Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I join many of my colleagues on both sides of the House in standing here today to talk about the Closing the gap report. I don't think that it is an overstatement to say the results reported this year are a terrible indictment of our collective failure—and I say collective failure, reiterating the statements that the member for Griffith has just made that we as a parliament need to be accountable for the failures. It's a terrible indictment on our collective failure and a terrible stain on our nation when we have only two of the seven targets in the Closing the gap report on track to be met, those two being early childhood education and year 12 attainment. Let us not forget that much of the reason why those two markers are on target to be achieved by 2025 in the case of childhood education and 2020 for year 12 attainment is due to the non-profit and non-government sector—organisations like Clontarf in Western Australia and organisations like the Girls Academy in Western Australia, which work with First Nations girls and First Nations boys to keep them in education.

The other five targets around child mortality, literacy and numeracy, school attendance, employment and, importantly, life expectancy are still not on track. It's not the first time that any of us have stood here and lamented the fact that we are failing in closing not just the gap but the incredible chasm that exists in inequality between our First Nations people and other Australians.

I've often said that we can't move forward without reconciling our past. I know that this is something that is broadly accepted but that we've yet to see positive action towards achieving. It's been 12 years since the national apology. The national apology was an important turning point in our history in offering not just an apology but also a start to healing the hundreds of years of hurt that have been caused between us and our First Nations people. It was just a start, but here we are, 12 years later, and my concern and my fear is that we squander our time here in this place, that each and every one of us fails to continue to push and to advocate for the change that is necessary to really close that chasm. We just can't afford to squander our time here. We are in a time in Australia's history—an unprecedented time in Australia's history—where we have a significant number of people in our parliament who are of First Nations. We have Senator Lambie, Senator McCarthy and Senator Dodson, and we have an Indigenous Minister for Indigenous Affairs in the Hon. Ken Wyatt as well as a shadow Indigenous minister for indigenous affairs in the Hon. Linda Burney. And I think that now is a time for us to listen, to really listen to them and to follow their lead.

I'd like at this point to reiterate a suggestion that the member for Chifley made. He suggested that the Indigenous minister and the Indigenous shadow should be able to deliver the address to parliament on Closing the Gap, in the same way that we have the Treasurer, for example, delivering the economic statements every year. I would back the member for Chifley's call to give our Indigenous minister and our Indigenous shadow minister the power to deliver that address.

I am incredibly proud to live in a democratic nation like Australia, and I have a very deeply held optimism and belief in our political institutions—in the intent of their design and in the undeniable good that they have done when they work for everyone. But I am also well aware that those institutions have sometimes also set policies that don't always benefit all Australians, and this is no more evident than in the persistent state of inequality and inequity that besets our First Nations people. I appreciate that we have political institutions and structures that compel us—not just each and every one of us in this House but each and every Australian—to pursue the cause of closing this chasm of inequality between our First Nations people, our brothers and sisters of First Nations, and other Australians. But we must use these institutions to listen, to empower and to give our First Nations people a voice and a platform to determine their futures and support them in doing so.

In the Prime Minister's address on the Closing the gap report, he spoke of a top-down approach, and many members on the other side have also spoken about the top-down approach. But, please, I implore you, let us not allow this focus on a top-down approach to be an excuse for dragging our feet on progress towards equality. Let us not squander our time here and let us not squander this moment in history, when we have an Indigenous minister and an Indigenous shadow minister who can be a guiding light and show us the way. Let us not insist on leading when we should be following. We really should be following. And let us truly commit to a process that empowers First Nations people by establishing a voice to parliament.

I do not accept the argument that a voice to parliament will be a third chamber—quite the contrary. A voice to parliament will not just be a symbolic act. The member for Chifley quite rightly stated that we are humans and symbols mean things to us. Symbolic acts mean something. They are not just semantics; they actually do have deep meaning and speak and send messages in ways that perhaps it is difficult to fathom at times. It wouldn't just be a symbolic act; it would be a real act of giving a voice to First Nations people.

I know that standing up and talking about this isn't going to make the change that I want to see. I know that when I talk about the inequality for our First Nations people. I know that when we talk about issues like domestic violence. I know that there are so many measures of inequality that we could also be talking about—things like eye health and ear health for Aboriginal children, particularly those in remote areas; things like comorbidity and health outcomes; things like incarceration rates. We talk a lot about the gender pay gap, but we have no data on the fact that the gender pay gap is even wider for Indigenous women. We don't often talk about that kind of intersectionality of gender and race when we talk about issues for women.

In closing, I stand here as somebody who is not Indigenous and as somebody who is acutely aware that sometimes we take away the voices of those who we should be listening to. I listened to the Prime Minister's speech, and I have no doubt that it was heartfelt and sincere—I have absolutely no doubt of that. But I do fear that there was an undertone there about the setting of these targets. I do hope that we don't walk away from our accountability to achieve the targets that we set over a decade ago, because lives count on it, our First Nations people count on it and also our future, moving forward as Australians and as part of one great nation, counts on it.

See this speech in context