Ann Sudmalis (Gilmore, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is now 10 years since the eventful day when the national apology was made to our nation's first people. I was sitting in Macca's, Goulburn, and there were many Indigenous people stopping, talking and, in some instances, crying. The day was eventful and significant, and it was not just a symbol; it was the beginning of a new consciousness that would—and it continues to this day—make our nation a better place, filled with acknowledgement that what had gone on before was not the way we should keep going.

This year, 2018, closing the gap remains a shared commitment. This is a shared journey that I hope will always draw on the wisdom, strength and resilience, learned over thousands of years, of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander civilisation, as well as the learning of present Australians and those yet to come. There is a statement that we should not have to reinvent the wheel. While that is not the complete case here, it should be noted that effective programs and services need to be designed, developed and implemented in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This should not surprise us. It's blatantly obvious.

In addition, and also of great importance, is that governments must take a far more holistic approach, involving agencies from different departments to develop policies and deliver services to First Australians. And, although that phrase is taken directly from the report, I actually argue with the idea of delivering services to our First Australians. It should rather be with our Indigenous family. The lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have improved, but there's still a lot more to be done.

There are four main pillars in any community, and the Closing the Gap targets are no different: health, education, employment and community safety. Each is clearly inter-related. For instance, improving education standards helps to increase employment rates and levels of health. And community safety is fundamental to making sure children attend school and adults maintain employment. Three targets for closing the gap are on track. The first is halving child mortality by this year. Improvements in key drivers of child and maternal health over the past few years suggest that we could even do better. The second target is to have 95 per cent of all Indigenous four-year-olds enrolled in early childhood education by 2025. Personally, I see this as one of the foundation stones for long-term change, and I believe it is the indicator in the community for the greatest development potential. Finally, the target to halve the gap in year 12 attainment by 2020 is definitely on track. Nationally, the proportion of Indigenous students aged 20 to 24 who have achieved year 12 or equivalent has increased from 47.4 per cent in 2006 to 65.3 per cent in 2016.

In Gilmore especially, I am so very proud of our young Indigenous students, the schools they attend and their teachers. Along with their families, they are making huge inroads of change and achievement. Special mention is deserved for Batemans Bay High, Ulladulla High, Shoalhaven High, Vincentia High and Bomaderry High. With special reference to culture and confidence building, we are getting great outcomes. I'd like to thank some Indigenous leaders in my community in particular for all their efforts to close the gap: Uncle Tom and Aunty Muriel Slocky, Aunty Nell Mooney, Uncle Fred Carriage, Aunty Ruth Simms, Aunty Pat Lester, Aunty Delia Lowe, Alfred and Noel Wellington and Greg Peterson. There are many others, but these individuals I have come to know and I have a very deep respect for them.

We still have to work on overall attendance rates for Indigenous students, and I suspect that we need to develop different strategies to get to that target. Numeracy is on track for year 9 students across the nation, but, gosh, there's a lot more to do here. We do see the gap in NAPLAN results narrowing in reading in years 3 and 5 and in numeracy in years 5 and 9, but we still need to work there. Halving the gap in employment by this year didn't quite come together, so we've still got work to get on with in that area. The last measure is to close the gap in life expectancy by 2031, and I believe we all recognise that it's going to take more than a decade to bring that together.

Developing collaborative working relationships between government agencies and other organisations, and delivering services and programs in consultation with the Indigenous community will be essential in identifying the key social and economic determinants. A necessary part of this is valuing Indigenous knowledge and cultural beliefs and practices that are important for promoting positive cultural identity and social and emotional wellbeing for all Australians. Just this morning I visited the National Museum of Australia and was guided by the enthusiastic Indigenous curator, Margo Neale, to share in our Australian story of the Seven Sisters—the meanings, the evolution and the essential message that should be shared by all Australians. We really must build Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander capacity, involving good and positive mentoring for staff, and making sure their ideas and cultural influences are fully integrated in program design, delivery and evaluation.

Recently, one of my successful Gilmore Indigenous organisations sent me a bit of a report, and this is an excerpt from it:

Waminda's work in the community is driven by its vision for women and their Indigenous families being positive, happy and healthy. Waminda is guided by a vision where Indigenous women are admired and proud of their achievements in their own community …

Their service model is a 'comprehensive and holistic care' model, 'enabling a focus on the social determinants'. They're very successful. Glen Ella of sporting fame is trying to establish a program for sporting development that incentivises students to attend school on a more regular basis. His program is for both boys and girls. There are, in fact, dozens of small-scale programs that are working and making a difference for Indigenous children and their families, including the team at Cullunghutti and the community of Jerrinja. These are huge changes in attitude and expectations of change in themselves.

As education has been and continues to be a priority for me, I see many of the recommendations from the report of the last inquiry, The power of education: From surviving to thriving, presented by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Indigenous affairs, which I now chair, as great stepping stones for change. These steps will help to close the gap. We should collect the data relating to successful programs and figure out what's working and what's not. How good would it be to have school-age Indigenous young mothers still attending school while we help them with their maternal responsibilities? We need to alleviate the difficulties of learning where there are hearing impediments for children—or perhaps we should prevent them in the first place. We must work with the states and territories to have a clear strategy in relation to fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, as well as having appropriate screening so that learning disorders can be identified and steps taken to remediate these children. How wonderful it would be for some health interventions to be available close to our primary schools, just as Nowra East Public School is developing. In addition to their plan, the school parents and neighbours will be constructing a community kitchen in the garden next to their mini health unit. It's a terrific concept, and I'm only too pleased that we've been able to negotiate a grant of $12,000 to assist them. Ultimately, if we have a cooperative model of information exchange between education and health, what a great advantage that would be for the nurses, the teachers and the other professionals trying to help Indigenous children and their families.

It's wonderful to see the emergence of language in our schools and also that all students are learning language. But what about the rural and, importantly, the remote schools where English is in fact the second language? We really must train the teachers to be proficient in English as a second language. It's not the same as somebody who's trained to improve language, literacy and numeracy. They're actually quite different techniques.

I mentioned the possible Ellavation program in my area, but there truly need to be sporting opportunities for our Indigenous girls. The pride on the faces of our PCYC-sponsored Yuin Snake Teams was magic! Their parents were proud, the young women were proud, and it just showed what potential such a scheme has to change the self-confidence of our Indigenous young women. But other programs besides sport need to be explored to help our young girls. I'm especially thinking about encouraging them towards robotics and STEM subjects. In the report of the inquiry there's a strong call to review Abstudy. It observes how, in many cases, it is acting as an educational barrier. Let's bring in a review, as this too, once remedied, will surely help with closing the gap of Indigenous difference.

I say with pride that today the annual growth rate of Supply-Nation-registered Indigenous businesses is an average of 12.5 per cent. It is actually the envy of all other sectors in the Australian community.

Around 14,700 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are enrolled in early childhood education, which, as I said before, is in fact one of my priorities for all children. Each time I'm a guest at the VET awards night for our Indigenous students, I quietly burst with pride. Each successive year there's been an increasing number of students completing year 12 with a VET qualification. They're proud of themselves, and our entire community is proud of them.

We are closing the gap in Gilmore, and I believe we can upscale all the different and successful programs, not only in my region but across the nation, so that in the next 10 years we'll have six out of seven of the targets met and only the last one to work on. As we know, it will probably take a couple of decades to bring us closer in lifespan, because there are some entrenched health issues that have arisen in the past that we need to address in the future. I think we're doing well, but we can do better.

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