Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—As all members would be aware, a year ago, following the shocking findings of the Little children are sacred report and the recommendations it made, the Northern Territory Emergency Response was launched. Initiated by the Howard government, we in opposition supported the measures, acknowledging the need for an urgent response and offering bipartisan backing. This bipartisan commitment to protect children in Northern Territory communities continues and I welcome the opposition’s ongoing support for the Northern Territory Emergency Response.

The Little children are sacred report backed up claims of serious child abuse made public by Alice Springs prosecutor Nanette Rogers and found that child sexual abuse was occurring in all 45 communities visited. It was just one of a succession of special commissions and coronial inquiries exposing disturbing conditions and behaviour in Indigenous communities and its first recommendation was that ‘Aboriginal child sexual abuse in the Northern Territory should be designated as an issue of national significance by both the Australian and Northern Territory governments’. It was and remains an issue of national significance and a priority for the Australian government. Its effectiveness is central to meeting the specific targets the government has set to tackle entrenched Indigenous disadvantage and to bring about the practical, structural, sustainable change that is essential if the next generation of Indigenous Australians are to have a better future.

A year on, the government remains committed to the NTER and determined to maintain the momentum and committed to an approach that stringently examines the facts and makes policy decisions based on evidence, anchored in what works. That is why we have commissioned a review into the effectiveness of the Northern Territory Emergency Response measures—to take a hard-nosed look at what has been effective, what needs to be strengthened and to make recommendations for the future. Any assessment of the NTER must be based on data and hard facts. We know only too well from past failures in Indigenous policy that decision-making grounded in ideology is doomed to fail Indigenous Australians.

The NTER Review Board has begun its work and will submit its final report by 30 September 2008. But the pace is not slowing while the review is going on. We will press forward with measures to make children safer and build strong resilient families and communities. We have committed $666 million to close the gap in Indigenous disadvantage in the 2008-09 budget. We are continuing all current NTER initiatives as well as providing nearly $100 million for 200 new teachers and almost $30 million for three Indigenous boarding colleges.

We have learnt much from the first year of the NTER. We know that much can be achieved by working in partnership with Indigenous communities and that achieving sustainable change involves new approaches and strong leadership from all levels of government, industry and Indigenous people. One year on and the protection of children and improved community safety remains front and centre of the NTER. Our greatest responsibility is to make sure that children are safe and healthy, and growing up in families and communities which nurture and protect them.

To keep children and families safe, the Northern Territory Emergency Response has provided more police and police stations to enforce the law, help prevent violence and antisocial behaviour and enforce the bans on alcohol and pornography. Previously many remote communities were without law-enforcement authorities and serious violence went unreported. There are currently 51 extra police serving in communities which previously had no police presence, and night patrols are operating in all 73 prescribed communities. As well as policing duties, they are actively involved in their communities—coaching the local footy team, taking on a lifeguard role at the local pool. This is helping to build trust and increasing communication.

The Australian government has legislated to ban alcohol in prescribed areas and the takeaway sales across the Territory are monitored to stop grog trafficking. Night patrol services—a community-driven response to law and order problems—patrol community ‘hot spots’, diffusing violent situations, taking people out of harm’s way and diverting potential offenders from crime. Extra funding is being provided for legal aid and interpreter services and the Indigenous Violence and Child Abuse Intelligence Taskforce, part of the Australian Crime Commission, is conducting targeted intelligence operations both within the NT and more widely across Australia.

Supporting families and keeping them safe is critical to the NTER. Safe houses are being built in up to 16 remote communities and services are being expanded in Alice Springs and Darwin. A mobile child protection team has begun operating with the recruitment of additional child protection workers and Aboriginal family and community services.

To move towards meeting our targets to close the gap in Indigenous life expectancy, nearly 11,000 children have received a child health check. And much of the required follow-up treatment, including surgery, has started. Community based follow-up, including primary health care, audiology, ear, nose and throat (ENT) outreach and non-surgical dental services are being delivered in 46 communities and town camps across the Northern Territory. Audiology services have been provided to 669 children, non-surgical ENT services to 227 children, and non-surgical dental services to 350 children. Forty-six children have undergone ENT surgery and 40 children have undergone dental surgery.

The introduction of a school nutrition program, operating in 49 communities and associated outstations and seven town camps is providing breakfast and lunch to school aged children—improving their concentration and engagement in education. There is a small but nevertheless very encouraging increase in the school attendance rates in those communities where the school nutrition program is in place.

In 2006, the school retention rate for Indigenous students in the Northern Territory was just over 40 per cent—compared with the non-Indigenous rate of 75 per cent. The situation is most critical in remote areas. In these communities, the NTER is challenging the assumption that many children would simply not attend school and is asserting both the right and the obligation of school attendance. Two hundred additional teachers are being recruited over the next five years at a cost of $100 million to educate the 2,000 young people previously not enrolled. The first intake is currently in training. Significant capital investment in education is being made by the Northern Territory government and the Catholic Education Office. And the Australian government is building three new boarding schools to accommodate and educate remote area students from years 8 to 12.

We know that housing is critical to children’s safety, wellbeing and health. Families cannot function in substandard, overcrowded houses. The NTER is laying the basis for major improvements in housing stock and housing maintenance and management for Indigenous people. We are investing $813 million in remote Indigenous housing and infrastructure in the Northern Territory, including $793 million over the next four years as part of a joint agreement with the Northern Territory government. A further $20 million will be spent to refurbish houses in six communities. Under the Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program living conditions for 80 per cent of people in targeted communities will be improved. This will include:

• around 750 new houses including new subdivisions,
• more than 250 new houses to replace houses to be demolished,
• over 2,500 significant housing upgrades, and
• essential infrastructure and improvements in living conditions in town camps.

Income management is key to making sure welfare payments are used for the benefit of children and increasing the financial security of families raising children. As at 13 June this year, a total of 13,309 customers were being income managed in 52 communities, associated outstations and seven town camp regions. Women in many of the targeted communities are finding that the new income management arrangements are helping buy the food their children need. And licensed community stores are reporting significant changes in customer shopping habits with increased purchases of fresh food and more money spent on the needs of children. Sales of cigarettes have approximately halved, and customers are also saving for the purchase of whitegoods, such as fridges, so they can store fresh food at home. Store operators have also reported that there is less cash circulating, residents have more control over their money and the incidence of ‘humbugging’ for goods or cash has dropped.

Some customers are using income management to help them save. For example, one elderly woman from Titjikala has been saving for the first time in her life and has been able to buy furniture and a television. The food security of communities is being assessed and upgraded on a region by region basis through new community stores’ licensing arrangements. Fifty-nine stores have now been licensed and a system of bush orders introduced.

The Australian government recognises that creating socially and economically viable communities in remote Indigenous areas is a huge challenge. Our approach has been to set high-level targets to close the gap, to identify effective policy building blocks and progressively put in place the policy and program settings to reach these targets. Our target to halve the gap in Indigenous employment within a decade is critical to increasing economic participation—which in turn is fundamental to sustainable, long-term improvement in life outcomes for Indigenous Australians. Lifting Indigenous economic participation demands concerted, cooperative effort and attitudinal change from all levels of government, industry and Indigenous people themselves.

It also demands a forward-thinking strategy to manage the inflow of mining royalties and other resource industry funds in the best interests of current and future generations of Indigenous people. These unprecedented financial benefits must be used to create employment and educational opportunities now, with investment too in long-term benefits for communities. It must be made to last for generations, not distributed as irregular windfalls to be frittered away for no permanent good. I believe all of us in this parliament have a responsibility to work with industry and the Indigenous leadership to harness these resources for social and economic advancement. New approaches are needed to the ways payments are negotiated and structured so that we improve accountability and provide greater assurance to Indigenous interests.

Just this week, I approved a lease agreement between the traditional owners of lands in the north-west of the Northern Territory and the Bonaparte gas pipeline construction company. This pipeline, crossing Aboriginal land, will play a major role in guaranteeing energy security for the residents of the Northern Territory, and it is encouraging to see Indigenous interests playing their part in the economic development of the Northern Territory. The agreement is for a 99-year lease with Eni Australia Ltd, which is building the pipeline to carry gas from the Blacktip gas processing plant near Wadeye to the Stuart Highway. Under the agreement, 2,500 people making up 19 land-owning groups will share in $10 million over the term of the lease.

While it is my statutory duty to oversight these major agreements and the responsibility of land councils to act in the interests of traditional owners and any other Aboriginals interested in the land, I have no direct capacity to determine the way in which these payments are either allocated or utilised. But, as I said earlier, I believe the government does have a responsibility to take the initiative to make sure the money flowing from this pipeline venture is invested in the future of local people. I have therefore decided to take this opportunity to make a generous proposal to the landowning groups through their representative, the Northern Land Council.

I have written to the NLC chair this week and made the following offer: if the landowners are prepared to establish an educational trust fund which benefits children across the region and allocate at least 90 per cent of the projected benefits into the fund, the Australian government will match them dollar for dollar up to a maximum of $10 million.

A fund of around $18 million would provide considerable benefits in perpetuity for parents and children in a region with one of the youngest and fastest-growing populations in the country. There are already precedents for this in the Northern Territory, with recent agreements between Newmont Asia-Pacific and Warlpiri traditional owners establishing a series of programs under an education trust. We are determined to make these kinds of agreements more common so that real and sustainable improvement can be achieved now and into the future.

So, one year on from the emergency response in the Northern Territory, we have made some important progress towards providing Indigenous Australians with the fundamentals of a decent life: a safe home, good health and nutrition, a decent education and a job. But there still is much, much more to be done. We have made a positive start, but we need to continue to work in partnership with Indigenous people. I am confident that if we continue to work both with the Indigenous leadership and across the parliament we can build on this progress.

I ask leave of the House to move a motion to enable the member for Warringah to speak for 17 minutes.

Leave granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent Mr Abbott speaking for a period not exceeding 17 minutes.

Question agreed to.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Community Services, Indigenous Affairs and the Voluntary Sector) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is the third ministerial statement by the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and it has been the first one that was really worth making. First, it has been on an important topic and, second, she has had something significant and useful to say. So I want to congratulate the minister on her commitment to the intervention. I want to congratulate the government on the presence of 51 extra police in the affected remote Northern Territory townships. I congratulate the government on the fact that 11,000 Indigenous children have received health checks. I also congratulate the government on the extension of income management to 13,000 people in the affected Northern Territory townships.

I welcome the minister’s assessment that, as a result of the intervention, there is now less gambling, less substance abuse and less domestic violence in the intervention townships and that there is now more food on the tables of the families living there. However, I remain concerned that, notwithstanding the government’s overall commitment to the intervention, the restoration of the permit system, the watering down of the pay TV porn ban and the restoration of CDEP and its implications for effective quarantining in the impacted townships are potentially significant steps backward. Nevertheless, in essence the government does remain committed to the intervention launched a year ago by former Prime Minister Howard and former minister Mal Brough.

The police have moved in. The booze has largely been removed. The children are at school to a greater extent than before and the adults are in work to a greater extent than before. Nevertheless—and I say this not by way of criticism of the minister but more by way of observation about the government and the party which forms the government—there is a hint of half-heartedness about the government’s commitment to the intervention. I cannot forget the statement of the now Deputy Chief Minister of the Northern Territory that the intervention was ‘the black kids Tampa’ and I also cannot forget the fact that in other respects this government is somewhat watering down the practice of mutual obligation.

I am conscious of the stress on service delivery in the minister’s statement. Obviously the opposition welcomes the delivery of the best possible services in these townships, as indeed everywhere. But the problem is not so much lack of services in these places; the problem is more lack of an economic base. The problem is not so much lack of good quality housing; the problem is more building houses in places where there are no jobs.

I am conscious of a new stress on consultation. Consultation is something that almost no-one can oppose. Yet consultation has become a way of life in Indigenous communities; almost a substitute for getting on with life. I could not help but note the minister’s emphasis on creating ‘socially and economically viable communities’ in remote areas. I think I should in all honesty point out to the House that you cannot have socially viable communities that are not also economically viable, and you cannot have economic viability without a natural economic base. We will never close the gap in health without also closing the gap in employment, and we can never close the employment gap without equipping people to live in Australian cities as well as in Indigenous townships. I think we need to understand that we must do so much more than equip Indigenous people to live in an Indigenous version of old Sydney town.

Only Aboriginal people can maintain Aboriginal culture. The responsibility of government is less to facilitate the preservation of culture than to empower all Australians especially Indigenous Australians who need it most to operate effectively in the modern Australian society. That means essentially that the children have got to go to decent schools and the adults have to be involved in work programs that as far as possible reflect real jobs with real consequences for nonperformance. That in essence is the message which has been consistently given to Australians by Noel Pearson, and by Warren Mundine, the former national president of the Australian Labor Party, and I should acknowledge to the House that really they were a substantial inspiration behind the intervention and it is their courageous thinking to which we must stay true.

I want to conclude by saying that there was much that was mistaken in the mission era for which this House rightly apologised earlier in the year. But one thing that cannot be denied is the commitment of those missionaries to the people they served. The central error of the modern era has been to think that Australia is occupied by two peoples, one Indigenous and one not. We are, or should be, one people all with the same commitment to our families, their prosperity and their safety, all with the same standards of decency, all with the same standards of humanity. That in the end is what the intervention has been designed to secure. That is why it should be strengthened and extended. That is why I welcome the good news that the minister has been able to announce to the House today.