Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Blair should have completed his talk after the first 10 seconds, when he said that this is a good bipartisan report. In my eight years in this place, that was the most political, shrill and shallow speech I have ever heard—a disgusting effort. I actually had trouble containing my anger while listening to the member for Blair.

We have a great tradition in this place of putting together reports that are bipartisan, that take a great deal of the effort and the resources of the House—of the members of all parties involved in putting this report together. And this is a good report. The member for Blair acknowledged that in the first 10 seconds of his speech and then went on some shallow rant of a political nature. I ask you: do you think the communities in Cape York and northern Australia and in the western part of my electorate who are battling with the effects of alcohol in their communities would be impressed by a political speech like the one we just heard?

In an attempt to bring a bit of bipartisanship and sense to this, I will continue on to the report. Minister Scullion, I have to say, is a great friend of the Aboriginal people of Australia. He has great affinity and he lives his life through the way he speaks. The member for Blair may have peaked in his political climb to the top if that is all he can come up with.

Alcohol and drugs are a scourge in Aboriginal Australia, remote Australia and more urban areas such as the area I represent. This is not something that has just become apparent in the last couple of years or the last decade. This is an issue that has been a scourge for our First Australians for a long time. This report highlights and reinforces a lot of issues that we are aware of, but this report has formally put them together in order. I believe this report can be a road map towards addressing many of these problems. I am a relative newcomer to this committee. I replaced the member for Capricornia late last year. I was not present for many of the hearings and evidence, but I was present at three or four of those hearings. In South Australia, we went to Coober Pedy, Ceduna and Adelaide. I was very impressed with the will of the communities in those towns, particularly in Ceduna where we met with Mayor Allan Suter from the District Council of Ceduna, Mrs Miller from the Ceduna Koonibba Aboriginal Health Service and other members of the Miller family, who are very strong community leaders in the town of Ceduna. They have some real issues with being accessible to some of the remote communities in South Australia where there are alcohol bans. People come to Ceduna basically to drink. Those people live rough. We saw them sleeping in the grass. In Australia in 2015, it is indeed a great blight on our society. In Ceduna they have a room for sobering up and it is filled to capacity nearly every night. The community of Ceduna have made a decision. They agreed last week that they will be part of a trial—one of two or three communities around Australia—to try the welfare card. I really wish them well.

I thought that the town of Moree in my electorate would be an ideal location to trial the welfare card. The population of Aboriginal people in Moree stands at about 22 per cent and the welfare recipients are about 50-50, Indigenous to non-Indigenous. We had some very positive discussions with community leaders, but unfortunately the community leadership did not, in the end, embrace the concept. Sadly, some of the influences that were placed on that came from the hoteliers, where their cash flow is reliant on people on welfare, with takeaway sales and poker machines. It is basically my home town and I am terribly saddened that it is not going ahead. I said to the people of Moree that this was not going to be imposed; I thought it would be an opportunity to try to address some of the issues that are no worse in Moree than anywhere else. I thought they might be prepared to have a go.

Many of the things that we heard during our hearings just show that this is a very complex issue, and that is why the member for Blair's contribution was so irritating. We heard from health workers working in the communities of Cape York, where alcohol bans have been in place. An illicit bottle of Scotch is $200 or $300 in some of those communities. A hit of ice is $15. This is not just a matter of banning grog or having registers with drinkers on it; it is probably a combination of all these things.

I believe this report is a good one. A lot of soul-searching and a lot of thought went into this report and I certainly hope that it will be used as it was intended: as a tool whereby we can continue to address the blight of alcohol and the long-term effects of foetal alcohol syndrome—it not only has short-term effects; it is intergenerational. Quite frankly, after hearing some of the evidence on this, I would say to all mothers and fathers who are intending to conceive and have children: for God's sake, do not drink. This is not an issue just for remote Aboriginal communities; this is a blight on the entire Australian community. The alcohol culture that we have in this country is not only affecting the health of Australians now; it is actually impacting on the potential of our offspring.

There are some very sobering recommendations in this report. I commend the report to the House. I remind House that this report was put together in the spirit of bipartisanship—the one element that I am so proud that we have in this House. I tell my constituents that this place, basically, is a place of cooperation, where people of goodwill do their best for the people of Australia. Let us not see another episode like we have just seen from the member for Blair, which put a blight on the system that we have.

Debate adjourned.

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