Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I begin by paying my respects to the Ngunawal and Ngambri peoples, the traditional owners of this land that we're meeting on. I pay my respect to the elders past, present and emerging. When Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered the national apology to the stolen generations in February 2008, he made it clear that saying sorry was not enough. And it is still not enough. If we are to heal the hurt and wrong that has been done to Aboriginal people in this country, we must enable real improvements in people's lives, and that's what closing the gap was set up to do, to provide tangible measureable outcomes, to hold governments to account for the things they should do but for so long have failed to do, with devastating consequences. Unfortunately, this year's closing the gap statement is another failure.

It does bear repeating some of the targets and how we are off track in that statement. Five of the seven targets are not on track, including life expectancy and child mortality rates. The disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in this country remains stark. On average, Indigenous Australians live around eight years less than other Australians. Indigenous cancer mortality rates are getting worse. The numbers in this year's report are the same as last year. The Indigenous child mortality rates are still more than twice that of non-Indigenous children. That's a confronting reality. The child mortality rate is a direct result of poorer living conditions, issues with housing and overcrowding, limited prenatal care and a history of dispossession and colonisation, a disparity that is more pronounced in remote areas. It's unacceptable. We are failing our First Nations children by allowing this gap to continue.

In education, one in four Indigenous children are performing below minimum standards for reading, and one in five are below the minimum standards for numeracy. While enrolment for early childhood education is on track, there is concern about the variation between jurisdictions, in particular again in Queensland, Northern Territory and New South Wales in those remote areas. This has not been helped by the government having cut funding from schools that need the most help, including many remote schools with high Indigenous enrolments.

It is clear that for too long First Nations people have been shut out of the conversation about their lives. Despite being in the best positions to understand their communities and their lives, their voices have not been heard. So I want to commend the work of the Coalition of Peaks, the group of Aboriginal organisations who have come together to reshape closing the gap. Labor supports their priorities, and they're really important priorities. They include having a formal partnership between the government and First Nations people on closing the gap, growing First Nations community controlled services, and improving mainstream service delivery to First Nations people. We do need to ask Aboriginal people what they want. We do need to listen to their expertise and their knowledge of what is best in their lives and their communities.

We must also be clear that a formal partnership does not absolve government of its responsibility. Closing the gap takes money and resources, and government must not step away from this. I am very concerned that, in suggesting a new approach to closing the gap, the Prime Minister suggested the targets we have may not have been realistic or achievable in the first place. Lowering our standards or suggesting that it's okay that more Aboriginal children die because maybe it's not realistic to expect that to improve is a cop-out. As the Leader of the Opposition said in his statement to the House:

The problem was not that the targets were too ambitious … the failure to meet the targets is our failure…

We must continue to take responsibility for the failings of a system that does not benefit those we are trying to assist. If we want to see improved outcomes in the health and education of Indigenous Australians, we need to invest in these portfolios and in the services they provide. We need to make sure that people in remote communities have access to clean water for dialysis. We need to make sure they have clean houses to live in, that their schools are up to scratch and that they have a local health service. That is the responsibility of governments. Instead, we've watched as the consecutive Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments have made cuts to health and education. We can and we must do better.

Another area that we must continue to work on is how we account for what we're doing. In order to hold governments to account, we must continue to collect consistent data. Collecting the data on inequality, disadvantage and the disparity between Indigenous and non-indigenous people is fundamental to improving living standards. So while we may look at reviving the Closing the Gap targets, we can't lose the data and the progress we've made, because if we do we lose that ability to hold governments to account for their progress. We need this accurate data, as depressing as those outcomes might be. So I call on this government to make sure that that effort continues and that we don't walk away from the knowledge of what's happening to Aboriginal people in this country.

Finally, we must of course act on the Uluru statement and have a voice to parliament that's recognised in our Constitution. We all know that changing the Australian Constitution is not easy, and it's been done very few times, but we're at a turning point in our history. It's a turning point that will require all of us to work on it. It requires passion and it requires dedication. It requires the people in here to sign up. So I ask the people in here who are not on board yet, who think this somehow makes our country a worse place to be, to rethink and to listen to the voices of the Aboriginal people. It is time for them to be recognised in our constitution. It is time for them to have a meaningful voice in this place. It's time for our country to go through the process of truth-telling and treaty-making so that we emerge as a stronger, fairer country on the other side of that process.

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