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

In my speech in the House I had been saying in respect of the report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs concerning remote area stores that poor nutrition, particularly low fruit and vegetable intake, was a very important determinant of the health gap as it concerns Aboriginal people. In most remote communities the store is the principal source of fresh fruit and vegetables, and therefore our committee made a number of recommendations aimed to promote the consumption and improve the supply and affordability of nutritious, fresh food in remote Indigenous communities, including collaborating with every remote Indigenous community to develop and manage a healthy store policy; and establishing a national remote Indigenous food supply chain coordination office. This office would support communities or groupings of communities to develop supply models appropriate to them that deliver healthy perishables regularly—weekly where possible. This may well be our most important recommendation.

Other recommendations include 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 food and farming projects. We have recommended these improvements with confidence because we have seen that some stores and some communities are doing especially well at the present time.

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 the access that may be had to healthy and affordable food. The committee found that there is no comprehensive data available on the cost of living for Indigenous Australians living in remote communities. Therefore, the committee recommended the commissioning of 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 Indigenous community members in the communities in which they are located. The committee was impressed by evidence from remote communities that both own and manage their community store. Many remote communities take the option of appointing a non-Indigenous manager individually or through a store management consultancy group. Outback Stores is one such group, which is invited into communities to manage stores on a fee-for-service basis. Outback Stores is a non-government enterprise established by the Australian government in 2006. It presently manages 27 community owned stores, and the committee found that the Outback Stores model offers a successful store management option for communities. However, there is a significant difference between the business task that Outback Stores was established to fulfil and the need for food security which it is, at present, meeting. The committee has recommended that the Australian government should revise the purpose of the Outback Stores’ novel and recognise two distinct roles: one as a commercially viable store operator but also, where it is deemed appropriate, as a supplier of healthy food in communities where there is no viable store, or where access to healthy food is limited.

As each community varies so much, so do the particular needs and the context in which the community store operates. The committee recognises this diversity and recommended that the government work with individual communities to develop and support a diversity of store operations and delivery models that recognise the unique needs and situations in remote Indigenous communities. Responsibility for making decisions such as who will manage the store, or what type of health policies will apply within the store are, first of all, with the Aboriginal corporation or governance body which manages the business of the community and the land on which the store is built.

The responsibilities taken on in the directorship of the store by these Aboriginal corporations and the store committees they may form to run the store can be very significant. It is extremely important that these bodies function within an appropriate governance and regulatory framework. The committee has recommended that all Aboriginal owned and controlled stores should, in future, register under the Corporations and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Act 2006—that is, the CATSI Act—which is administered by the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations.

At present, arrangements for this purpose are fragmented, with Aboriginal store bodies formed under a range of state, territory and Commonwealth jurisdictions. This not only creates confusion about legal obligations for the owners of the store but it also creates opportunities for unscrupulous money management. The Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations offers a range of services that include store board education programs and auditing support, and it has powers to put a store experiencing difficulties into temporary administration. The committee also recommended that in the event that COAG agrees to a national licensing regime for all remote community stores—I understand that to be likely—the Australian government should take a number of factors into account, including concerns raised about the licensing process, governance structures, healthy store policies and eligibility.

This inquiry into remote community stores has been beneficial in highlighting the pivotal role the community store has in remote Indigenous communities. The store is often the only source of sustenance for many remote communities, and it is also the social and economic engine of the community. As the title of this report suggests, it is, indeed, everybody’s business how well a store operates, because it does play such a critical role in the economy, health and wellbeing of the whole community.

I take this opportunity to thank the previous chair of the committee, Richard Marles MP, for his contribution to the inquiry. I also thank the deputy chair, Andrew Laming MP, and all the members of the committee for the work they have done during the course of the inquiry. I should particularly mention two members present here, Mr Turnour and Ms Rea, for their quite special diligence in the prosecution of the inquiry that this committee has undertaken. I also express my gratitude to our especially competent secretariat staff: inquiry secretaries Susan Cardell and Rebecca Gordon; senior research officer, Loes Slattery; administrator, Claire Young, and secretary, Anna Dacre. All of these people have made a most important contribution to a report which has already generated a good deal of interest amongst remote Aboriginal communities and those who seek to support them. We have had steady stream of telephone calls and emails coming in from remote parts of Australia seeking more information, offering opinions and generally expressing gratitude that our committee has been able to make these unanimous recommendations to what we hope will be the long-term benefit of the communities that we have been examining. I thank this committee for allowing me to bring forward the report.

Jim Turnour (Leichhardt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to talk about the report that has been tabled by our chair, the Hon. Bob Debus, and to thank him for his leadership of the committee. Everybody’s business is the report of an inquiry into remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community stores. It is an inquiry that I spoke to Minister Macklin and the former chair, Richard Marles, about last year, and we were very pleased to see the reference come to the committee.

As the representative of the great electorate of Leichhardt, which includes Cairns, Cape York and the Torres Strait, I have a particular responsibility to represent Indigenous people in this country. Around 8,000 in the Torres Strait and 12,000 in Cape York Peninsula gives a total population of 20,000 Indigenous people in remote communities in my electorate alone, as well as the communities in Cairns. I would like to recognise the traditional owners and the elders of those areas as well as those of the other lands that we are speaking about today and thank them for welcoming us to those Queensland communities and the communities in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia that we visited during the period of this inquiry.

This is a particularly important inquiry for remote communities because, as we know, closing the gap is a government priority, and going to that are health issues. We have an 18-year gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and obviously health is a critical part of that. Having access to good-quality, nutritious food is part of that. Often we see government investing in new preventative health services, in hospitals or in health clinics, but critical to closing that gap and making a difference is the availability of foodstuffs, and this inquiry goes to the heart of that issue, which is very much the availability and supply of them in stores. There were 112 submissions to the inquiry and we travelled extensively, visiting remote communities all across the country.

Health flows onto cost of living. You can have available foods in these communities—and there is a real issue with the availability of foods—but they also have to be affordable. The committee looked at those issues and we had a range of submissions on that, particularly in my electorate from areas in the Torres Strait and also in Cape York Peninsula. The other area that we looked around during the inquiry in a general sense was the issue of governance. We made some specific recommendations around Outback Stores, but the whole issue of governance of remote Indigenous stores and the importance of that was also discussed during the inquiry, and a number of recommendations came down in relation to that.

Central to what we heard regularly, whether it was through submissions or whether it was through presentations to the committee, was the importance of the management of the local store and the engagement of the store manager with the local community. When we were in the Torres Strait we heard some really poor examples of engagement by the IBIS stores in the community. I am pleased to hear, on visiting the Torres Strait subsequent to this inquiry, that there have been some changes with a new CEO coming into IBIS, and I believe there is a new culture developing in terms of engagement with that local community.

Similarly, in my electorate in Leichhardt, some of the feedback that we heard was that there is a well-functioning store in Aurukun run by Island and Cape. Concerns were raised in Kowanyama about the Queensland government-run store, which is in real need, about centralised buying. We need to make sure that store managers are properly engaged with their communities if these stores are to function correctly. There were recommendations made to that effect in this report. The engagement of the community store manager with the community is critical.

If we go back from the store, the supply chain is critically important to the supply of fresh fruit and vegetables and other goods to these stores. We have made a number of recommendations for the supply chain. I will come to them in a second. As I said earlier, cost of living is critically important as well. You can have fresh fruit and vegetables available and regularly, but they need to be affordable, and the real issues are cost of living—particularly in remote communities—and governance.

The committee made 33 recommendations as part of its report. I am going to jump around a little bit in the order of these recommendations, but I am going to talk about them in relation to the importance from the point of view of communities. Committee recommendation 13 was that the Australian government establish a national remote Indigenous food supply chain coordination office. We were talking about the importance of the store manager in the community, but the supply chain is critically important. What we heard is that there are issues and variations in the quality of the supply chain to remote Indigenous stores. We saw that there were some advantages to collective buying at a reasonable level. Outback Stores, ALPA Stores and Ibis have some capacity to do that, but there are some individual stores that would benefit from a national office that would work with them to pull together bulk buying and look at how they can support their supply chains. We made a recommendation about the minister establishing a national supply chain coordination office to work on those issues.

There are some new technologies to monitor cold stores as they travel across the supply chain, and we thought it was important that those technologies not just be available to corporate stores but be worked through with some of the smaller community stores and privately run stores. We want to make sure that technology is available to those stores. Similarly, the coordination office would have an important role not in terms of bringing groups together to look at their supply chain but to make sure they were utilising the most up-to-date technology.

The other supply chain issue that came up regularly with the committee was the increase in the cost of travelling and taking food along the supply chain and the impact that had on costs at the store level. With particular regard to the Torres Strait, we made a recommendation that the committee, following on from the assessment from a national supply chain coordination office, look at the options of a freight subsidy of the Torres Strait, recognising that in Tasmania there is a significant subsidy to freight across the Bass Strait. It is for different economic reasons; Tasmania is disconnected from the mainland and there are some competitive trade disadvantages there, while the Torres Strait island communities, similar to Tasmania, are disconnected from the mainland, but they are at the very end of a barge system in which you often have to have fruit and vegetables go from down south to Cairns, then on to Horn Island and then the outer islands. We felt it was critically important that this supply chain be looked at technically and that we also advise that down the track the minister and the office look at a freight subsidy to the Torres Strait specifically to address issues around cost of living.

There was a recognition as part of the discussion of freight, though, that it was not just freight that made food expensive in remote community stores, and I encourage people to read the report and the evidence given there. Obviously, refrigeration equipment costs—if they break down people need to be flown out to communities; they often find out what is wrong with it and have to order the part—have a range of back and forth that can go on with the maintenance in the stores. That can add to the cost levels. Food can sometimes have to be thrown out, so there is increased cost with the supply of that food, because not as much of it can be utilised if it arrives in poor quality. These were the recommendations focusing on the supply chain and ensuring that we do not have wastage of food, but there are other issues around the cost flow-through. Freight is important, but other issues include maintenance of stores and the fact that you can have people from outside who not only need to be employed in the store but also need housing and a range of other support mechanisms.

Another critical recommendation that flows from that is the issue of some stores having good-quality infrastructure. Effectively, the federal government invested extensively in Outback Stores to provide them with the capacity to upgrade infrastructure in stores following the Northern Territory intervention. We felt it was important that community stores and other stores also had the opportunity to access a government fund that would improve community store infrastructure, because having good-quality fridges and other sorts of presentation facilities in stores keeps that food better in the store and also makes it much more attractive to community members making purchases. So a store infrastructure fund was also one of the recommendations that we made in relation to this inquiry.

Another issue we made recommendations about concerning access to fresh and good quality food was that of growing local produce and the availability of local produce. In the Torres Strait the federal Rudd government is investing in a program called You, Me and Gardens, through the Torres Strait Regional Authority, and we felt that there was a real opportunity in some situations for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to grow their own food and look to see if that can be linked to marketing not only into the stores but also directly into the communities. We wanted to make sure that was also picked up in the committee’s recommendations.

I will move on to some of the governance issues. One of the issues handed down to us as a committee was to look specifically into Outback Stores. We have already heard the committee chair talk about the fact that we have made some recommendations on the registration of stores and their corporate governance. Outback Stores were part of the inquiry’s terms of reference, but we felt it was of particular importance that the federal government and the minister did not just consider one particular model as the right way to go. Outback Stores are doing a good job—we have heard positive feedback from communities about their work—but there are also good quality community stores and privately owned stores out there. We believe that the government needs to consider an approach to community stores that looks at ensuring, as part of government policy, innovative approaches that enable individual communities to meet their needs for fresh fruit and vegetables. Simply saying that Outback Stores are the best model and we should therefore provide government funding through Outback Stores was not necessarily the result of the inquiry or the recommendation that we made.

The committee made a number of recommendations on Outback Stores, including that they should have Indigenous representation on their board and nutritionists on their board, recognising the need for clarification of roles in the delivery of commercially viable stores. We heard evidence that there are a selection of stores that are not currently commercially viable, and the government is effectively providing subsidies through FaHCSIA to support those stores. We wanted to make sure there was not some confusion in the longer term governance of Outback Stores in those two areas. Particularly for those stores where there is not necessarily sustainability at the moment, we thought that, rather than simply saying that was the responsibility of Outback Stores, in the longer term government should engage with those communities and look at how it can work with those communities with a long-term approach on innovative ways to deliver fresh fruit, vegies and produce in store to those communities. For example, in Western Australia there was a store that was meeting community needs by getting someone to drive out once a week to the community, having purchased goods in Kununurra. That was the way that local community met their needs.

There were other hub-and-spoke models that we thought were effective that were being run out in particular communities. We thought it was important that, through government policy and government regulation, we enable different communities to look at different models to meet their own particular needs. If we are going to build up local communities, and we need to make sure government regulation allows them to have the capacity to meet their own needs and be empowered. For the longer term, we have made a number of recommendations on licensing so that, if the government does move to a national licensing framework, it ensures that these innovative hub-and-spoke models—community supported, owned and managed stores—are not put at a disadvantage in relation to corporate stores or Outback Stores. There are a range of recommendations about that.

In my closing remarks I would like to thank once again the traditional owners and elders of the communities we met. I would like to particularly thank some of those in my electorate: the Chair of the Torres Strait Regional Authority, Toshi Kris, who presented to the committee; Pedro Stephens, the Mayor of the Torres Shire Council; Councillor Fred Gela, the Mayor of the Torres Strait Island Regional Council, who also presented to the committee; Councillor Wayne Givara from Badu Island Council; Councillor John Morsby; Councillor Ron Day from Mer; as well as councillors in Cape York: Joseph Elu, Neville Pootchemunka and Tommy Hudson from those communities. These people made us so welcome in my electorate. I also thank those people from other parts of Australia who made us so welcome.

I would also like to thank the chair, the Hon. Bob Debus, and the former chair, Richard Marles, for the support that they provided throughout the preparation of the report and the hearings. I thank the secretariat, including Ms Anna Dacre and Ms Sharon Bryant, who led the secretariat well; inquiry secretaries Ms Susan Cardell and Ms Rebecca Gordon; research officer Ms Loes Slattery; and office manager Ms Claire Young. I thank them all for the work that they have done. I really do recommend this report to members from remote communities.

Kerry Rea (Bonner, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on this very important report of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs entitled Everybody’s business. As previous speakers have already said, and indeed as has been said by people from the Prime Minister down, it has been made very clear from day one that this government is committed to closing the gap on Indigenous health. We are also committed to attempting to redress some of the wrongs of the past in the treatment and policies that have very clearly affected Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in this country. It began with the apology but it did not stop there; it continues. This particular report, Everybody’s business, is a key document in terms of the government’s attitudes to and development of policies towards closing the gap on Indigenous health.

We all know that, regardless of where you come from or who you are, the health and prosperity of any community is shaped by the health and wellbeing of the individuals within that community. Indeed, if we are going to address some of the very serious health problems that affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people today we have to start with addressing the health of those communities and the health and wellbeing of individuals within those communities, particularly those people who are living in remote communities that do not have the equity of access and the nearby support and resources that so many people living in larger populations benefit from. I must make particular reference to the children in those communities. If we are going to create well-functioning and prosperous communities we have to ensure that the children in those communities are well cared for and, indeed, achieve all the nutritional needs that they require to grow up to be healthy, positive and active human beings.

Whilst remote community stores may seem a very small and specific topic to look at, the issue actually has massive implications for the way that we and future governments develop policies for Indigenous peoples living in those communities. The fact that this report has produced 33 recommendations is a reflection of not just the commitment of the committee and this parliament to supporting improvements in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities but also how significant the community store is, particularly in those remote communities in the north and west of Australia.

The report focuses on two key areas. One is nutrition, with a deliberate emphasis on the importance of nutrition and of providing good-quality fresh food to people in order that they may not suffer from the allied health problems associated with not eating the right food. It requires education and an understanding of diet and the importance that fresh food plays in contributing to your health. But it also involves the logistics of actually providing fresh fruit and vegetables in particular, and fresh food and nutritious food more broadly, to some very remote parts of Australia. The logistics of that, as you can understand, Mr Deputy Speaker, is a major challenge alone, not to mention that of making people aware of this and encouraging them to transfer from not-so-good food to healthier food to improve their lifestyles and those of their families.

Nutrition was a very important part of the focus of this report. As the previous speaker, the member for Leichhardt, said, it is not just about the logistics of getting fresh food to people and getting them to purchase it and eat it. It is actually about how you can create an environment where people are encouraged to buy that fresh food. It is about making sure that you can invest some significant capital funds into the improvement of the store so that it does have good working fridges, a freezer and cold storage areas, so that food does not wilt and go off too quickly. The store must be an attractive place to walk into and the displays and all of the things that are designed to encourage people to purchase certain goods within a store must have been paid attention to. It is about capital investment as well as logistics.

It is also therefore important that we acknowledge the importance of governance, which is the other key focus of this report. The way a store is governed has a significant impact on the community’s attitude towards that store; their sense of ownership of the store and their sense that it is a fundamental part of the community that is providing an important service encourages people to use that store and purchase goods in it. What also emerged very significantly was that a well-run, well-managed store is one thing, but unless there is a level of community involvement and engagement with the running and operation of that store then it does not quite service the community in the way that it should. Particularly in remote communities, where the store is the social economic hub of the community, the people living within that community must be a part of the management and operation of that store. Where possible, local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be employed in the store and training should occur that enables local Indigenous people to end up being the managers of that store. Community ownership of the store has a significant impact on the community’s involvement, engagement and support for that store.

So governance was also the other key factor when it came to conducting this inquiry. The nature of the store is not just about the building. The member for Leichhardt and the chair have already talked about the hub-and-spoke model where it is not necessarily just a big shop that you all rock up to to buy your groceries. If there is a central hub by which delivery can occur to very remote communities, providing fresh, quality food which also has those communities supporting that particular model of delivery, then that will work. That is why the recommendations around licensing are critical to the success of the adoption of this report. There are varying models and ways of managing a store. Communities are different; they have different dynamics and different governance arrangements. The way the community store operates should reflect the differences in the communities, many of which we had a great opportunity to visit.

At this point I would like to focus on the experience that I had and I am sure other committee members had in conducting this inquiry and indeed visiting some very remote, very different parts of this country. It was an incredible, overwhelmingly positive experience that I had, whether it was engaging with elders and members of remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities or sitting in a capital city, like Darwin, Melbourne or Brisbane, listening to people who had come a very long way to present evidence on what they saw was a very important, indeed vital, topic for the success and the future of their communities.

There are some amazing people out there doing some amazing things in circumstances and conditions which I know many people would probably baulk at. There are leaders within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community who are bringing their communities with them and are taking the negative experiences of the past and trying to turn those experiences around into positive ones for their communities and the children—the future—of their communities. There are some amazing women out there in many adverse circumstances who have struggled to provide their children and their families with the basic essentials that keep them going. They provide them with the essential nutrients—in food, including vegetables—that they require and they have also built up around them a very positive community that is not just healthy in body but healthy in spirit.

If I can recommend anything, it is that, whilst this report raises many concerns that we need to address if we are going to support people living in those remote communities, it also highlights the incredible strength of character and strength of leadership coming from many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people out in their communities. I want to pay tribute to them and to the incredible commitment they have to improving the lives of themselves, their family and, indeed, their people. So it is important that we get that balance right and understand that this report is not advocating a top-down approach; it is advocating working with those leaders within each of those communities who we know can, with the right support and infrastructure, manage to bring about great improvements in those remote communities.

In closing I acknowledge both chairs of the committee, Mr Richard Marles and the Hon. Bob Debus, both of whom, in very different ways, have brought great strengths to the conduct of this inquiry. I particularly acknowledge the committee secretariat: Anna Dacre, the secretary; and Susan Cardell and Rebecca Gordon, who travelled with us everywhere, organised everything on time and tolerated us when we were late but made sure that we did manage to get those planes. We appreciate them for that. I also acknowledge Loes Slattery and Claire Young, who provided such incredibly important information and backup that really made the conduct of this inquiry so much more pleasurable and informative. They gave us background that enabled us to ask the important questions, not just the ones that we thought were important. I thank them for that.

I also acknowledge my fellow committee members. This was an enjoyable inquiry. When you are travelling with anybody in remote parts of Australia it can often be a challenge, but I am happy to say that from both sides of the fence, in terms of the political divide, we all got on very well. I think that as a result of all of our individual contributions we have come up with a report that is well worth reading and that I know will have a very positive impact for the future health and wellbeing of the Indigenous people of this country.

Debate (on motion by Dr Jensen) adjourned.