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

If you go to a remote Indigenous township you will invariably find a school, a clinic, a store and a council. Under the aegis of the council, you will invariably find municipal services, employment services and housing services. These are a lot of governmental institutions to operate in what are often quite small communities. In, for argument’s sake, a community of say 500 people you will often get 50 to 100 resident officials or professional staff staffing the school, the clinic, the store and the various services run by local councils. While there are well-developed vertical lines of command between, say, the school and the educational authorities in the state capital and between, say, the clinic and the health authorities in the state capital, there are often not well developed lines of horizontal communication and coordination between the various governmental bodies and agencies in these places.

Indigenous communities often provide very powerful illustrations of the defects of services in silos. This is a well-known problem with the delivery of governmental services generally, but it is particularly acute in many Indigenous places. Indeed, Indigenous places are often characterised by an abundance of government but an absence of authority generally. If you look at these remote Indigenous communities, you often see in the lifetimes of the older people resident in them transitions from traditional authority to mission authority to virtually no authority. It is a real problem. One reason why so many of these places are hotbeds of social dysfunction is that there is very little effective authority in them. So often we have committed idealistic young officials and professionals going into these communities and returning after six or 12 months defeated and disillusioned, because they feel that nothing really changes. Those who are there for the long term have begun to think that nothing really matters anyway.

This problem of disorientation and disillusion in Indigenous communities—especially among the people who deliver services to Indigenous communities—is very serious and needs to be tackled. This bill to provide for a Commonwealth Coordinator-General of services to remote Indigenous communities is the government’s attempt to move in this direction, and I want to commend the government for its good intentions.

There is the potential here to make a significant difference, because the Coordinator-General will have the power under this legislation to require people such as state and federal officials to provide information and documents, to require people to attend meetings and to request assistance from Commonwealth, state and territory agencies. It is envisaged that the Coordinator-General will have the power to—metaphorically, at least—bang heads together where problems are not being addressed in an attempt to make a difference. As I said, this is a worthy move on the part of the government. The Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs has said that the establishment of this office is long overdue, and I have to say that I am inclined to agree with her.

I should point out, though, that as part of the intervention in the remote townships of the Northern Territory the former government did establish in virtually each of the 73 remote communities affected by the intervention the position of government business manager. The idea behind these government business managers was that they would be people with the authority of the Commonwealth government who would be in a position to try to ensure that all the services and agencies in this town were working together rather than pulling in different directions. So, if the teachers were not talking to the doctors and nurses, the government business manager would be able to have a quiet but authoritative word in the ear of all of them and try to ensure that common sense prevailed.

I have to say that, in my opinion, even better than the establishment of one coordinator-general based in Canberra would be the establishment of a whole series of mini coordinators-general in every single remote Indigenous community. In my opinion, the establishment of a senior Commonwealth officer in residence in each of the remote communities would be an even better step than this. But I do think that this is a step in the right direction.

I hope that the coordinator-general, once appointed, turns out to be a person of great natural authority as well as a person who is widely respected by the Australian community and widely experienced in getting things done—in making a difference. I hope that, in looking for people to fill this job, the government might consider former senior military officers, for instance—former senior officers of those institutions and establishments which do not muck around but get on with things and are used to being treated with respect and taken seriously, because that is the kind of officer that we need in this role if it is going to make a difference.

The coordinator-general has to be focused on the actual delivery of services on the ground. The coordinator-general has to be focused on trying to ensure that the people on the ground are absolutely committed to their role. That is what is necessary if this job is to start to make a significant difference to what can often be ghastly conditions in our remote Indigenous communities—the Third World in the midst of what is otherwise one of the greatest countries on earth. I do not want this coordinator-general to end up being just an addition to the bureaucracy; I would like to think that this coordinator-general is going to spend most of his or her time out in the remote places of our country actually making a difference where it matters. I commend the bill to the House.

Damian Hale (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I support the comments of the member for Warringah. The Coordinator-General for Remote Indigenous Services Bill 2009 allows for government investment to be prioritised and coordinated to ensure that each priority location has the infrastructure and services that support and sustain healthy social norms so people can reach their potential and communities can thrive. The position of coordinator-general is being established to address the practical problems associated with designing, sequencing and rolling out myriad programs in remote communities. As the member for Warringah mentioned, this position of coordinator-general is important. However, Indigenous communities have waited a long time. There is a sense of worthlessness and despair in many of these communities. The government joins with the opposition in a bipartisan approach to make sure that we bridge the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

The bill makes provisions for the coordinator-general to arrange with the Secretary of the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs for the services of the APS employees from the department to be made available. If the coordinator-general is not satisfied with the response from the head of the agency, the coordinator-general may report the matter to the minister and also the Prime Minister if necessary. This is an important mechanism because too often we see there is too much slippage in programs and the money is not actually getting to where it is most needed in Indigenous communities.

I would like to draw the attention of the House to today’s Age. A young guy by the name of Liam Jurrah is pictured on the front page. He is a traditional man—a Walpiri man—from Yuendumu. Anyone who follows AFL football would know what our Indigenous brothers bring to the game. Some 12 per cent of AFL players are Indigenous and the league is working towards getting that to around 20 per cent by approximately 2020. There is also an aim for four per cent of employees of the AFL to be of Indigenous descent in the near future.

Liam Jurrah’s is an interesting story. He is a boy from Yuendumu. I coached Liam Jurrah when I was coach of the Northern Territory Thunder a couple of years ago. I remember taking Liam to Melbourne. He played at Princes Park—or Optus Oval, depending on who was sponsoring the Carlton ground at the time—and I remember how cold it was. Liam Jurrah, the boy from Yuendumu, really struggled with the cold. He found it very difficult. After a game we would do a rehab session where the guys would go down to the beach at St Kilda. It is quite an interesting spectacle. You see all these guys up to their waists in the sea. The coach and all the coaching staff even went in—I made it compulsory for everyone to go into the sea. From memory, the water was about eight degrees. Liam Jurrah stood there and looked at me as if to say, ‘Coach, please, don’t make me do this.’ I thought at the time that by making Liam Jurrah do that we would lose him from the program, but he hung in there.

Last year, the Collingwood Football Club gave Liam an opportunity to play reserve grade, but he had to go back to Yuendumu for his tribal business. He is a ‘ceremony man’, as they say, and already one of the elders in the community—he is a leader. Liam Jurrah played for Collingwood and went back to Yuendumu, and this year the Melbourne Football Club drafted him in the rookie draft and promoted him to their list. On Friday night, Liam Jurrah plays his first game for the Melbourne Football Club. It is a fantastic story.

I would just like to say that the AFL probably does it better than anyone when it comes to working in Indigenous communities and giving hope to a lot of young Indigenous footballers. Liam Jurrah will run out onto the MCG on Friday night to realise his dream of playing AFL football. The game is against the mighty Essendon, I must add—the side I support. Essendon has a long association with Indigenous Australia. We remember the association that Kevin Sheedy had with Michael Long.

I see that the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs is in the House. I would like to acknowledge her. Last year I had the pleasure of walking with her on the Long Walk with Michael, from Federation Square in Melbourne to the MCG to celebrate Indigenous Australia and what they have contributed to AFL football. What the AFL does in Aboriginal communities is certainly something that government can support and work closely with. I would be very proud. I hope that Essendon beats Melbourne, I must admit, on Friday night. I also hope that Liam Jurrah plays well but he will certainly be a hero in Yuendumu. One of the comments was:

In Yuendumu, this is bigger than going to the moon … somebody’s already been to the moon.

No-one from Yuendumu has ever played AFL football. Good luck to Liam Jurrah.

The challenges are enormous. I have a part-Aboriginal wife and five kids; I have been to Tea Tree and I grew up in places like Katherine; I lived in Maningrida as a four-year-old. A lot of Aboriginal people in communities have got to a point where they have said: ‘Nothing will ever change. There’s no hope for us.’ I welcomed the comments from the member for Warringah because this is bipartisan. Aboriginal people do not need to be a political football. As a nation we certainly need to really address the crisis that has occurred in communities for a number of years.

It started, I suppose, on 13 February last year with the apology. This was a significant moment. People who do not think it was significant are wrong. There are a lot of people within my community from the stolen generation. My mother-in-law was one of those people who were taken away from Tea Tree when she was seven years old, never to see her mother again. She grew up on Melville Island. There was always a worry about compensation. Sure, there are avenues for people to get compensation, but certainly my mother-in-law was just happy with the fact that it had been acknowledged that things were not done properly back in those times. The apology from the Prime Minister on 13 February was certainly well received in my area.

The Coordinator-General will provide information to agencies on obstacles within their areas of responsibility and advise the minister and COAG on the need for systematic change. If the Coordinator-General fails to receive an adequate response from the agency official, this bill allows for the matter to be reported to the head of the relevant Commonwealth, state and territory agencies.

The then Minister for Employment Participation, Brendan O’Connor, came to Darwin and we toured one of my Aboriginal communities in Bagot. We drove around and the minister was quiet. I think he was taken aback with what he saw and how some of these people were living. We had a meeting with the local council. The minister said to me, ‘Should I go around and meet people and say hello?’ I said: ‘Look, with all due respect, Minister, you don’t have to do that. These people have met all politicians.’ They have met former politicians from the other side, in Mal Brough and David Tollner; they have met Damian Hale and Matty Bonson, the local member. They will show a lot of respect. They will stand up, shake hands and say, ‘How are you going?’ and it will be just another white politician who has come to visit. They will go back and sit under the tree and nothing actually changes.

To the credit of the minister, who is in the House today, I had a conversation with her last year and she said, ‘Where do we start?’ We started on housing as an issue. Overcrowding probably leads to a lot of the dysfunction in Indigenous communities, as well as a lot of the health issues, the truancy from school and the inability to go to work. The housing program has been rolled out—some $800 million of housing for the Northern Territory. It is a vital component and starting point. The minister has been very proactive in listening, talking and consulting with communities. It has certainly been appreciated. But the time has come for us as a nation to actually get the results that we need to get in these communities. We have talked about it and we have been here for 240-odd years, and for a lot of that time Indigenous Australian communities have gone backwards. The time for results is now. We cannot continue to muck around, take our time, have inquiries and write reports. It is about making time now for action in Indigenous communities.

I applaud this bill. The Coordinator-General will be the person who can make action happen on the ground where people need it, so that the four-year-old kid does not end up with sickness caused by bad living conditions. Gingivitis in your mouth has a direct association with heart disease. Gingivitis in a four-year-old’s mouth can cause heart disease when they are 45. Already a lot of Indigenous friends of mine have died between the ages of 35 and 40—young men who have died from heart disease at a very young age. It is a challenge.

I notice the member for O’Connor is here. Certainly over his time he has been involved heavily in Indigenous Australia in Western Australia. I acknowledge his commitment to this cause. It is something that goes above politics. It is not about politics at all. This is about our First Australians. Let’s remember: they are the First Australians; they were here before anyone else. They are the longest-living, structured culture in the world. For so long we have looked at them as a problem. We should not look at it like that. We should be embracing Indigenous Australians because they are unique. They bring a unique set of skills; they bring something unique to our country.

It was interesting to hear what the Prime Minister had to say in a conversation I had with him and that he had with us at caucus. After the apology, he went around the world talking to other world leaders. He met with the President of the United States of the time. They begged to differ on a few issues—on Iraq and withdrawing troops and climate change and that sort of stuff. But predominantly what leaders around the world wanted to talk to the Prime Minister about was what it was like to apologise to Indigenous Australians. That is the impact that it has had.

Now is the time when we need to really start to look at what we can do for Indigenous Australians, in particular those in remote communities. How can we make those communities function better? How can we rid them of the alcohol problems, the drug abuse and the petrol sniffing? We continue to build houses. We get them into functional communities. How do we give them economic development through working not only with government agencies but also with private enterprise—to allow it to come into communities—to make sure that we do close the gap?

Closing the gap in Indigenous life expectancy has been the focus of the Rudd government from day 1. That has not changed. The coordinator-general will now provide us with a vehicle for somebody to really ask the hard questions and to say: ‘Well, all right, we have put this money into this community. Fine. What effect is it having on the ground? What is it going to do? How is it improving things?’ These things are measurable.

How many kids are getting to school? We need to work with parents in order to make sure their kids go to school. We take it as it given that kids will go to school. But, in some of these communities, mums are very protective of their children—they are very close to their children—and some of them do not like their children going away for six hours during the day. Some people do not understand the benefits of that. They want their kids near them. That is their culture. That is the way they are. They are very clingy to their kids. My wife is no exception to that. She is very close to our five kids. You can go to the football and just buy one seat for her to sit on because they all sort of sit on top of her—and they are getting to be 16, 17 and 18 years old. But they are still very clingy to their mother.

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

I hope they are not all as big as you.

Damian Hale (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It would be a lot cheaper to just buy the one seat, Jenny, instead of the six that I usually have to pay for!

We need to continue to work with Indigenous Australians because they are a gift to us. The gift that they do bring—and I go back to Liam Jurrah, and I see his picture on the front page of the Agecomes not only through football but certainly through the arts and drama. David Gulpilil was from a place called Ramingining. My father taught at Maningrida and he taught David Gulpilil. David has had to walk both sides of the street his entire life. I had the pleasure of catching up with him in the mall a couple of weeks ago in Darwin. He tried to sell me a painting, I must admit, which I did not purchase, but he was very friendly. David has done it for so long. We take it for granted that he should be able to do it. But, when you think about it, he is a full-blood Aboriginal man who has grown up and lived in Ramingining all his life and he has not only been able to be with his people and his culture but also been able to walk the walk in New York and places like that overseas, where he has been a superstar of the screen in movies like Storm Boy. He cut his teeth on Storm Boy, then he went on to Crocodile Dundee and he played a starring role in Australia recently. David is a great example of somebody that has had to really struggle. He has had his own personal struggles, but certainly he is an iconic actor. When you meet him he still has the big smile and the sparkle in his eye. He is certainly an individual that all Australians should be very proud of.

Hopefully, if the coordinator-general can do this, we can get some real goals kicked for Indigenous communities. The time has come; we cannot talk any longer. Time is running out for a lot of these people. As I just said about the time the minister came to bag it with me in my community, the trouble is—and the community said this—that a lot of them have given up. They have just decided: ‘Well, my lot in life is that I am not going to have a job. I am not going to have a house. I am just going to sit under this tree and die when I am 50 because that is my lot.’ That is a tragedy. We need to address that.

As I said, I welcome the comments from the member for Warringah and I do believe that he has a genuine concern about Indigenous communities. I think, as I said, this has got to be a bipartisan approach. It cannot be a political approach. It has got to be a bipartisan approach. Do what is best for Indigenous Australia.

When the coordinator-general is appointed, I wish that person the best of luck to work closely with government to make sure that we deliver services on the ground. We do not need layers and layers of bureaucracy. We need to have a coordinated effort in which money that is committed by government actually hits the ground so that we start to make some real changes for these people that live in these remote communities—not only remote communities, but also in places such as in my area of Solomon in Darwin and Palmerston, where I have five Indigenous communities. They are suffering like the Yuendumus and the Lajamanus and the Ti Trees and the Santa Teresas and those communities, like Mutitjulu, that are more in the spotlight.

There is a crisis there, and I commend the minister on her efforts so far in 18 months. Certainly it is not an easy job. I will continue to work closely with her for my communities. I think that, whenever this position is filled, it needs the support of everyone in this place so that when we walk of this place one day—when we are voted out or we retire—we can look back on our time here and say: ‘Well, did I make a difference? Did I get into politics for the right reasons?’ I believe that the 150 members in this place are all here for the right reasons and are all passionate about their areas and are all passionate about Australia.

But being in politics is about trying to make a difference. This parliament can make a difference in the next 18 months, as can whoever wins the next election after that. This is our time right now to make a difference to Indigenous Australians. We cannot wait any longer. To Liam Jurrah, my friend: I wish you luck. I hope the Bombers win, but I hope he gets a kick. I commend the bill to the House.

Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is good to see the member for Solomon has maintained his enthusiasm for Aussie Rules football from his days in Temora in New South Wales.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I congratulate the member for Solomon on his genuine interest in the constituents he represents and in the broader Indigenous population. Let me say of the AFL that I am not exactly sure that there is a degree of altruism in their giving opportunities to Aboriginal footballers; it so happens they are very good at the game. Let me also make a comment in passing, and a reference to the shadow parliamentary secretary for energy, who is at the table, about the efforts of Gerard Neesham in the early stages—and Mr Randall, the member for Canning, also prosecuted this—in gaining Commonwealth grants for the program: ‘If you go to school, you can play in the footy team.’

I have some serious things I want to say, but I might just add while I am on these ‘anecdotal facts’ that when I went to Carnarvon in 1958 we had three football teams and the East Carnarvon team was 90 per cent Aboriginal. It may seem a funny thing to the member for Solomon, who has been a football coach, that in those days we played to position—and your coach gave you a nice old bollocking if you were in the back pocket and were seen running up the ground to try to kick at goal. I used to make the odd contribution—I was very ineffectively as a footballer, I might add. But, as the president of the Warriors football club, if we were short I had to play. But we always used to laugh at East Carnarvon because they used to run up and down the ground following the ball wherever it went, and we would say, ‘That’s not football!’ Of course, today that is the way the game is played. I want to make another point there, and that is that in all sectors of society we should always give people the opportunity to be good at what they are good at. You just cannot turn people into things they may not be, but our Indigenous people will excel in many areas of sport, as Cathy Freeman and others have demonstrated, and there should be a strong effort to ensure that they get the opportunity to achieve that potential.

I could not go through a whole speech without a little bit of political irony. I note that the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs said in her second reading speech on this Coordinator-General for Remote Indigenous Services Bill 2009 that:

… this bill will give the coordinator-general the powers:

to require people to provide information and/or documents;

to require people to attend meetings; and

to request assistance from Commonwealth, state and territory agencies.

Those first two items sound a bit like another piece of legislation that is being hotly contested at the moment when it is applied, of course, to trade unions. As I said, I just could not avoid the irony of that circumstance, and I understand and hope there is a difference.

I want to take this opportunity in speaking on this legislation to make a point that the member for Solomon actually put into words: getting the money on the ground. This is the challenge for the coordinator: is this another layer of bureaucracy that consumes money that would be better on the ground? And that question arises in many respects. For example, I have been a long-time critic of the type of house that we build for Aboriginal people. We seem to think we do them a favour by giving them a European design because we want to give them equality with us. I know a lot of the $800 million mentioned has gone to transportable homes; furthermore, they in themselves, by the nature of their fabrication, are not suitable. I have proposed to our shadow minister that, instead of him having another Pollie Pedal, we have a pollie house-building exercise, because there are methods of construction which can be easily taught to people in remote communities, using a lot of remote area equipment, that would provide very adequate housing of a robust nature and of a design, to my mind, that better accommodates the housing desires of people in remote communities, but I will go no further into that.

In the time available to me I want to touch on some issues from our history. I took my wife as a very young person to the town of Carnarvon in 1958. That was nine years before a constitutional amendment gave any power whatsoever to the Australian parliament, in fact the parliament was forbidden, to pass laws relevant to Aboriginal people. It was forbidden to spend any money in that area. The peculiarity was that the Aboriginal people I knew at that stage were hugely self-reliant, partially, I guess, through neglect. They did not have a nanny state of any nature. They had some supervision by state agencies. They even had to apply for citizenship, which I always thought was pretty outrageous. But what did these people do? They all had jobs. They were very, very competent workers. And they did have houses, they paid rent for them and they got them, in competition with white people and others, as residents of the community.

When the Western Australian Main Roads Department constructed the North-West Coastal Highway from just north of Geraldton all the way to Onslow, the third in charge was an Aboriginal man and good friend of mine. I ended up having a business hiring out graders and I was very happy to get some of those Aboriginal people to drive my graders and other forms of earth-moving equipment. And, yes, out there on the pastoral properties were communities. They lived on the pastoral property as a community and as a labour pool, but they had employment.

Then along came a Liberal government—so I am not applying this criticism on a party basis—and, with the best goodwill in the world, got a constitutional amendment that was supported by something like 97 per cent of the electorate, and my vote was yes also, to give the Australian parliament a responsibility and the capacity to assist these people. I believe that, one after another, we have failed. This legislation is probably another recognition of that fact, that we are uncoordinated et cetera, but it is another process of top-down funding.

I have a paper, and the member for Solomon might want to read it some time, presented to John Howard—after he closed down ATSIC—by every member of the coalition who had a significant Indigenous population within their electorate. We referred in that paper to bottom-up funding. It is interesting if not just for the simple arithmetic alone. If the total expenditure of this parliament were $3 billion on Aboriginal matters, although I think it would be closer to $4 billion these days, and you shared that equally on the basis of the 300 identified language areas, the grant to each of those bodies in average terms—of course the amounts would be much greater for some and much less for others—would be $10 million per language area, and you could then divide that up as you like. The fundamental issue of our proposal was to do as is done with local government whereby the financial assistance grants are not distributed by this parliament, so it is not about going to your friendly local member of parliament to get you a bit more. This parliament puts a one-line item in the budget and the federal Grants Commission, on this occasion, distributes that on a needs basis to the states and then in this case it goes through—and it would be unnecessary in terms of this parliament—what the states have. A state local government grants commission—and I was one of the original persons on that—distributes all of the money on a needs basis.

Our proposal went further, and I am pretty sure the member for Solomon will not disagree with me on the management responsibilities that we give to Aboriginal people. All those Main Roads workers in those days used to get paid by cheque and my hotel was the bank. On Thursdays we had to have a very large amount of cash for when these people brought their cheques in and got them cashed. We also had to have a large amount of small-denomination notes, because these hardworking people, managing their own affairs without any government assistance, knew that when they got out the door there would be a few hard-up rellies wanting them to give them money. They had an obligation to give it and they managed that by having small-denomination notes. That is not a criticism; that is a fact of life. When asking these people to manage taxpayers’ money, we must always ensure they are protected from a cultural fact of life.

So we said, having decided that all moneys would be distributed by the federal Grants Commission on a needs basis according to whatever was an appropriate formula, that it would be managed at the grassroots level by an Aboriginal board of trust. We used those words advisedly because there were to be trustees and we suggested that they be, in most cases, the local government authority which already had a high level of prudential legislation applicable to its management. We then looked at the opportunity of how you would spend that money. It was our view that that body would be buying services from all echelons, including the state and federal governments, as they needed them. If it were the view of a community that an additional police officer was a need or that upgrading a police station was a need, they could fund it from that money. More particularly, if they thought they needed some public health nurses, they could hire them from state authorities or from, in our state, the charitable agency called Silverchain. Furthermore, we said they should have the power to say to those service providers, ‘We want you to create a couple of training positions which we will also fund.’ So there would be a process over time of training in all sorts of skills being achieved. Of course they would have a right to buy housing and of course they would have a right to do many other things. The decision would be theirs with appropriate assistance in doing so. They would not be paid large salaries. They would be paid a meeting fee and whatever costs were associated with a meeting to decide how the money should be spent.

I am prepared to bet that you would get a lot better outcomes from that. But above all, member for Solomon, just think of the money that these people spend from time to time to get a grant. They actually have to go and get consultants to get their money, which we have provided in the budgets in this place. I am saying that with those communities, however they were structured—and we used the language areas but it was evidenced that those boundaries could have been adjusted somewhat to be more sensible—the whole idea was to give people some power over the way that money was spent and I think then you would not need a coordinator. By the way, as far as I was concerned, an Aboriginal legal service would survive on how many customers they got from those groups, as would land council services and others. In other words, if you thought locally known solicitors would provide better representation for your group in whatever area—not as occurred in the Kimberley recently where they killed off a negotiation without even saying what the final offer was—then you would have the opportunity to buy services from those people. Think of the money: if we are dividing $4 billion by 300 community areas, it is a lot more than $10 million per group on average. I put that forward as I consider this process brought into this House, with all the goodwill in the world, as an admission of failure to date—a failure as much administered by our side of the House as by the other. Let me say that when we took that proposal I have outlined to Mr Howard he would not have a bar of it, which shows the problem of having prime ministers coming from Sydney: they do not understand and, unfortunately, they still believe that this is the dominant parliament to assist these people.

The money—to quote the member for Solomon—needs to get on the ground. After having taken his salary and the salaries of his staff out of this budget amount, which we allocate in various lumps and in a variety of ways, maybe the coordinator will achieve that on this occasion. With the best of goodwill, I doubt it. The problem is top-down funding and this is another process of top-down funding. The member for Solomon is a person who might want to get a copy of this and have a look at it. You can have variations of the scheme, but my fundamental view is that there is no solution other than to give people the first decision about how they should spend their money. You want to create scholarships and send some of the young kids to better schools or you want to hire a truancy officer? All of those things should be their responsibility and their first choice. I think those people exist in those communities and the advice they might get from the local shire clerk, as part of that system, would be beneficial.

I do not go back to Carnarvon very often nowadays, but after I left someone up there decided they wanted an interpretative centre. From my recollection, that community had grown a long way away from Aboriginal culture. There was quite a significant infusion of Asian bloodlines that had occurred over the century. But they were going to have an interpretative centre. They spent $4 million on it while there were still inadequacies in housing and education. It has never opened because, after building it, they could not decide who was going to run it. We know why—it goes down to family issues. I think that has got to be better understood.

I do not oppose this legislation. The shadow minister gave it a glowing reference. I understand that the government has done this in the hope that it can make things better. But, until this parliament decides in a bipartisan fashion that the whole funding structure is wrong and that the involvement of federal parliament has brought no good to the Aboriginal people, I think we will go on passing similar laws, introducing more public servants and bleeding more of the funds away from the grassroots and it will not succeed. I do not want to predict that on this occasion but I think that it is time that we revisited the whole program and took that local government example as a basis for distributing the money to the people who need it most and allow them to decide how it should be expended, from community to community. The people of Redfern are going to have a different view on that than the people of Yuendumu.

In closing, substance abuse and all these things are first driven by idleness—although I do not want to make idleness a dirty word. Regarding children, my attitude always was that, if they were not so tired by 6 o’clock that they needed to go to bed, there was a chance that they would want to go out and get into trouble. The original lifestyle of the Aboriginal people was such that they spent all day hunting and gathering. They were a very fit people and very much involved. We come along and replace the kangaroo with the government store. Of course, they have extra time, and it is a great tragedy that in many cases they have consequently resorted to substance abuse. We have got to create environments where the people have got something to do. I agree with the member for Solomon that we should give them more sporting opportunities and things of that nature—in which they are very capable—or else we are just leaving them to missed opportunities.

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

in reply—I thank the various members from both sides of the parliament for their contributions and their support for the Coordinator-General for Remote Indigenous Services Bill 2009. This important bill creates the position of the Coordinator-General for Remote Indigenous Services to drive the implementation of the Council of Australian Governments reforms across a wide range of areas, including service delivery, employment and housing. Resources will be initially concentrated in priority locations across the country and we will seek to deliver to those communities facilities and services that are comparable with those in non-Indigenous communities of a similar size, location and need in other parts of Australia. I think that will be a very significant step forward.

New locations can be added to the purview of the coordinator-general by the minister specifying the remote community by a notice published in the Gazette. A remote community in a state or territory can only be specified after that state or territory has been consulted. Government investment will be prioritised and coordinated to ensure each priority location has infrastructure and services that support and sustain healthy social norms so that people can reach their potential and communities can thrive. It is intended that the approach will be extended to other remote locations.

Reporting directly to the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, the coordinator-general will work closely with governments to make sure that we have real improvements for Indigenous Australians against the Council of Australian Governments Closing the Gap targets. The position of coordinator-general has been established to address the practical problems—and I really want to emphasise that. It is about addressing the practical problems associated with designing, sequencing and rolling out a myriad of programs in remote communities. The coordinator-general will make sure that the delivery of all government programs in the specified remote communities is coordinated between governments instead of being planned and delivered in isolation.

It is our aim to remove bureaucratic blockages and ensure commitments by government agencies are delivered on time by monitoring requirements under the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Service Delivery and other COAG reforms. The coordinator-general will be assessing progress and advising governments where there are gaps or slow progress or where improvements need to be made. The coordinator-general will oversee planning and strategic investment in communities and provide agencies with guidance on good practice. I will certainly expect, as the minister, to receive regular reports on progress and the coordinator-general will make sure that all government agencies are held to account for their implementation responsibilities.

The coordinator-general will also meet regularly with national and state and territory officials, who will be identified as coordinators within relevant government agencies. There will be provision of information by the coordinator-general to agencies on obstacles within the areas of responsibility of those agencies and he or she will have to provide advice both to the minister and to the Council of Australian Governments on the need for systemic changes.

When there is an issue requiring urgent remedy, this legislation will give the coordinator-general the powers to require people to provide information or documents. The coordinator-general will be able to require people to attend meetings and to request assistance from Commonwealth, state and territory agencies. In the case of state or territory governments, the coordinator-general will make his or her request to the state or territory coordinator-general in the first instance. If that request fails, the coordinator-general may make his or her request of the head of the relevant state or territory service agency. If the coordinator-general fails to receive an adequate response from an agency official, this bill allows for the matter to be reported to the head of the relevant agency. If the coordinator-general is not satisfied with the response from the head of the agency, the coordinator-general may report the matter to the minister and also to the Prime Minister, if necessary. I think this emphasises the critical importance we place on this task. The coordinator-general will report to the minister twice each year, or as otherwise required, on the development and delivery of remote services since the last report and on the progress that has been made in achieving the Close the Gap targets within the specified remote locations.

The bill outlines the administrative provisions about the appointment of the coordinator-general including their appointment, acting arrangements, staff, remuneration and leave, and resignation or termination of appointment. The establishment of this office, supported by all Australian governments through the Council of Australian Governments to ensure government commitments in remote Indigenous communities are met, is long overdue. I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.