Bob Debus (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, I present the committee’s report entitled Everybody’s Business: Remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Community Stores, together with the minutes of proceedings and evidence received by the committee.

Order that the report be made a parliamentary paper.

On behalf of the members of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs I would like to acknowledge the Ngunawal and Ngambri peoples, the traditional custodians of this land, and pay respects to the elders, past and present. I also acknowledge other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who now reside here.

The Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs has completed its inquiry into the operation of stores located in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait communities, initiated in December 2008. This inquiry was of vital interest to our remote Indigenous peoples and to the many stakeholders who have been working in partnership with their communities over decades to improve the health of Indigenous Australians. I am delighted that this report is a unanimous one.

The committee received 112 submissions during the course of the inquiry, many from individuals living in remote Indigenous communities and some from government departments, store owners and store managers, freight providers, health experts, universities, non-government organisations and Indigenous representative organisations. The committee held 28 public hearings and visited 17 remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait communities, from Cape York and the Torres Strait in Queensland, to Broome in the west, into Central Australia and across the top of Australia to Arnhem Land. I would like to express the committee’s sincere appreciation and gratitude to the remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait communities who participated in the inquiry. The committee thanks in particular the traditional owners and elders, who welcomed us, and the clans and families in those communities, who shared their experiences, and also the store managers, who opened their stores to the committee during busy shopping hours, morning and evening. The honest commentary from all participants involved assisted in informing the committee’s view and evaluation of the complex challenges to food security in remote regions.

The title of the report was drawn from an observation by Mr Traven Lea, chair of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nutrition Strategy and Action Plan, NATSINSAP, and a descendant of the Wuli-Wuli, Darambal and Djirubal people from South-East Queensland. At hearings in Canberra Mr Lea acknowledged the positive trend in national strategic policy, which has made the wellbeing of Indigenous Australia everybody’s business—all of Australia’s business. Specifically, developments under the Council of Australian Governments National Indigenous Reform Agreement to close the gap on Indigenous health have focused the national effort on the disproportionate chronic disease burden borne by Indigenous people.

Poor nutrition, particularly low fruit and vegetable intake, is an important determinant of the health gap. In most remote communities the store is the principal source of fresh fruit and vegetables. Therefore, the committee made a number of recommendations aimed to promote the consumption of and improve the supply of and affordability of nutritious fresh foods in remote Indigenous communities, including: collaborating with every remote Indigenous community to develop and manage a healthy store policy; establishing a national remote Indigenous food supply chain coordination office, which would support communities or groupings of communities to develop supply models appropriate to them that deliver healthy perishable foodstuffs regularly—weekly where possible; establishing a remote community store infrastructure fund to assist in the investment of delivery, refrigeration and storage of fresh and healthy produce; and, supporting community garden, traditional foods and farming projects.

The financial capacity of Indigenous people living in remote communities is limited. This, combined with the fact that most goods and services in remote Australia are at least 20 per cent more expensive than in the city, poses an even greater strain on providing access to healthy and affordable food. The committee found that there is no comprehensive data available about the cost of living for Indigenous Australians living in remote communities. Therefore, the committee recommended commissioning a regional cost of living study for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders living in remote communities.

By far the majority of stores are owned by the Indigenous community in which they are located. The committee was impressed by evidence from remote communities that both own and manage their community store. (Time expired)

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this report of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Everybody’s Business: remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Community Stores. Indigenous community stores are truly everyone’s business. I am glad they have been the business of this parliament for the last year. There has been a fantastic effort by my colleagues working on this committee. I congratulate the chair for his work and I congratulate the entire secretariat, of Anna Dacre, Sharon Bryant, Susan Cardell, Rebecca Gordon, Loes Slattery and Claire Young, for their work. I also want to congratulate members who are here today to listen to us talk about these reports. We have here the member for Kalgoorlie and the member for Leichhardt, both of whom have vested interests in ensuring that community stores deliver the best possible nutrition to communities, and the member for Cunningham—I do not think she has a remote community store in her electorate but I understand that food choices in her electorate are probably about as poor as they were in the 17 Indigenous communities that we visited. It is great to have her in the chamber.

What can I say except that, when it comes to community stores, we need to find ways that private sector provision—something which was done as a community good and a public good just a generation ago—can function effectively. For that to happen we have looked very, very carefully at, firstly, supply chains; secondly, the function of stores, particularly with the overlay of the intervention and remote community stores and the funding that was given to Outback Stores; and, thirdly—setting aside the supply chain—how we can build demand for healthy food. It is a challenge globally, in mainstream Australia and in these communities themselves.

I will just add a little bit of detail to what the chair of the committee has articulately put by referring to some key recommendations. The national remote Indigenous food supply chain coordination office is unctuously named but it actually does something very important. In the division of ordering and supplying of food—something important to so many tiny communities around this country—the role of a very small office in pulling together the capacity to get food delivered quickly, cheaply and reliably is so important. We know that charitable organisations do a great job in WA. That is covered in recommendation 14. We know also that further investment in delivery, refrigeration and storage—recommendation 15—would be beneficial.

I now turn to the promotion of healthy eating. We have the RIST resources, and they should be available in every community—recommendation 10—but we know that the regional cost of living is very poorly understood. Recommendation 21: let us start understanding what these foodstuffs cost, because we do not know, the communities do not know and the stores themselves do not know. The household expenditure survey done by the ABS still does not include Indigenous communities, so let us look at expanding that—recommendation 22. And of course fees, banking choice and financial literacy underpin food-purchasing choices in remote communities. That is still a major challenge for us. Recommendation 24: how can we work with the Australian Banking Association and other stakeholders to improve the understanding of how credit cards work? How can an Indigenous family find their balance? How can they budget? Can they take food home to a household where they can store food, cook nutritiously and understand how to use new ingredients? These are challenges in health promotion. We need a nutritionist, potentially, on the board of Outback Stores.

Finally we looked at the functionality of the stores themselves. As you can imagine, in these tiny communities they are all run slightly differently. As a committee we were looking for a model in communities that vary in size, in remoteness, in capacity, in commitment, in love of their store, in where the profits go. All of these things change year by year. How can a store model be resilient enough to provide what we believe is an absolute public good? It is as important as a hospital, it is as important as a court and it is as important as a council. You cannot always just leave it to the private sector unfettered. What this committee looked at was a healthy store policy in every community—recommendation 5. Their should be incentives for managers; it may not be their core business but it should be their business—recommendation 2.

ALPA, the Arnhem Land Progress Association, showed us their food card. It is a fantastic innovation but for the fact that the BasicsCard came along straight after it. Recommendation 9: how can we help small cohorts like pregnant mums and those who buy for the young, the frail and the old buy healthy food? There should be training of staff, not only on site but by allowing them to travel away to larger centres to study and learn in supermarkets and larger food providers—recommendation 11. Get local produce freshly and cheaply and allow food harvested and grown to actually be on those shelves—recommendation 19. I will finish with nutritional education. These are the elements that should not gather dust. They are simple, they are affordable and they can make a significant difference to our community, the food choices and the availability across Australia.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Does the member for Macquarie wish to move a motion in connection with the report to enable it to be debated on a future occasion?

I move:

That the House take note of the report.

In accordance with standing order 39, the debate is adjourned. The resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.