Tim Hammond (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I'm delighted and feel quite privileged to be able to rise to address this place in relation to this report as a member of the Standing Committee on Indigenous Affairs. At the outset, I would like to give the appropriate thanks to those who were involved in the very challenging work of putting such an impressive report together. It is entitled The power of education: from surviving to thriving.

On that note, I pay tribute to our chair, the member for Durack, who I must say chaired proceedings in an efficient but also a very impressive manner in terms of keeping a large volume of evidence and information moving along; our deputy chair, the effervescent member for Lingiari; and of course, Madam Deputy Speaker, as the member for Newcastle. In my view, as very much a newcomer to this role, I was blown away by the depth of knowledge that you brought to the proceedings. I also acknowledge the other committee members and the secretariat, who played an invaluable role in ensuring things kept moving along so smoothly—Ms Brocklehurst, Ms Mazzarella, Ms Milligan and Ms Jones.

My journey to having the privilege of being on this committee started a long way back. It actually started with a seminal moment in one's life, one of those forks in the road that steers one in a direction that one could never possibly anticipate, but in many ways it really was responsible for steering me here at this point in time. That related to the time and place when the Bringing them home report was released, in 1997-98, and it's apposite that we talk about this now in the context of the 10th anniversary of the apology to the stolen generation, particularly in relation to addressing the Closing the Gap targets.

I will never forget walking into the office of Cedric Wyatt, who has now passed away, sadly. Cedric, for those who don't know, was then the CEO of Aboriginal Affairs in the state of Western Australia and was also the very proud father of Ben Wyatt, who is the current Treasurer of Western Australia as well as the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and, I'm very proud to say, a very firm, longstanding friend of mine. We used to knock around together in primary school. I went to Cedric to say, 'I'm interested in doing this paper at uni about this report that I've heard a bit about called Bringing them home. Is there any chance I could have a look at one?' He gave me a copy of this report. I read it from cover to cover at around the same time that I first saw our then leader Kim Beazley stand up in parliament, having read the document overnight, and being moved to tears about the nature and extent of the trauma suffered by the stolen generations as a result of their forced removal.

What I didn't know then, and I subsequently learned, was Cedric himself was a member of the stolen generation. While he was a close family friend, I had never really appreciated not only the impact that being taken away had had on him personally but, again, that imperceptible level of trauma that filters down from generation to generation and that, in some special way, quite possibly drives Ben to want to effect the positive change that he does to this day.

Analysing that report took me through the law to actually publishing a paper, because at that stage I had a question: what can we do to try and remedy this wrong? I knew instinctively that we had committed an irreparable level of harm on an entire race of people. I thought, 'We must do something to try and repair this damage.' At that stage in my life, I thought perhaps the answer was with the law. That took me to publishing a paper which was about trying to establish whether there was a fiduciary duty involved so that one could seek a remedy from the government, in so far as the establishment of the then inspectors or protectorates of Aboriginal people had a fiduciary relationship over the wards of the state. I fleshed out the fact that there might be a case there, or there might not be.

Ironically, in 1998 many of those arguments were fleshed out in the litigation that became known as the Cubillo and Gunner litigation. It was at that stage where time, effectively, defeated the plaintiffs, not so far as the Limitations Act argument went but an equitable doctrine of laches, as it then applied. At that stage, again, it took me on the path of seeking justice for those who had been wronged, like the stolen generations, through the law. Ironically it took me over to cases that involved representing other Indigenous peoples who had been either dispossessed of land or dispossessed of entitlements, and over to Papua New Guinea to act on behalf of landowners against BHP for the damage done to the Fly River in relation to the Ok Tedi copper and gold mine.

As I was being taken along the Fly River I was told by the landowners that the Fly River—it then had the colour and texture of a milky coffee—only 20 years before was so clear it looked like kerosene, in that you could see the bottom of the river without any trouble at all. The 50,000 land owners along the Fly River effectively had their economy taken away from them because they could no longer rely upon the river to sustain their market based subsistence. It is with some irony that I have the privilege in this place of being assigned responsibilities in the resources sector and I find myself dealing with the BHPs in this part of the world and managing those relationships.

I then went over to represent landowners in Bougainville in the case against Rio Tinto, and again it was the same sort of thing. And at that stage in my life I thought that perhaps the answer to try and seek redress lay in the law, but it was clearly lacking in terms of its ability to deliver a meaningful remedy. That took me into this place in many ways. I had the great privilege of serving on this committee, and hearing the evidence from community leaders all over the country in relation to the ways in which the current system was failing them, and, more importantly, failing Aboriginal children, in so far as not landing the educational outcomes that were intended just to ensure that these kids had a level playing field.

Madam Deputy Chair, you were there, and I suspect you recall as distinctly as I do, Wadeye—which is a community around 500 kilometres west of Darwin, and one of the largest communities in the country—at which a number of questions were asked of the principal. He was working his back side off like, everyone else there, in order to try and ensure that educational outcomes were delivered for these kids. The question was asked of the principal, 'How many kids are in the school?' There were 800 kids enrolled in the school; it was St Joseph's, I think, the only school in the community. Then questions were asked of the principle: 'Forget about the literature, the studies, the peer reviews and all that sort of stuff. In order to get these kids out of the school system with a reasonable degree of literacy and numeracy, how often do they need to be at school?' Well, the evidence was that they need to be at school perhaps 80 per cent of the time. When one thinks about that, that's every single week of your schooling life you're missing a day, so you're only getting to school for four days out of five. That's pretty significant, one thought to oneself—I certainly did.

Then the question was asked of the principal, 'That's all fine. So how many of your kids are hitting that mark so you can send them out?' The principal said it was about 20. One reasonably thought, 'That's about 20 per cent of 800,' so the question was asked, 'Is that 20 per cent?' and the answer was, 'No, that's 20 kids.' So we have a system right now where 20 children out of 800 are actually heading out the other end with just a workable degree of literacy and numeracy. The evidence given at that stage was that one of the fundamental issues was food security. Children in these communities are not getting enough to eat. They are vulnerable to substance abuse and there are all manner of ways in which the opportunities just to get ahead are circumvented by virtue of obstacles or roadblocks in the way.

What was very clear in all of this and what is reflected in the report is that there is no silver bullet to ensuring educational outcomes are achieved for Aboriginal people. But one thing I know is this: what is very clear from my time in the law and my brief time having the privilege to serve in this place is that none of this will change as long as we think we need to fix things by doing things to Aboriginal people. What is very clear from this report about the way forward is that, whether we like it or not, if we are ever going to effect some form of meaningful change for our first-nation people, we need to stop thinking we know the answers. We need to face up to the reality that the Uluru Statement From the Heart, as indelicate and unfortunate as it might be in fitting into our current paradigm of doing things, perhaps is the way to go. It might just be the way to go because that was the recommendation of the first-nation people, and that has to be something we take forward.

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