David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Lingiari proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The need for the Government to address urgently the underlying issues pf poverty and disadvantage, including the causes and symptoms of substance abuse, violence and dysfunction within indigenous communities.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The events of recent weeks have thrown into stark relief some of the more horrific and sensational circumstances that Indigenous Australians confront every day of their lives. I would like members across the chamber to agree that dealing with these circumstances is our most urgent national priority.

It is important that we do that. I acknowledge that none of us on either side of the House can come into this place with clean hands on this subject. It is clear from our perspective—certainly from my own—that we could have done more when in government to address the underlying causes of poverty in Indigenous communities. It is unfortunate that the social justice package which was being developed by the Keating government was never put into any agreement or funded. What we have seen subsequently is a matter of some concern. I note that, now more than two years ago in an article in the Age, Michael Gordon wrote:

For much of his eight years plus in office, John Howard has concentrated on what he calls practical reconciliation, refusing to say sorry for injustices and placing little store in symbolic gestures. But (outside the COAG trials) he delivered little, partly because so many responsibilities are shared. The explicit promise of yesterday is that money will now be used more effectively and the lives of indigenous Australians improved.

Importantly for all of us, particularly those of us on this side of the chamber, he went on to say:

Turning this promise into reality will require diligence, rigour, vision and more political will than has been on display from either side ...

That is still the challenge that we all in this parliament face, right here, right now, today. It is worth reflecting upon the success that the government may or may not have had in addressing these needs.

It is clear to me that, whilst the Howard government has been in power for 10 years and despite its rhetoric about practical reconciliation, which it has embraced wholeheartedly, little has changed. We now know that the COAG trials that Gordon refers to have been a sham. It has diverted more funds into the bureaucracy, and very little money has hit the ground where it is needed. In the celebrated case of one Tasmanian project, the administrative costs were 10 times that of the project itself.

I note that the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs seated at the table referred to the COAG trials with the Thamarrurr Council at Wadeye recently. In that reference, he has made the assertion that the Commonwealth had put $44 million into the community through the COAG trials—

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I did not.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister will have an opportunity to reply.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Minister Brough, I am happy for you to respond when it is your opportunity. He stated that the joint NT-federal contribution, however, was more like $1.9 million. Wadeye elders said that there would be no need for intervention if only the Northern Territory and federal governments met their obligations. Data unearthed through the Senate estimates process reveals that tens of millions of dollars spent administering trial programs under the umbrella of COAG in many instances outgun the value of the project. I referred to a case in Tasmania where administering a $34,318 program cost the Australian community $327,784 in administrative expenses. If we listen to the rhetoric, we are led to believe that millions, indeed billions, of dollars have been thrown down the chute after Indigenous affairs. What we know, constantly of course, is that a lot of this money never meets its destination, and we need to be very concerned about that.

The government came into power with a hard-edged and very clear-cut agenda to rid itself of the very last vestiges of Labor’s approach to Indigenous affairs. It shrugged away any semblance of a bipartisan approach. From day one, the government has pursued its agenda to reshape the Indigenous affairs policy landscape in its own image, with a single-minded ideological commitment. ATSIC was the first to feel the blowtorch when it was ordered to make across-the-board cuts under the first Costello budget.

These cuts, not coincidentally, had the greatest impact on programs dealing with family violence and the support of young people. Indeed, it is a matter of some concern that, in the 1995-96 ATSIC budget, $30.3 million was spent on community and youth support, including the Family Violence Intervention Program. This program funded 37 women’s centres, four men’s programs, 15 children’s services, 70 services for youth activities and youth bail accommodation, nine family support and violence intervention programs, the night patrol project in Katherine and a women’s crisis centre serving 20 communities in New South Wales. In March 1997, the community and youth component ended as a result of budget cuts to ATSIC in the 1996-97 budget.

We have seen the horrific results of family violence and sexual abuse in Indigenous communities highlighted over recent days. We as a community will not, and should not, tolerate the excesses that have been perpetrated upon Indigenous women and children by some males. But Indigenous Australians deserve a great deal more respect in this conversation we are having about them—not with them—than they are currently receiving. Whilst ATSIC may have had significant flaws, its abolition by the government—and I have not come here to either praise or bury ATSIC—has left Indigenous Australians without a nationally representative structure, and indeed, without a national voice. Its so-called replacement, the National Indigenous Council, comprises a group of people who do not represent anyone, who are not responsible to anyone and who are not accountable to anyone. Yet they purport to give the primary source of advice to the government on Indigenous affairs.

During ATSIC’s lifespan the issue of sexual abuse and family violence was repeatedly raised by commissioners. Indeed, one of those commissioners, Alison Anderson, now a member of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly for the seat of Macdonnell, raised the issues with the Prime Minister himself as a member of his task force in 2003. Report after report has made recommendations that have been shelved and all but ignored. The pleas and cries of women in the Indigenous community have not been listened to by this government.

The minister has visited Central Australia and Northern Australia on a number of occasions. In 1979 and 1980 I was working with an Indigenous community in the Pitjantjatjara homelands of South Australia to put forward a proposition to the government to fund a petrol sniffing program—the first petrol sniffing program to be funded by the Commonwealth. Despite repeated requests for recurrent funding by Indigenous families across Central and Northern Australia for diversionary programs to deal with petrol sniffing and alcohol abuse, the programs have not been funded appropriately. Now we are having visited upon us the stark reality of what happens in communities which suffer from excessive substance abuse. Violence against women and families has followed.

I am happy to acknowledge, as someone who has lived and worked in these communities for many years, that we should have a far greater understanding than is currently being exhibited about issues to do with customary law and how they impact upon the community. As a nation we need to better understand and address the issues at the heart of the problem. To do this, we must first look, listen and learn. I say to the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, who is at the table: I am pleased that he has taken the interest he has. If I can do anything to assist in his understanding of Indigenous issues across Northern Australia and Australia generally I would be happy to do so. If there is any way I can assist him to sit down with communities so that he might understand what their issues are, rather than have those issues told to him by others, I would be glad to do so.

I know from Indigenous Australians who live in my electorate—around 40 per cent of my constituents are Indigenous Australians—that they hanker for an engagement with the community about the issues which have been publicised so highly lately. They need to be understood. They want you to sit down with them and not talk about them, but talk to them. They want you to understand that they have concerns about the issues which have been raised publicly. They also have solutions to some of these issues. They understand the need for a high school education. It is worth noting in passing that until 2001 no Aboriginal kid living in a bush community in the Northern Territory could get to a high school, pass high school and get his or her year 12 certificate in their home community. That was because of 24 years of indolence and direct policy failure by successive conservative CLP administrations since 1978. It is only since the ALP was elected to the government in the Northern Territory that there has been any effort to provide secondary education for kids in the bush.

There are between 3,000 and 5,000 young Territorians who have had no access to high school education. These are young people who, if they could get a job, would never have the skills for it. These are young people who do not even have the skills to be able to access the training they require to get a job. We cannot blame these people. There is no point accusing them. We have to understand their plight and sit down and work with them. The minister and others have been to Wadeye, and I have talked already about the COAG trial at Wadeye. What the community there have been telling me, and telling governments for many years, is that they require a new form of housing, setting up what are effectively subdivisions for some time. They have already set up one. This would decentralise the community. They have been after this for some years. It has been part of the COAG discussion, but it has not hit the table.

Whilst the government has a predilection for trying to ensure that every Indigenous Australian, wherever they live and whatever their circumstances, is a private home owner, it ain’t going to happen. Welfare housing is extremely important, and the public sector has a significant role. There is already a housing deficit of around $1.2 billion in the Northern Territory alone, and around $2.5 billion across Australia. We need to address these issues, and we need to address them together. I say to the minister: ‘Let’s sit down and talk about targets and goals. Let’s talk about what might be achievable to redress the balance. Let’s talk about the things that can be done to ensure that Indigenous Australians have the same opportunities as the rest of us. Let’s understand that attacking their rights is not the answer. Let’s recognise that they have rights as Australian citizens—the same rights as every other Australian citizen—which need to be funded by government.’

I am aware that the government is proposing significant changes to the CDEP. Some of them are probably worth while, but others are totally misguided. Again, I am happy to enter a dialogue with the government—I am sure my colleagues on this side of the House are too—to see how we can get more effective changes than the ones which have been proposed by the government.

Recently in the Australian of 26 May Patrick Dodson referred to the 1997 report Bringing them home. He said the report:

... highlighted the infringement of UN definition of Genocide and called for a National apology and compensation to those Aboriginal people who had suffered under these valid laws for the destruction of Aboriginal societies and the sanctioning of the biogenetic modification of Aboriginal people.

He said:

... despite the horrors exposed in the report as a nation we proved incapable of confronting our past and dealing with its consequences. That failure alone should have been seen as condemned for a lack of courage and a denial of justice.

…         …         …

Undoubtedly—

he said—

some of our politicians see these outcomes as a sustaining of the natural order of the dominant society and its institutions. However there are others ... who understand that the unjust assertion of the power of one section of society over a less powerful group will ... diminish us as a nation ...

I say, ‘Hear, hear’ to that. What I say to the minister is: let’s walk together down this path. Let’s walk together in a bipartisan way to improve the lot of Indigenous Australians for the benefit of us all.

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let us make no mistake today that the speech by the member for Lingiari was not about addressing the fundamental issues; it was about revisiting an ideological approach that has failed. It is one that has failed miserably the people whom we should all seek to represent. I would like to address at the outset a few of the issues that the member for Lingiari raised. For starters, he said I should have a dialogue with him and some other people. Let me tell you that the people I have had dialogue with and continue to do so are not just Indigenous leaders and representative bodies—whether it be the NIC or Reconciliation Australia—but people over the fences, people sitting on the river banks, people who have been picked up by the night patrol and people sitting in their homes who do not have a voice. They do not know that this discussion is taking place in here today.

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Do you think you are the only one who talks to them?

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Hotham asks, ‘Do I think I am the only one who speaks to them?’ The member for Lingiari, your representative on this issue, has said, ‘Come and talk to me.’ The people I am talking to do not even know that this discussion is occurring today. They are the people who have said to me: ‘These are the key issues for us. These are the key issues for the people on the streets.’ These are the people who are saying: ‘You’ve got to understand that we want to be treated the same as the whitefella. We want to be treated the same way under the law.’

If you want children to attend schools, you have to have parents accepting responsibility for ensuring that they go there, and the state or territory government has to police those laws. These people want to ensure that the laws that currently apply—not new laws—apply to them equally, just as they do to the wider community. They tell me—whether it be in Wadeye, Port Keats, Galiwinku or Mornington Island: wherever it happens to be—that they do not believe that occurs today.

I know there is a great propensity on the other side to widen this debate. I have deliberately kept the issue focused on delivering the fundamental principle that underpins any civilised society. There has not been a civilised society ever that has succeeded when the basic rule of law has not existed and when the criminal justice system that applies in that society has not had the confidence of its people. That is what has occurred in these places.

Let us deal with some of the specifics. In Wadeye there has not been one riot of 150 people; there have not been two riots of 150 people. They have been going on and on. When there is a riot—let me explain what happens here—150 people trash a suburb. In fact, the men and boys go through first and behind are the women and children who actually ruin the homes, destroy the toilet bowls and break the windows. We have seen the evidence of that. There is no escaping that there is a fundamental breakdown in law and order. What I am simply saying to people, first and foremost, is that if we do not deal with that issue we can continue to build more homes, which we have done. In Wadeye there have been 28 homes destroyed over the last few months. If we want to continue to replace houses at the same rate as they are being destroyed, we will be here in another 10 years time facing the same issues.

First and foremost we have to face up to the stark reality that there are people who do not know anything other than lawlessness in these communities. It is not just Mal Brough or the Howard government saying that. It is the people who are having the crimes perpetrated upon them who say, ‘I want to stand up in a court of law and give evidence, but I’m afraid of payback.’ The member for Lingiari knows as well as anyone in this place that there is a very real notion of fear for these people, whether they be black or white. When I was in Wadeye I had both black and white Australians saying those words to me. They said: ‘I know exactly what you’re saying. What you’re saying is 100 per cent correct. Don’t expect us to stand up in court because payback will cost us too much.’ There is a fundamental breakdown in our faith in the criminal justice system and our capacity to deliver law and order that we, as Australians, accept and, in fact, demand in every suburb that we live in. Yet it does not occur here.

The member for Lingiari says that there have been reports on domestic violence. His words were, ‘They’ve all been shelved or all but ignored by the Howard government.’ I say to the member for Lingiari: who has the constitutional responsibility to deliver law and order in this country?

Carmen Lawrence (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Dr Lawrence interjecting

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If the former Premier of Western Australia is oohing and aahing about abolishing the states because they cannot deliver Australian fundamental law and order, get up and say it—that is fine. The reason I asked all the states and territories to come together was not to berate them but to do the very thing that the member for Lingiari asked. It was to bring us together not just on the issue of what happens after the event—after a child has been raped, after a young woman has been burnt, after someone has had domestic violence perpetrated upon them year after year or their house has been destroyed or the community centre has been destroyed—but on the issue as to how we are going to prevent those things from happening in the first place.

I am not suggesting for one moment that issues of housing, education, employment and opportunity are not important. But Wadeye is a classic example—and the member for Lingiari is, in fact, incorrect: he invited me to correct the record so I shall—because the federal government and the Northern Territory government, in partnership, signed up to the COAG trial. The COAG trial was to try and ensure that there would be better outcome for the people of Wadeye. It has not occurred; we accept that. Forty million dollars has been spent or committed. Half of that money was for housing, much of which has not been delivered. The reason it has not been delivered—I am sure the member for Lingiari would be keen to hear—is the delay in providing serviced land to enable the housing to be established. There are lengthy delays in providing serviced blocks to these remote communities. In fact, in Wadeye the government provided $1.5 million to the Northern Territory government in June 2004 for servicing of the land and to this date it still has not occurred. I am not blaming the Northern Territory government. It is a statement of fact that, as the member for Lingiari knows, there are huge issues in getting land when no-one, other than the community, can own it.

The fact is that there is a new subdivision out there—and the member for Lingiari referred to it in his comments—which is safer, which is removed and which was supported and dealt with through the federal and Northern Territory governments working together. I ask any member of the Labor Party whether we can seriously say, of 150 people rioting, people being speared in the leg, people being hit over the head with nulla-nullas and people running through town trashing houses and breaking toilet blocks, that there is an excuse that we can give for that. I say no.

In that same trial 24 young apprentices were put into a housing prefabrication factory in Wadeye. We did not need 24 apprentices; it was about opportunities. The last I heard there were five remaining. Why? Because those individuals do not have the basic numeracy and literacy skills to stay there and, probably far more important than that, the education system has failed them of course. Why? Because they do not turn up to school. There is no cause and effect from the parents. That is a reality of life. I was told only this week by a resident of Wadeye, that when some of the young men have been taken to a workplace that very night the elder who has requested that work placement happen and has aided and abetted that person in having a better opportunity has had their house trashed and ruined. If that is a fact, how is a community ever going to dig itself out of the malaise that it is in if we do not first and foremost restore law and order?

I invite the member for Lingiari and those who sit opposite if they missed it to have a look at last night’s Four Corners. It was an excellent program. There were no dramatic overtones to it. It just had statements of fact, and the camera does not lie. Firstly, there was a corner store in a community of about 150 people which has lost over $100,000. How can one store in one community lose that sort of money unless it is mismanagement or corruption? Secondly, the night patrol vehicle, which is supposed to keep the streets quiet and peaceful at night because there are no police there, was in Alice Springs being used as a cab. The fuel is no longer there because of the misuse of a resource that is supposed to be used to keep people safe. Then there was the community hall which 12 months ago or a little longer had a billiard table and other resources to assist people in having something positive to do and to engage the young people. It appeared like there were a lot of bullet holes in it. It was clear that it was trashed. I wonder whether there was a police investigation into that trashing of public property. I wonder if there was a police investigation into the corruption at the store. I wonder if there was a police investigation when they said women could not walk the streets at night because of the violence in the streets in a ‘dry’ community. Are we as Australian taxpayers supposed to continue to pour more money into a community like that until we get the basis that every civilised society both demands and deserves—that is, to have a safe community?

There have been some improvements over the last 10 years. It is worth mentioning them— because there is a lot of doom and gloom. There are communities out there that are doing the right thing, but I am not prepared to gloss over the problems and stand up here and say, ‘The Howard government has spent more than any previous government—$3.3 billion—and we should be proud of it.’ We should be proud when people have the same rights as everybody else, have the same opportunity to live anywhere they choose to in this nation and have an education and the life skills to live in Canberra, Wadeye, Galiwinku or Alice Springs. Today they simply do not have that opportunity.

The death rates from respiratory illness have reduced. These are still appalling figures, so do not let anyone misread what I am saying, but it is important to recognise there has been an improvement. The death rate from respiratory illness from 1992 to 1994 was seven to eight times the non-Indigenous average—today it is four times. Death rates from infectious and parasitic diseases was 15 to 18 times more likely to occur than the non-Indigenous average—today it is five times. The year 3 writing benchmark at school was 73 per cent of all students—today it is 83 per cent. Secondary school attendance has improved. Year 12 retention has improved. Students attending what used to be known as VET has gone up from 2.4 per cent of 32,000 to 33.6 per cent of 57,000—so a dramatic improvement.

Home ownership has improved. I want to deal briefly with this issue of home ownership. The Howard government has made a big ploy that we want to move away from collectivism. If you go to these communities, people say there is no employment. The reality is that the collective, the corporation, owns the land. No individual owns the land. You can never own your own home. Even if you aspire to do that, it is a simple impossibility. You cannot own a business there because the collective owns the businesses. The collective determines who gets the house, the collective decides who works in the community store and the collective makes all the decisions on behalf of the group. I know there was a time when we thought that self-determination and land rights would solve the problems. I believe it was well meant on both sides. It simply has not worked and it will not work.

The people of Nguiu in the Tiwi islands have voted with their feet and said, ‘Let’s change and let’s allow homeownership here. Let’s allow ourselves to able to put in our own sweat and effort and own something for ourselves, make a determination for ourselves like every other Australian and take control of our lives rather than being dependent upon the collective.’ There is nothing wrong with that. That is a direction that the Howard government wants to move in. We recognise that there will be communities that will not be able to participate in that because they are so isolated they simply will not be eligible or able to participate in a market economy, but we can take a lot of people forward.

What underpins this and is the glue that holds it together is that no government, state or federal, has ever dealt with comprehensively the fundamental right to live in a safe community. I could stand here today and read out all of the horrific things that have filled our newspapers, but I will not be doing it because it is there for everyone to see. I understand the horror of those opposite because I feel the same way, but I think that it is important that the Australian public acknowledges and understands the pain these people have put up with for so long. They are demanding that it stop. When people talk about intergenerational rape, it is not something they want their children to have, and we have a role today to stop it, but if you are not prepared to put someone in jail who has raped a child or who has committed domestic violence, not as a one-off but in a systematic approach, then I am afraid we are not going to get to the core of the issue. We can have all the domestic violence units that we like, we can have all the family relationship centres that we like and we can have all of the provisions afterwards, but when someone turns around after a crime has been committed against them and there is no one to talk to, there is no policeman there to act and there is no safety because the person that has perpetrated the crime of serious assault or sexual deviancy against them comes back into the community for up to two years while they are waiting for trial is it any wonder people do not stand up to give evidence?

They are fundamental issues that I am hoping to address in the summit. I want them to be addressed because I believe it is the only way we can go forward. I know that the shadow spokesman and the Chief Minister have been talking about housing. Housing is a key issue, but we have to recognise that throwing good money after bad is a failure and that, over the last four years, the Territory government have failed to spend the money that they have received. That is a statement of fact and they acknowledge that. If they cannot spend the money they had, even if we were of a mind to throw a lot more money at the problem, what would it have achieved? Let us have a bipartisan approach to this and let us put the ideologies behind us. But let us recognise that, if we do not deal with the two fundamentals of law and order and faith in our criminal justice system, we will condemn ourselves and that community to being in the same position in 10, 20 and 30 years time. I think that is unacceptable. It is something that we should all accept as our grave responsibility and deal with it now. (Time expired)

Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Reconciliation and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I respond to the comments made in the matter of public importance by the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs by saying that we on this side of the House not only come with a strong commitment to find grounds for bipartisan approaches to this issue but also recognise that we do not have the answers. I also strongly say to the minister that, if we do talk about walking together, we do it in a way which acknowledges that some of the differences that we have about ideology and approach should not blind us to the needs that Indigenous communities have, including the ones that he spoke so strongly about in the House.

I remind the minister that many of us here have had a long and abiding concern, interest and connection with these issues, so we are very aware of the level of abuse, suffering and hurt. We are well aware of the level of dysfunctionality that some communities display and we have given some thought to what the best means might be for governments to address this issue. We say to the minister very clearly that it will not be sufficient—notwithstanding the strong fervour that he has for addressing law and order, and I take nothing away by that comment—to confine his approach and the government’s approach to those law and order issues, although they need addressing. It will be equally essential to go to the matters that we have put up for debate and discussed in this matter of public importance.

Here is the test for the government and for the minister. For 10 years a number of ministers have held this portfolio and the Prime Minister himself has committed himself to the cause of true reconciliation with the Aboriginal people of Australia by federation, but within that 10 years, on indicators of health and life expectancy, Indigenous people have continued to go backwards. That is the direction they have headed in. In order to address that particular aspect of what has happened to Indigenous people, we must look at the underlying issues and we must recognise that these issues have a historical component that attaches to them. The problems that the minister spoke about in places like Wadeye and the Alice Springs town camps are the product of generations of governments’ mistreatment and neglect. As long as there is no national strategy to deal with those problems which addresses not only the necessary observance and proper respect for law and due process within the criminal justice system but in addition the causes of violence and abuse, backed up with the resources to do the job including realistic and measurable goals and time lines at the summit that the minister is going to hold, then these problems will continue. That is the minister’s challenge.

Let us recognise that some of these debates can waylay us. A debate about political correctness or customary law and the impact that it has on the criminal justice system is a debate that we can have, but it is not the key debate. The key debate is how a First World country can allow its first people to live in Third World conditions and to suffer the matters that the minister referred to. As the minister knows, there have been some 40 reports since 1990, and I think 21 reports in the last two terms of this government. There are plenty of answers in there for this minister. Many parliamentarians on both sides of the House have used their good intelligence and their commitment to Indigenous people to consider how these issues should be addressed. What has happened to those reports? What has happened to those recommendations? What has happened to those submissions?

I was interested to hear the Co-chair of Reconciliation Australia, Mark Leibler—whom the minister will know—make the point just last night about reconciliation being ‘a journey for all Australians as joint navigators’. He went on to observe:

Governments must acknowledge, privately and publicly, that the necessary immediate law and justice response needs to be supported by properly resourced action to address underlying causes.

We need some proportion in this debate, and I hope that we can bring it in the call that my colleague the member for Lingiari made and in the responses that we have heard from Minister Brough. Not every out-station is a living museum and not every settlement is dysfunctional. Numerous homeland centres around Yirrkala, for example, in north-east Arnhem Land are happy and healthy places. Papunya, often mentioned, is getting on top of its petrol sniffing problems. In my electorate of Kingsford Smith, parents at La Perouse are making solid efforts to get their kids back into school for the long term.

It is true we do need to square up to the violence that the minister refers to. We need to take responsibility as members of political parties, and governments also need to do that. But let us be clear: the rate of Indigenous youth in jail is already alarmingly high. Is the suggestion I hear coming from some quarters that we will simply jail all these kids and that they will now sit in jail for the next five, 10 or 15 years? At what cost to them and at what cost to the community? We need better interventions, more policing and more rehabilitation measures. We need state governments and bureaucrats to step up to the mark and we need the Commonwealth to lead the effort.

I do note and I do say very strongly that the reasons for the high levels of unacceptable violence and sexual abuse against women have already been identified and reported on. The minister spoke of the Australian Institute of Family Studies. It reports that there have been many years of inaction. Surely that is the point here. I hope, Minister Brough, that when the Prime Minister gave you this portfolio you said to him, ‘Don’t take it away from me. I want to keep it for as long as I can so that I can get the job done.’ I think, Minister, we need to ask you whether you will push hard for some of the budget surplus to be invested in making Indigenous people and Indigenous communities healthy. The AMA have done much good work on this and they continue to provide their report cards to government. They say again and again that health care and preventative health care remain consistently underfunded. This is something that the Commonwealth could address, and it could address it now.

You raised good points in the discussion about housing, but are we simply saying that we are not going to provide levels of housing that all other Australians in similar conditions and circumstances would receive until specific instances of criminal violence, damage or destruction are dealt with? Surely that is not what the minister is proposing here. We must commit necessary resources. If we do not, we are just going to be treading water on addressing the underlying causes of violence and abuse.

The Treasurer in question time took a question on comparative economies. I cannot remember exactly what his answer was—I do not want to endorse it—but I think we should ask the same question about comparative countries as they address issues of Indigenous people. Let us look at Canada, a comparative country. Let us look at the efforts they have made. Let us look at the money they have spent. Let us look at the resources—the significant additional resources—that they have committed to health. Let us look at something else that they have done which we need to do—let us look at the fact that they squared up to their past. They did not try and provide their own perspective on the past; they squared up to it. In squaring up to it, they recognised that people had been hurt—people had been terribly abused in the schooling system there—and that those people needed to have that hurt recognised and acknowledged by the national government and policies put in place, resourced and supported to enable them to come to terms with that hurt and to rebuild their lives so that they could make a decent contribution to Canada.

As we look at the statistics in Canada, we see that by taking that decision—in other words, by adopting both reconciliation and practical measures—the Canadians have succeeded in arresting the decline and have improved the conditions for their indigenous people, something which in Australia, to our great shame, we have failed to do. So, Minister, why not use the national summit to come up with a national strategy on violence and abuse which includes realistic targets and time frames and measurable goals? Why not include Indigenous leaders in that summit? I say finally: if we are going to move forward, why not look at ways in which Indigenous people can meaningfully engage not only in your summit but also as part of a national representative body which they support and develop which would enable them to work hand-in-hand with governments as both embark on this important task together?

John Anderson (Gwydir, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I say at the outset that I want to make three very brief points. The first is that there is no doubt that the problems are very real and that we need to face the reality of this ugliness in our society. The second thing is that we need to address the underlying issues—the point of this MPI—as a society and we need to do it in consultation with Aboriginal communities and, in particular, to respect their traditional structures and the role of the elders. Thirdly, as I have thought about this—and I do not take it lightly at all—I am absolutely convinced that the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs is right to say that we must move first to secure the environment in which Aboriginal people, women and children in particular, have to operate if we are to achieve that very important objective of addressing underlying issues.

I want to outline briefly to the House today two experiences which have really shaken me in recent years in relation to this whole question of violence and abuse and of unsatisfactory outcomes for children in particular in our Indigenous communities. I represent a lot of Indigenous people in my own electorate of Gwydir and, in addition to that, as Deputy PM I had what was really the privilege of overseeing an Indigenous trial in the east Kimberleys. From these experiences there are some things I would like to say today. One of them can be reflected by a truly horrific interview I had in my electorate in the town of Lightning Reach, where two Aboriginal men, leaders in their communities whom I respect greatly, came to see me one day and said, ‘We’re here to talk about the impact of video trash in our communities.’ I thought, ‘This’ll be interesting. Where’s it going?’ One of them, a man I genuinely respect greatly because I have had a lot of dealings with him over some 17 or 18 years, said to me, ‘You have to understand that many of our young people are growing up in an environment where they are not really socialised in any normal way. They do not have a functional home environment in which they can learn either their own traditional values or mainstream Western values.’ I think we sometimes arrogantly assume from our own Western perspective that all Australian kids, regardless of who they are, are growing up in some framework where they can be sensibly socialised, and that is often not the case. That was the point that this leader was making.

He said, ‘You’ve got to understand that a lot of our young men are actually socialised by this highly inappropriate material that sometimes comes into their communities in truckloads.’ I said to him, ‘All right, you’re talking about censorship, and that is a very sensitive issue in Canberra. Where would you start?’ He shocked me with his answer. He said, ‘You can start with every video that contains the term and relates to the concept of’—and it was a filthy word, the first part of which is ‘mother’ and the second part of which relates to sexual activity. I looked at him and said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Because some of our kids who have grown up where they have had no socialisation in regard to what is acceptable sexual behaviour think that that is normal, and they learn it from whitey communities. They learn it from your communities!’ I have never felt more ashamed in all my life.

On that front, I was intrigued to note a press release put out by a man I do not know, a fellow by the name of Gondarra, who is the Chairman of the Aboriginal Resource and Development Service Inc. and the political leader of the Golumala clan in the Northern Territory. It makes very interesting reading, because his press release said in part:

No group or people can exist without a system of law to protect its people from abuse. This is especially so for the most vulnerable people, the young and aged, both male and female.

We would all agree with that. We would all uphold that. We would all recognise that no society can survive where its women and children are not safe. It is impossible. Every society worthy of the name society, let alone of the concept of civilisation down through the ages, has ensured the protection of its young and its vulnerable, and Aboriginal communities are no different. That is the point that this man is making. He says:

It is time to get a true understanding of traditional Aboriginal Law.

He goes on to say that their traditional approach is a real law system with parliaments, politicians, constitutions and acts of law. He says that their traditional law is not ‘customary law’ and it obviously seeks to protect the young and the vulnerable. But he goes on:

However, right now there is a sub-culture forming within Aboriginal communities that is violent and abusive. Unfortunately this sub-culture even believes that it is acting within “white fella” law when being abusive. A thinking that began with the systemic undermining of our own law with the colonization of Australia and the atrocities that followed. It is now reinforced by TV, movies, pornography and drugs brought into our community from wider Australia.

So while some incorrectly see our traditional … Law as barbaric and associate it with violence and abuse; the opposite is true, and those who have rejected traditional … Law have now become totally lawless, which they think is the new “white fella” way.

We have to face the fact that we are responsible for a lot of the inappropriate socialisation that is happening in Aboriginal communities today. I believe that very strongly.

We need to recognise that most of us would find abhorrent much of what is portrayed in those communities as being acceptable values in mainstream Western society, yet we need to recognise that it flows into a moral vacuum. I find that very concerning. I draw out of this that we must consult. We have got to draw alongside and spend a long time—or support those who spend the time and make the sacrifices—working alongside Aboriginal people. I do not want to denigrate those who have marched across bridges and what have you. I belong to that camp to some extent myself. I have mouthed a lot of platitudes. I have talked ‘knowingly’ about what ought to be done. But the people who really deserve the support and need our support are those who make the sacrifices to spend the time to build  the long-term relationships on the ground with Aboriginal people. It is patronising to pretend that we can do it all somehow from outside.

This is going to be a real challenge. I think all of us who have thought about it will find it very difficult. How do we engage? How do we really draw alongside these people who, in the end, as I have just portrayed, abhor violence and abuse just as much as we do? Richard Trudgen, who wrote the book Why Warriors Lie Down and Die, seems to be saying that the intellectual leaders of Aboriginal society have never really been engaged by our leaders; thus, Aboriginal leaders feel both patronised and marginalised. We have not been able to mediate across that line, and maybe in some communities we can no longer do it because that intellectual and moral leadership has gone. There is no-one to mediate with. Yet we have to try. This is incredibly important, and Trudgen interestingly says that we have to learn to overcome our language difficulties, our communication difficulties. He makes the very powerful point, ‘The capacity to learn equals the educator’s ability to teach.’

I do not have much time, so I want to come to the second thing that gave me a real shock. As I mentioned, as Deputy PM it was my great privilege to be the patron minister for a community in the east Kimberleys. The eight Indigenous COAG trials were in many ways a very interesting set of communities for us to interact with. When I was Minister for Transport and Regional Services I had the Regional Women’s Advisory Council—a great group of women. They used to meet with me regularly. There were a couple of Indigenous women leaders on it, and one day they said, ‘What we’d like to do is to get some money out of your department and pull together a few women from each of those eight Indigenous COAG trial site communities across Australia and get them into Alice Springs,’ and they did that. They got a reasonable number of women there together, and they reckoned over the three or four days that they were there they had spent a couple of days before any of the Aboriginal women were brave enough to really speak out. They had to establish trust. It was a laborious process.

The stories that they did tell, though, were horrendous. I will never forget those women, who were aghast at what they had heard. One of them—an Aboriginal leader herself—said, ‘If we were applying decent standards of child protection, there are hardly any communities across Australia where you wouldn’t remove the children.’ I know how sensitive that is, but it was an Aboriginal woman who said it to me. That is a tragedy. And that is why I conclude—and I would love to talk much longer on this because I feel very passionately about it—by saying I think the minister is right. From what I learnt from those women and from my experiences across my own electorate, we have to do everything we can now to put in place the legal structures and the policing necessary to secure the safety of those men, those women and those children who are vulnerable so that we can start to effectively engage them on those very underlying issues that the mover of this motion, the member for Lingiari, wanted us to look at. We have to start with the policing. I am surprised to hear myself saying that, but I believe earnestly that it is right and that it is the priority and where we must begin.

Carmen Lawrence (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on Violence concluded after a very comprehensive inquiry in 1999:

The people who could have made a difference have failed to intervene to stop innocent women and children from being bashed, raped, mutilated and murdered and exposed to forms of violence that have been allowed to escalate to a level that is now a national disgrace.

That was the call to us from the Indigenous community leaders then. Seven years later, I am sorry to say it is still a national disgrace—indeed it is worse—and we all share responsibility for that state of affairs. There is no point trying to duck it, as the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs tried to do to some extent. I think he should spend a bit more time listening to the member for Gwydir, who seems to have a much better understanding of the complexity of these issues.

Despite these cyclical moral panics with numerous reports, summits, tub-thumping editorials and a succession of shocked ministers, sustained action to address violence in Indigenous communities sadly has not yet been forthcoming, and that is what we are debating today. If the past is any guide—and I hope it is not—the moment the current media focus dims, as it inevitably will, the government will be tempted to go into Rip Van Winkle mode again, leaving the already damaged to fend for themselves. In fact, as we have heard, one of the first acts of this government was to cut $30 million allocated for the modest but promising Indigenous family violence prevention programs as part of the massive cuts to ATSIC’s budget in 1996-97.

What might now be reasonably called the ‘shocked minister syndrome’ must be pretty galling to the many people who have contributed to those many reports and summits—and to the many people who work in this field and have for a long time been urging governments to act—that should have made it impossible for anyone in this place, and indeed in the whole community if they had had their eyes open, to be unaware of the truly dire circumstances in many communities throughout Australia. During the 10 years that this government has been in power, the problem of child abuse and family violence has been examined and reported on many occasions. There is no excuse for ignorance, let alone inaction. There are at least 30 reports—which have been available since that time to any conscientious MP, let alone a minister—which deal in whole or in part with the factors which lead to such violence and which outline the policies which could assist to reduce the pain and suffering which are the daily bread of so many Indigenous people.

The latest shocked minister, who expresses so much surprise at violence in Indigenous communities, has been in this parliament for the decade that the Howard government has been in office and is responsible for Indigenous Affairs. So forgive us if we are little critical that maybe this conversion is a decade too late! And although this minister has been on this planet for 45 years, he appears to have remained ignorant of the dire conditions in many Indigenous communities, although for a time he was the minister responsible for employment services and must have seen some of these problems. But despite his manifest lack of knowledge, he is not embarrassed to proffer instant solutions. As my mother used to say, ‘A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.’

As a previous speaker on our side indicated, it is important that the minister listen to the great many people, especially Indigenous people, who have put a lot of effort and thought into trying to solve these problems. Unfortunately, as we heard from the minister today, in the process of focusing on one area of law enforcement, he appears to be in the process of misdiagnosing the problems and denying his government has any responsibility for the state of affairs that he has so belatedly discovered; it all has to be done to state and territory government law enforcement practices. I say to the minister that responsibility for Indigenous wellbeing is front and centre a Commonwealth responsibility—shared with the states, it is true, but constitutionally and unavoidably a Commonwealth responsibility. It is simply not good enough for the minister to seek to absolve the government by saying:

Law and order and ... criminal justice ... have always been the responsibility of the states and territories.

Yes, they are and those governments should ensure proper policing in Indigenous communities, enforcement of liquor licensing laws and child protection. They should ensure that the full force of the law falls on those who inflict serious violence and abuse children. I absolutely agree with that and I do not imagine that anyone in this parliament would not. I have said and written this before, as many other people have, and I underline it again: Indigenous communities have the right to enjoy the same peace and good order as any others in our nation. And there has been serious neglect of law enforcement in Indigenous communities. But surely the minister understands—or I hope he can be made to by his colleagues—that preventing violence and abuse in the first place must be the prime objective for this national government, that seriously tackling these problems needs more than just more police and more arrests—the Indigenous community have had plenty of those—and that dealing with abuse and violence needs a long-term strategy, as the government were clearly advised by their Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report of last year. The report concluded:

Many Indigenous families and communities live under severe social strain due to a range of socioeconomic factors. Alcohol and substance misuse, and overcrowded living conditions are just some of the factors which can lead to child abuse and violence.

That is direct advice to the government. I hope the minister will come to understand that making any progress will require acknowledgment, as the report also pointed out, that crime is strongly related to socioeconomic disadvantage wherever it occurs. In Australia of all countries, knowing as we do the historical basis of European settlement although we might sometimes seek to deny it, we must acknowledge that if people are condemned to live lives of entrenched disadvantage, social breakdown, crime and violence will inevitably result in many cases.

If the answer were really as simple as more and better law enforcement, we could all go home. What is needed is not just law enforcement, although that must be done, but dealing with the root causes which produce the elevated rates of crime and violence in the first place. A decade down the track, I ask the minister why his government has not followed up on the many promises that have already been held out to Indigenous Australians to act to reduce the levels of violence and sexual abuse in their communities. We all agree, or at least I think we do, that after decades of turning a blind eye to violence in Indigenous communities this violence can no longer be tolerated. It has been tolerated for far too long. We have to place the same value on the lives and security of Indigenous women, children and men as we do on those of the rest of the community. But the responses must be carefully designed: they have got to engage the Indigenous communities, they have to be based on evidence of where the problems are most severe and what intervention actually works and they have to be sustained—I underline this—not a reflex response born of the next shocked minister’s panic. Threatening to close down remote communities by the stroke of a pen or to starve them of funds, which currently seems to be the preferred mode, is not a solution either, not least because research from my own state shows that the level of clinically significant emotional and behavioural difficulties amongst children is actually lowest in the most remote communities. The same study shows that alcohol consumption is much lower amongst the young people who live in those outermost communities than it is among those in metropolitan areas or areas surrounding agricultural and mining regions.

And we do not need any more reports. As I have said in another place, there have already been so many that they could wallpaper this House and the Senate as well. There have been at least three major initiatives by this government which have apparently gone nowhere. Minister, sustained action is what is required. Don’t wait for the media circus to move on and then disappear. It is going to require a lot of persistence. Minister, if any progress is to be made in reducing violence and abuse in affected communities—and it is by no means all of them—then it is vital that there be a proper understanding of the causes of that violence. It is not good enough to simply address the consequences. I really need to stress this because, given some of his public utterances, the minister does not seem not to understand this. To understand is not to excuse. To understand is to arm yourself with the necessary tools to intervene successful. No-one is trying to justify the violence. People are simply trying to understand it by examining, for instance, the immediate precipitating causes, by looking at the situational factors, such as alcohol and substance abuse, unemployment and welfare dependency, and by looking at the underlying factors, including historical circumstances. They cannot be denied.

After years of silence and shame about acknowledging the problem, Indigenous leaders decided more than a decade ago that the only way to begin the process of reducing violence was to confront it directly. As they have done that, the least that we can do is support them. This shift in sentiment was driven largely by women speaking out and refusing to countenance the devastating levels of abuse experienced in many communities. Minister, listen to those women, listen to the people who have been working on this problem for a very long time, sustain the action and you will get unqualified support from the members on this side.

Barry Wakelin (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As one of the last speakers in this MPI debate I thank everybody for the wisdom they have tried to bring to a very difficult subject. To sum up in the time I have and to offer added solutions is my challenge. Perhaps I can start with lawlessness. Will we overcome that just through tackling poverty and disadvantage? If only it were so simple that we could spend money and overcome it. As the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs advised us, we have spent $3.3 billion per annum. Never has there been more money spent on the issue. The Four Corners program in a very straightforward and comprehensive way showed Australia the challenge that lies before us.

As in the electorates of many of the previous speakers, my electorate has many Indigenous people; it includes the Pitjantjatjara lands, the Maralinga-Tjarutja lands. I have watched with despair and frustration the inability of our government to find appropriate solutions to these longstanding issues. There have been COAG trials and additional police. Indigenous people are 2½ per cent of the population and the 25 per cent of the jail population, figures that we all know about. The member for Kingsford Smith asked: ‘How can a First World country allow people to live in these Third World conditions?’

Yet, on the other side, over the last 12 months as chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs I have seen great improvements brought about by enlightened leadership. Looking at employment, one of our major corporates has been able to achieve in one operation a workforce in which 17 per cent of the workers are Indigenous people. They are quite optimistic that they will move that figure to 35 per cent over the next 10 years. But dealing with the issues of violence, lawlessness and the trashing of houses in order to allow a community to live in a civilised way is just beyond us.

This week in the parliament Gary Johns, a former minister in this place, had the Minister for Education, Science and Training present to us, and launch in the community, a report entitled Aboriginal education: remote schools and the real economy. In his last three paragraphs in the conclusion Gary Johns says:

Governments must decide if they want to sustain some of the pre-conditions which prevent children from succeeding in the education system. If education is an essential gateway to a satisfying life, impediments to achievement must be removed lest education be left carrying the weight of expectations far beyond its capacity to deliver. Policies which continue to treat Aboriginal culture differently, or play the cultural relativism game, will consign another generation of Aboriginal children to failure.

A change in education policy, from one focused on the artificial economy to one based on the real economy will have consequences. Economic incentives focused on parents will hopefully bring about a change in educational achievement. These changes will have an effect on remote communities. Some of these communities will not survive. Governments will need to plan for the inhabitants of those remote communities. The drift of the population, to regional and urban centres, to find new work will create new adjustment challenges for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians.

The clear role of educators is to prepare children for the future, not the past. The future is an economic one and not necessarily in a remote community. This change in direction will attract reactionary criticism from those whose careers are based on extracting rents from the current regime. This criticism should be expected as a sign that the new direction is the right direction. The new policy direction must not apply different standards to Aboriginal children. It must fundamentally treat Aboriginal children as children.

So that is the challenge presented to us by Gary Johns, and I thank him for that. I thank the minister for having the courage to address the issue and for the partnership that he is endeavouring to forge with the states and territories. We can offer something within the adversarial roles in this place if we can just learn a little from the past. The member for Gwydir talked about Richard Trudgen and the benefit of understanding, the benefit of establishing trust, the benefit of engaging and the benefit of building relationships. I agree with the member for Gwydir that we are collectively responsible for the inappropriate outcomes that have occurred, particularly over the last 30 years. We must secure the communities.

We know that our federation creates great challenges in how we work with our partners in the states and territories. As the minister was at pains to say, it is not a criticism that will finger point and not give any outcome or result. There is money available for effective expenditure; it is about how we spend it. All the reports—and I am guilty of a few of them myself—are there. So, with an ounce of luck, and with goodwill from the Commonwealth and throughout our states and territories, there are great opportunities for us. There is no reason why we cannot have, in the future, Indigenous communities that are part of the total community in an equal way. But we must seek positive examples. Trudgen, tries to get us to understand—and he is but one person. Warren Mundine, Gary Johns and some in the media have made this their life’s work as well. We have the mechanisms in front of us to solve these problems. In the employment area alone, very positive outcomes are available to us. There is no reason why we cannot have in this country the wit within the police, law enforcement, the courts and the Koori courts to address this issue in a way which will give Indigenous people far better outcomes than they currently have.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The worst form of praise is self-praise, but I am going to indulge in a bit of that. We have to look at success stories. The library tells me I was the longest serving Aboriginal affairs minister in Australian history—and I was only in the job for about seven years. I found an article that states:

Mr Pearson—

Noel Pearson—

during his speech, also praised the work of controversial Queensland MP, Bob Katter.

Mr Pearson said:

Through the course of a deranged ministry—

he was referring to the situation before I came in—

Katter dragged Indigenous affairs in Queensland into the 20th century. You would have to have lived and grown up on a Queensland reserve as I did to appreciate the huge changes he effected to rigid systems of state control over Aboriginal affairs that had hardly changed since the turn of the century.

He went on to say that I was one of the best Aboriginal affairs ministers. Father Frank Brennan—definitely no great flatterer of mine—said to the Courier Mail that ‘Bob Katter Jr, the new federal member for Kennedy, was the best government person he had ever dealt with in Aboriginal affairs when he was minister for Aboriginal affairs in the Queensland government’. I think that four Sixty Minutes stories were done on me and what we were doing in the department at that time—and they were all highly praiseworthy.

This was an extraordinarily successful model. What was the magic formula we used? I have listened to previous speakers, and some of them are very good people. The member for Gwydir said we have to act to give these people a fair go. The essence of what he was saying seemed to be that policing was the area we had to look at. I do not mean to denigrate any of these people. Mr Fitzgerald, the person who destroyed the Queensland government, was paid a lot of money to disclose that the problem was alcohol. What his report essentially said was that, if alcohol were banned, the problems would be solved. It was a very deep and far-reaching intellectual achievement to tell them that alcohol was the problem!

The member for Fremantle said we should listen to the people who work with them and know their problems. Quite frankly, from my experience, they are the last people I would listen to. The member for Grey said we should give them education. I do not really know why—and I am at a loss as to how you would give it to them. You cannot force children to go to school. Parents cannot force their children to do anything these days. If a kid does not want to go to school, I am at a loss as too how you can give them education.

At Camooweal in my day we had two wonderful teachers. One of them would go to the front of the Aboriginal community and the other would go to the back. When the kids flew out the back, he would grab them, throw them in the back of the kombi van and take them to school. That is how they got them to school. So, Member for Grey, how would you go about getting them to school? Are we going to belt them? We would then have them taken from us.

I will continue on about how marvellous I am. George Mai was a legendary leader, and a great friend and mentor of Father Passi. In fact, Eddie Mabo was kicked out on the second day of the Mabo case and Father Passi, a man of towering integrity and presence, took his place. George Mai, a legendary leader for some 20 or 30 years in the Torres Strait, was kind enough to say I was the best minister he had ever worked with. What was the magic formula? I suppose I had the advantage of playing in football teams. If you look at my wall, you will see all the football teams there. I was brought up and mixed with Aboriginal children. Some of my best friends are Aboriginal. Last time I watched a state of origin match, in Mount Isa, one of my good mates of Aboriginal descent was there. They taught me to ride a horse. They taught me a lot of what I knew about playing rugby league football. They taught me about mining as well.

So I had an advantage, but that was not the reason. The reason was that the one thing nobody said was, ‘Please, for Heaven’s sake, go out and listen to them.’ This is nothing very complicated. When we went out there, I vividly remember a picture on my wall of Jackson Choicha and Eddie Holroyd at what is now Poomperau. I said, ‘Just tell us what you want.’ They said, ‘We want self-management.’ I said, ‘Righto, you’ve got that; it’s on its way. What else do you want?’ They said, ‘We want to have a go at the cleanskins.’ I said, ‘You’re going to have to build yards. You can’t do that on government land.’ The government was not going to put out money to build yards on government land, so I told them they might need to take up some land. They said, ‘We can’t do that.’ So I said, ‘I’m the minister. If you want to take up land, take it up.’ I did not know whether I could deliver, but I said that I could. One of the 60 Minutes segments was done on Jackson Choicha and Eddie Holroyd.

We said, ‘From now on, you build your own homes totally.’ In Queensland we got agreement that all houses would be built by Aboriginals and some 700 jobs were created out of nothing. Until then white contractors were building all of the houses in Queensland or we were buying existing houses. From now on every house would be built by exclusively black labour. This was not easy. I think there were at least a dozen sackings in my department. I went out and inspected site after site myself to enforce the decision that had been taken by the Aboriginal coordinating council in Queensland. Gerhard Pearson, Noel’s brother, said, ‘Why can’t we use the CDEP money?’ That was started off by another Hopevale resident. Two 60 Minutes segments were done on the CDEP Work for the Dole program, which was commenced by a person of Aboriginal descent from Hopevale, home of Matty Bowen, the famous rugby league player. It was commenced by Greg and then Gerhard said, ‘Why can’t we start using CDEP people to build the homes?’

So we went from building three homes a year, and then Donnie Fraser at Doomadgee, another person of Aboriginal descent—these are people doing it themselves—said, ‘Can we get block-making machines?’ So we bought seven or eight, and they did not cost a lot, only about $70,000 apiece. So they were building almost everything they needed. Apart from the fittings and the roofs, everything was being built at the Doomadgee and Hopevale sites. The entire cost of the houses—that $60 million or $70 million that we were spending each year in Queensland—suddenly was providing jobs for all of these people.

With the cattle incentive, in the Aboriginal areas of Queensland we had mustered 1,874 head of cattle before these programs started. By 1985 we were mustering 4,285 head of cattle a year. In the Torres Strait, where the industry was fishing, they went from around $200,000 to $3 million a year—most of that was concentrated on Badu Island.

There was an absolutely remarkable success story with cattle, and the reason was that the government was running the whole fishery up there and the people of Torres Strait Islander descent could not run or own anything themselves. We came along and said, ‘What about the land?’ They were given a choice about whether they wanted tribal ownership, land council ownership, local government ownership—because we were setting up local government—private ownership or a continuation of state government ownership. Surprise, surprise. They all said they wanted to own their own homes and farms themselves.

I do not know of a single government in Australia that has delivered to the black people the simple right to own their own homes. Nobody has been up there to ask them, because the last time I visited Yarrabah the chairman was banging his fist on the table and saying, ‘The only place in the world you can’t own your own home is at Yarrabah.’ They looked at me and I said, ‘Doomadgee, Palm Island—you name the place; you’re not allowed to own your own home.’ And this is in that 40 per cent of Australia that is owned by people of Aboriginal descent.

The money that is handed out by the state and federal governments to these people because they are of Aboriginal descent works out to about $80,000 a family. I have to honestly say I do not see any of my blackfella mates driving around in Volvo motorcars. So where is the $80,000 going? It sure is not going into black pockets. Forty per cent of the surface area of Australia is owned by people of Aboriginal descent, but they cannot access it. They do not really own anything; it is tribal ownership.

The initiative for them to build their own homes was abandoned; they are all back being built by contractors in Queensland and 700 jobs have gone up in smoke. Everything humanly possible has been done to smash private ownership in the reserve areas of Queensland, including by the incoming ALP government, which took the right to private ownership—(Time expired)

Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The discussion is now concluded.