations, the Work for the Dole measure is another important one, and we are rolling that out progressively across Australia. Minister Scullion is doing a terrific job in reforming the old RJCP program, which might have been fine in intent but was not delivering consistently across the board in outcomes. Our intent is for every single person in those RJCP areas to be doing some meaningful activity for at least 25 hours per week.

The member for Grey also touched on the Healthy Welfare Card. I made comment about this card previously, in terms of our objective and our approach. Again, it is no secret that one of the communities amongst a group of communities that we have been having some cooperative discussions with is in the Ceduna region and surrounding communities. We have had very good engagement to date, and that engagement will continue to assess the preparedness and the desirability of implementing that proposal in that region. I have worked very cooperatively with the member for Grey on that.

There are also other measures within the Forrest report which may have an impact in his electorate—some of them measures that concern early childhood; some of them school attendance measures, for example. They will ultimately have an impact on his electorate.

See this speech in context