John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Food Security, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Aboriginal culture is quite obviously and undeniably part of the fabric of this country and is and always will be part of the enduring fabric of my electorate of Calare in western New South Wales. However, while the government continues to funnel funding and programs into Indigenous communities throughout western New South Wales, the Northern Territory and Queensland, the Indigenous people of my part of the world face many of the same hardships as those people in Queensland, the Northern Territory and elsewhere. They have the same problems, the same social issues and the same entrenched lifestyle factors that have caused the situation that we have today. But in every situation there are nuances; there is a need for flexibility and a need to target programs—and I hate using the word ‘programs’ in this situation—and ideas and to allow people to have flexibility within them.

The Wiradjuri people of western New South Wales have themselves taken steps to break down some of the cultural issues, but they have gone much further than that. Programs such as their language program travel to schools and educate younger generations with a positive influence. They are proud people, like anybody else, but what this does is regenerate pride in their own history and, hopefully, in what their future will be within Australia, particularly within my part of the world. The program is run by tribal elders, it is embraced by students and it has received numerous awards acknowledging just how much good it is doing in terms of people getting on with their lives and feeling good about themselves. The program is devised by the Wiradjuri people themselves and is working to close the gap which has been spoken about today. A program like this one should be a benchmark and, unfortunately, I have to say that this program is probably the exception to the rule. A program needs to be versatile, it needs to be targeted, it needs to be flexible and it needs to be relevant to the region in which it is practised.

In the two years since Kevin Rudd’s much praised apology, the efforts to close the gap have in fact done little to acknowledge the culture of Indigenous people in my part of the world, the electorate of Calare, in western New South Wales, and even less to provide the communities with the power, the resources or the ability to help themselves to close that gap. I am not sure that I like the term ‘close the gap’. I think it is about being able to fit in within your community and getting on and having a productive life. However, we are using that expression.

There are few better examples of the mismanagement involved than in the failure of Kevin Rudd’s policies in the town of Wilcannia, in western New South Wales. According to the most recent census, around 50 per cent of the population identify themselves as Indigenous. In fact, it would be far, far higher than that. Wilcannia is one of several communities in the area serviced by a host of welfare and support programs. But they are all based somewhere else and Wilcannia is screaming out for a different solution. There are 55 agencies servicing the area and they are all fly in, fly out. They show up, they work and they leave. There is very little community ownership, no sense of connection to the people or the land and no empowering of the community to actually come to grips, deal with and target the program in the way that they would see fit.

As an illustration of the total lack of planning, there are four different employment agencies—in a town which officially has, I think, about 500 people in it—serving about 150 people. The scarce funding being put towards closing the gap in this area is quite obviously dramatically missing its mark. This is a case of putting people on the ground for the sake of having people there, for the sake of saying that there is actually a program.

This is one issue where I hate to bring politics in because if dealing with the problems of employment and the other issues surrounding our Indigenous community were easy then any government would have solved them a long time ago. So I am not trying to pretend this is an easy case. But when you have four employment agencies in a town this size and there are 55 different agencies flying in and out all the time, then it is obviously not targeted.

The general manager of the Central Darling Shire, based on Wilcannia, has seen the waste of resources. He summed it up best when he said, ‘The real issues aren’t heard in the shadow of a whiteboard during a 10-minute visit.’ And obviously they are not. If you sit around under gum trees for long enough then you might find out what will actually work and what might be done. It does not take 55 agencies and four different employment agencies to sit down and listen and come to that conclusion.

Most of these employers—who, I am sure, are well intentioned—work on 12-month contracts. We know that real solutions and progress take longer to develop and stick with than that. I do not like saying this, but the methods being employed by the current government are outdated. They do not work. We have known for ages that they do not work. The issues of Wilcannia are subtly, and in some cases not so subtly, very different to those of Ivanhoe, Cowra or Orange. The ‘one size fits all’ method does not work. We need people in the community to be trained. They need to be local, to be on hand and to have the conversation under the gum tree, whether it is on the Macquarie, on the Lachlan or out on the Darling.

With 70 per cent of funding going towards training and employment, surely there is room to make this happen. In the nine or 10 years or whatever that I have been around this place—and I have been out in the far west my whole life and thought I knew a bit—I have realised that being a member of parliament certainly does teach you a lot more about certain areas. Through being a parliamentarian I have certainly learnt more about the situation of our Indigenous people in the areas of employment, lifestyle and health than I ever knew before, and I do not pretend to be anything like an expert on it. But the one thing I have come to learn is that a job is worth a hell of a lot more than any social program that has ever been devised, because a job is the greatest social program that we can provide.

I bring this up because places like Wilcannia and Burke are not far, in effect, from places like Cobar, which has been through a bad time employment-wise in the last 18 months because of the mine but is on the way back up again. The fact that at a place like Cobar, for example, you can work in the mines and have 10 days on and 10 off, or four on and four off, certainly lends itself to the lifestyle of people who feel tied to their land because it is not far to travel a couple of hundred kilometres—it is no big deal—when you get four or more days off. I have been trying to support this for ages. I guess we got knocked on the head when there was the huge downturn in the copper industry, which is the lifeblood of Cobar. But it is now coming back, so I would love to see these programs funnelled in and saying, ‘What we can do is provide for you to travel to Cobar, work your four or five days—whatever the mine can work out with you—and then you have time off to return home.’ There is not much point doing training and employment programs where there are no jobs. Basically, that is the situation particularly in Wilcannia and also in places like Burke. But there is a way around it if we can have flexible programs that deal with the situation on the ground.

In Cowra and Orange, where there are jobs and opportunities, what the Aboriginal Employment Service have come up with is going to businesses and saying, ‘We can find someone to do that job if you’re willing to employ an Aboriginal person.’ That is a totally different situation, but it is a waste of time at Wilcannia. So we need to be flexible. Politics aside, we must be flexible and talk to the Wiradjuri people in that particular region and ask, ‘What’s going to work here?’ Never lose sight of the fact that a job is the main social program that everybody needs, whether you are a member of parliament or you are sitting on the banks of the Darling. That part does not change. This is one issue that should transcend politics. I hope and pray that, whether we are talking about Orange, Cowra, Burke or Wilcannia, we can look at it in a local sense, not in an Australian sense and not in the sense of: ‘How can we have a program so that we say we’ve got a program?’

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

As the Prime Minister said in his ministerial statement on 11 February, Australians want to close the gap. In a survey by Reconciliation Australia, 91 per cent of non-Indigenous Australians and all the Indigenous people surveyed said that the relationship between the two peoples was important to this country. As the Prime Minister also said, it is 10 years ago this May when, to John Howard’s grim disapproval, a quarter of a million Australians walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge and three-quarters of a million people walked in other places around the country in support of reconciliation. I do remember saying at the time to Aboriginal people in my electorate who felt despondent about the attacks of right-wing commentators on the idea of an apology and about John Howard’s obvious support for their attacks on what was disdainfully called ‘the black armband view of history’—I remember saying to them: ‘Don’t worry. The modern history of Australia is not on the side of those people. Those massive marches show which way the country wants to go.’ I think I was right.

Two years ago the Prime Minister made his formal apology in the parliament, particularly to the stolen generations, and that was news around the world—news that was good for Australia’s reputation. On 11 February, the Prime Minister indicated in his statement that we had achieved for the first time a bipartisan commitment to closing the gap in life opportunities between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. We acknowledged at that time the failure of successive governments to provide adequate services to many Indigenous communities. We recognised that closing the gap would not take a few years but a few generations, and we showed that closing the gap was a national priority that should indeed be above partisan politics. I acknowledge the remarks of the member for Calare, who has preceded me, in that respect.

The subsequent national agreement between all the governments of Australia to make an investment of nearly $5 billion in Indigenous-specific national partnerships to change the circumstances of Aboriginal people in health, early childhood development, education and employment was made against background principles that are not so much newly understood—plenty of people have talked about them in various ways in the past—but principles that have never been so clearly articulated before as a matter of national government consensus. Governments must take responsibility for addressing past failures of policy. Aboriginal Australians must take responsibility for change in the lives of individuals, families and local communities. All Australians should take responsibility for improving the relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous citizens.

It would be very hard ever again to reproduce the drama or the depth of emotion felt across the country in offices and schools and in the street on the day of the apology. But the dramatic change of policy agreed in November 2008 by COAG is the practical, lasting consequence of that moment. It is a new thing for government to set measurable targets—of which there are six, covering life expectancy, infant mortality, early childhood and education, literacy and numeracy, year 12 attainment, and employment—against which to establish a program of investment based upon the best carefully assembled evidence and against which to establish a framework for evaluation and accountability for expenditures and to seek deliberately to walk together with the Aboriginal community and its leaders while this great enterprise is prosecuted.

The book published last year by the noted anthropologist Peter Sutton called The Politics of Suffering makes a very powerful critique of the liberal ideology that from the 1970s laid emphasis on self-determination, an idea that the problems of Aboriginal communities are the consequence of dispossession and discrimination, to be overcome almost entirely by policies to promote self-determination and self-management. He suggests that that approach permitted policymakers and administrators to avoid truthful acknowledgement of the dysfunction that in fact occurred in many communities over the last 30 years when self-determination failed.

Sutton’s arguments are confronting, not least for someone like me, who helped establish the first Aboriginal Legal Service in Redfern in the 1970s. However, I do believe that it is easy to underestimate the nuance and complexity of the circumstances of Aboriginal Australia in recent times. Indigenous communities are not homogenous, as the member for Calare has just been saying. I have recently seen a paper produced by the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology in Sydney which shows there are quite dramatic differences in crime rates between the two similar villages of Wilcannia, which the member for Calare was mentioning, and Menindee, nearby in western New South Wales. The latter has a much lower crime rate, accompanied by much higher levels of cohesion and pride. The member for Calare has just spoken about Wilcannia and I cannot disagree with much of what he said. So it is important that under the Closing the Gap strategy Wilcannia is one of those priority communities that are to be provided with a business manager, and I accept that that business manager should perhaps think about exactly some of the things that the member has been saying.

During last year I visited places that were sinking in despair and addictive behaviour. It has to be acknowledged that there are plenty of communities where social circumstances, crime rates and levels of imprisonment have got worse in the last 20 years. On the other hand, I have seen the great hope that has accompanied the dramatic improvement in social conditions at Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberley following the successful campaign by local Aboriginal women to restrict the sale of alcohol. I know that, under the influence of the Redfern-Waterloo Authority in Sydney, social and employment conditions for Aboriginal people in the notorious ghetto of Redfern are improving. There are plenty of communities that have had similar success in recent years, not to mention most encouraging indicators in the Cape York welfare reform trials.

It is often forgotten that while there are most particular problems associated with small and remote communities, half of all Aboriginal people live in New South Wales and Queensland alone and the largest single population is actually in the western suburbs of Sydney, where, I should point out, many schools with significant Aboriginal populations will benefit not only from the specific Closing the Gap measures but from the government’s $1.5 billion investment in 1,500 low socioeconomic status schools across the nation. Indeed, a total of 78,000 Indigenous students will so benefit. With the addition of the planned expansion of the innovative Stronger Smarter Leadership Program to support schools in more remote areas over the next four years, I believe we may reasonably expect success with our Closing the Gap educational targets.

I would like to dwell for a little time on the significance of the principles of community development and early intervention in the restoration of broken Aboriginal communities. These principles, quite strongly acknowledged in the Closing the gap report, have not always been favoured by our bureaucracies or indeed understood by them. However, they are well understood in the development aid community, in which I once worked, and they are well understood by institutions like the World Bank, which is concerned with the alleviation of poverty in developing countries. What I would call the community development approach certainly acknowledges the consequences of the history of loss and discrimination, but it also seeks to confront present destructive behaviour. Recently, Gregory Andrews, Chief Executive of the NGO Indigenous Community Volunteers, made a submission to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs in which he explained the causes of Indigenous disadvantage and dysfunction from this perspective. With admirable precision, he argued that the key causes were:

• Social and economic disadvantage.
• The transgenerational nature of disadvantage and dysfunction.
• The effects of passive welfare … when alcohol and drugs use are in epidemic proportions—

he is not against welfare but against this use of welfare—

• A lack of law and order in many Indigenous communities.
• Weak capacity and governance in many Indigenous communities.
• Perverse impacts from the well-meaning policies of self-determination that have led to buck-passing or disengagement by the state (until the recent positive changes) …
• Ad hoc and reactive policy and program responses from governments.
• A culture of permissive drug and alcohol use among many … people working with youth and communities.
• Mainstream ignorance and detachment—

that is, by mainstream Australian communities.

After such a list it was not surprising that Mr Andrews went on to say that these problems would only be overcome if communities, governments and NGOs acknowledged that these characteristics were also characteristics of communities in a fragile state and that international experience dealing with fragile states suggested that sustainable change would require the following things: robust and truthful analysis of the problems of any particular community; an acceptance that solutions would be found only over more than one generation; the establishment of realistic objectives and acceptance that the risk of failure was significant and that it might be necessary to have a few tries at a problem; the establishment of the same law and order conditions that exist in mainstream communities; working to ensure that as far as possible local people take ownership of development initiatives; ensuring that women are actually involved; ensuring that incentives are used to encourage positive change, not to support passivity; adopting whole-of-government and whole-of-community approaches; and employing and retaining the right people to do it. In this respect, I think government should give the closest examination to the appointment of the government business managers that are to be employed in the 29 priority communities that I have mentioned which have been chosen to benefit from the government’s remote service delivery initiative. This is a very important initiative in the context of the principles I have just been describing. I think the selection process for those business managers should be about as stringent as the process that the Antarctic Division goes through when it chooses a station leader for a remote outpost.

There is a final proposition that Greg Andrews has put forward—that it is necessary to maintain basic services and meet humanitarian needs while long-term development is underway. It is very important that a long-term development process not be impeded by the absence of a determination to ensure that the most basic of humanitarian needs continue to be met. And if they are not being met by the community then governments have to intervene and, with as much consultation as possible, provide services through an outside agency. To a degree that I believe to be significant, these principles are generally being acknowledged in the Closing the Gap program, and I think this does represent a profound change in the way that government is approaching this enormously difficult problem that exists within our society. I think it is reasonable to hope, especially if we are able to maintain a degree of bipartisanship in these matters, that our nation will indeed move forward.

I will take the opportunity to mention that today there is a very important event underway in the parliament. The Minister for Employment Participation, Mark Arbib, is hosting an Indigenous employment forum with some of the biggest corporations in the land. The Closing the gap report describes some extraordinarily encouraging developments in the area of business. Over the last few years, we have seen for the first time ever a serious engagement of big business in the issue of Aboriginal deprivation. Over one-quarter of the membership of the Business Council of Australia, including its 11 largest companies, have developed or are developing reconciliation action plans which cause them to make long-term commitments that include hiring Indigenous employees, using Indigenous contractors and offering school based traineeships and higher education scholarships.

In fewer than four years since those plans have been in operation, organisations adhering to them have created 6,000 positions for Indigenous people and filled 3,000 of them. Through the plan $750 million worth of contracts have been awarded to Indigenous businesses. The Business Council works with organisations like the Australian Indigenous Minority Supply Council, set up by my friend Michael McLeod and others, to engage for the first time with the business sector in assisting Aboriginal people to find economic independence. I must say that this is a most encouraging development. It is the kind of development that gives me hope that we may indeed finally be breaking the mould of despair that we have so often had to acknowledge in the recent generation. I commend the Prime Minister’s report to the House and to the nation. When many other things that we are doing in this parliament are long forgotten, this will not be.

Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Whilst I was not here when the apology was made two years ago, I was going through Sydney airport the day after and I can confirm that I saw the pride of many Indigenous men and women who were walking through the airport feeling 10-foot tall. As a consequence of Indigenous pride, that moment in time demonstrated Australian pride at the same time. It is a window of opportunity for Australia, through the celebration of Indigenous culture. If we get it right in the future we will have an Australia we can all be proud of.

I often talk about the Indigenous cultures in my electorate, where an elder structure is strong, where belief in family is strong, where land management practices of 40,000 years are strong and where dreaming and spirituality are strong. In a parliamentary sense, we grapple with the concepts of spirituality, family and land management on a daily basis. Quite often we continue to be blind to the opportunity to listen, to learn and to celebrate a history of 40,000 years. Look at the engagement in Indigenous family structures by comparison to family structures in non-Indigenous Australia today. Our lack of respect to elders, for example, is shameful. There are many lessons for all of Australia to learn about the concepts of family and respect for elders. Likewise, I know leaders of both political parties quite openly put their spirituality on the table. I would hope there is a spiritual and a values base in all members in this place. It is questionable as to why you are here unless you have that values vase and that spirituality base.

But again, there are lessons to be learned, there are stories to be celebrated and there are keys to our future in learning from the spirituality of the people who have been here for 40,000 years. There are issues of land management. In fact we are grappling with the concept of climate change and global warming in a parliamentary sense right now. At no time yet in the debate have any of us stopped and reflected and thought about land management practices that are 40,000 years old and whether the keys to the future might lie in some of those land management practices.

My point is that we quite often wrestle—and I hear it from political leaders—with what it is to be Australian and who we are as Australians. I would hope that this process of making ‘black the new black’ and making Indigenous culture really part of Australian culture is the answer to what it is to be an Australian and what it is to live in Australia. We have a wonderful cultural history to celebrate and to embrace. I would love to live in an era where so-called mainstream Australians know the Dreamtime stories, know what Indigenous nation they live in, know some of the words from their local languages, learn about the family structures and spirituality, and also respect the land management structures that have gone on for many, many years before the Union Jack was planted at Port Botany. The apology, a couple of years ago now, was an important moment. Hopefully, in a cultural context, it does start to shape an Australia that has our Indigenous history and our Indigenous stories front and centre in the Australia of the future.

Two years later, in regards to the Closing the gap report and in regards to the work I do as a local member representing a large Indigenous regional population, in a ‘Torah! Torah! Torah!’ moment I say to anyone who may just want to look at one page of this report, please look at page 12, page 12, page 12! My message to this House is the message contained on that page. It is a message to a government, an executive, a Prime Minister wanting to embrace the topic—which I respect—and wanting to put the issue on the agenda—which I also respect.

But, again, I worry about this continual falling into the trap of thinking that all things Indigenous are either in the Northern Territory or in Cape York. There is so much more to the story. The previous speaker mentioned the very large Indigenous population in Western Sydney. That is the first time in my 15 months here that I think I have heard a comment such as that made in trying to embrace the complexities and the challenges around urbanised Indigenous communities. That is why I say ‘page 12, page 12, page 12’—because it has a map of Australia and it identifies where the Indigenous population of Australia lives.

The point that I continue to make—and I wish government would hear—is that we all have an obligation to crack the stereotypes that over time have formed in people’s heads about Indigenous issues being about outback, dusty towns. They do not accord with the facts. The vast majority of Indigenous people live—and these are very rough boundaries—smack on the east coast, roughly between Sydney and Rockhampton and maybe a little bit further north. That is the area where more than 50 per cent of Australia’s Indigenous population lives. But it is lost in the rhetoric and in the politics. Because of the constitutional weakness of a territory we seem to have focused entirely on the Northern Territory. Because of the wonderful skills of Noel Pearson in Cape York we seem to have focused entirely on Cape York and Cape York alone in Queensland.

The story lies on page 12, which shows, without doubt, that more than one in two people live in New South Wales or Queensland—we are getting up to nearly 60 per cent of the entire population. It is the east coast window. Everyone in Australia wants to live in this window, so it should not surprise anyone that there has been the same feeling over the last 40,000 years, let alone the last 200. But it is the regional Indigenous communities which I would like to hear more about and would like to see more work done on. The member for Macquarie spoke about the remote service delivery aspect. The whole Samson and Delilah feeling is an important one and remote and rural issues are important. But they should not be at the expense of the vast majority of regionalised and urbanised Indigenous people and communities. There are complexities about that and, if we are serious about closing the gap, we are not going anywhere fast unless we tackle those complex, challenging regional and urban issues.

I enjoyed the report—I particularly enjoyed page 12. I would love everyone to have a look at it and to think about how they view many of the issues wrapped up in the ‘closing the gap’ story. I hope it challenges a few people to rethink. I hope it challenges the executive to spend more time, effort and energy on the window between Sydney and Rocky. And I hope we can start to tackle some of those complexities. I know the many local members, from all political persuasions, in the window are trying, but there are particular challenges on which we need the help of government. The one I want to focus on in my time left is education. We all hear it talked about as a key both to reconciliation and to getting out of the poverty trap, and I agree with that.

I want to put on record a couple of examples where we as a region have been trying, in a bottom-up way, to help ourselves. We have asked government—they were not big asks—for some assistance and some support for us as a region to help ourselves. There are some frustrations. The first one I want to get on the record relates to the tremendous work that is done by Macleay Vocational College, which is pretty well smack in the middle of South Kempsey. Kempsey was identified by Tony Vinson as one of the six most problematic areas in Australia. We do not hear about them in here that much. We do not hear conversations about the Vinson hot spots as much as I would like, because most of them are regionalised communities—not rural or remote. But Kempsey is one of them and this vocational college got off the ground largely funded by local community fund raising. There are some opportunities, without going into detail, where government could provide greater assistance in helping the principal, Jann Eason, who is right on the front line trying to keep engaged kids who have been suspended or expelled or who are not turning up to so-called mainstream education. At the moment she is frustrated with the lack of help that is coming through from government. They are not big asks that she has; there are two or three of them. But it is a tremendous, practical, front-line delivery of education that I think a few of us are starting to feel is being left behind by government. So I ask for some assistance on that front.

The other is a proposal to government that a few education providers put together about place-based learning. Place is incredibly important not only for Birpai and Dhungutti in my region but, I am sure, for everyone’s local communities—if they are seriously connected, they would understand the value and importance of place.

We put a proposal to government last year about a bottom-up approach. Yes, it is almost the complete opposite of a top-down emergency intervention but we think we are in a position to help ourselves. We would love some help. It challenges everything about the way government views itself, where it is a paternalistic deliverer of Commonwealth taxes. Yes, it challenges all of that. It challenges all of the silo thinking in the delivery of government—we give a bit here, here and here, depending on departments. It challenges all of that, but, if we are serious about social inclusion, if we are serious about closing the gap, if we are serious about self-determination, then the bottom-up approach, the place based thinking, is one that has to get into the psyche of government. It is a nut that has to be cracked. We have to turn this around from being a top-down delivery to being a bottom-up delivery—use the word ‘organic’ if you want—approach about people helping themselves. It is a much more sustainable model than the alternative.

If we want value for our tax dollars then I am asking the Deputy Prime Minister in particular, and the executive more generally, to give us a bit of help with this place based model. It does challenge convention. It is the complete opposite, as I say, of emergency interventions and all the politics around that type of thinking, but it is a better way forward. It is a sustainable model and, if we are serious about closing the gap, for my region, where we have 11 per cent of the New South Wales Indigenous population, I am confident that it is the way forward.

There is a proposal in the government’s hands. We are getting a bit frustrated that we have not heard back—it is now nearly six months. I am worried that it has been lost in the silo thinking, that it does not fit in a box. I ask for a minister and an executive to assist, particularly from the angle of social inclusion and education being the ticket out of some of these traps that we have found ourselves in over the 200-year history of this conflict. Here is an opportunity to do some good work. Deputy Prime Minister Gillard, I once again ask for your support.

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

It is indeed with pleasure that I rise to talk about the Prime Minister’s Closing the gap report that has been introduced into this parliament. By beginning, I welcome the Prime Minister’s initiative of first of all producing this report and giving a commitment to introduce an update every year to the parliament and allowing parliamentary scrutiny of this very important issue—closing the gap for Indigenous life expectancy and, indeed, Indigenous wellbeing in our community.

The report focuses on three key policy initiatives or imperatives which the government believes are fundamental if we are to address the many areas of vulnerability and disadvantage that Indigenous people face in this country. The three points focused on are: to address decades of underinvestment in services, infrastructure and governance; to rebuild the positive social norms which underpin daily routines, such as going to school and work, and which foster community led solutions; and to reset the relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

Before I go into the detail of the report and highlight some of the very important information that is raised there, I acknowledge the speech of the previous speaker—the member for Lyne—and say that, as the member for Bonner and as someone who represents a fairly significant Indigenous population within Brisbane City, I am very well aware of the vast majority of Indigenous people who live in urban areas, and I know my colleague the member for Oxley would acknowledge that. In fact, I know the member for Lyne was quoting from the report, but I have had reported to me that if you take all of the urban areas in this country roughly 70 per cent of Indigenous people live in urban areas. That is not in any way to ignore or diminish the very significant issues faced by Indigenous people living in remote and rural communities. As local members acknowledge the difficulties faced by Indigenous people in urban areas, I want to assure him that we on the government side also understand that issue and are constantly advocating on behalf of the Indigenous communities within our electorates.

Before I go to the bulk of the report, I want to focus on some of the myths and criticisms that have developed around the government’s approach to closing the gap. In particular, it is often said that this is once again a case of all talk and no action, that the apology was simply a symbolic gesture and one that has not really led to any real detail or substance in addressing the issues of Indigenous people. I acknowledge those criticisms and in doing so I would like to address them on two grounds. First, I believe that this report reflects quite a significant amount of action that has resulted in the government’s commitment to this issue. I will go into that detail a little later on. But I also want to address what is often referred to as a false dichotomy about symbolism versus action. Symbolism in itself is action—to actually stand up and say sorry to somebody is a very important action. It is not just a gesture—it is actually acknowledging a problem, it is actually admitting a problem and it is actually publicly stating that you want to do something about that problem and that you apologise to the people you believe have suffered as a result of actions in the past.

Can I emphasise, particularly coming from Queensland and being a great fan of that wonderful game of rugby league, that there was last weekend what could have been considered a symbolic gesture in the season opening game played at the Gold Coast between the Indigenous all stars team and the NRL all stars. It might have been seen as a symbolic gesture, but it was a most powerful initiative to try to deal with the issue of reconciliation, acknowledging the role and contribution of Indigenous people in this country from all aspects of society, including on the sporting field. Unfortunately I was not able to go to the game as I was at a function in my electorate, but my 15-year-old son kept me updated on the scores through text messages. He was excited about the game, like many people in Queensland, not just because it was a great game of rugby league and not just because they were two teams chosen very significantly on merit and skill that were evenly matched but because it was an emotional response to the acknowledgement that Indigenous football players have been a fundamental part of our sporting community, and having that game kick off the rugby league season was a significant emotional event. I think the response of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people through their attendance, through their watching on television and the support given through many rural and remote communities as well as across the south-east areas of Queensland, is a very good indication of how what can possibly be interpreted as a symbolic gesture can be in fact a very significant action towards reconciliation between these two very important cultures in our community.

I want to focus on some of the very significant parts of this report that definitely need highlighting. Again, I guess it is important to start by acknowledging the problem, by admitting the problem, and never forgetting the very unfair and disadvantaged situation that many Indigenous people have found themselves in in this country. It important to remind ourselves that at the time of the apology, as the report says, the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous life expectancy at birth was estimated at 17 years. Indigenous children were 3½ times more likely to die before they reached the age of five. It is important to remember that those issues of life expectancy and parents, families, facing the death of children under five is a very real consequence of inaction on the part of governments and often discrimination and exploitation on behalf of the whole community. The six targets identified in the report around life expectancy and mortality rates for children are early childhood education, literacy, numeracy, education, ensuring that more Indigenous students get to year 12 or its equivalent, and looking at halving the gap in employment outcomes—six very important targets that address the statistics I have just referred to.

But of course the most important thing to begin with in an action plan to close the gap is to make sure that we get the data accurate. That in itself is an action, and I am pleased that the government has committed $46.4 million over the next four years to get the data right. We all know that the rush to do something, the impulse to get an outcome, can often lead to misdirection. It can often lead to funding programs or activities that are not necessarily hitting the mark. Unless you spend the time to get the data right you will not get the outcomes that you want, no matter how eager or how keen you are to see improvements in this area.

At the time, the emergency response in the Northern Territory was very controversial and there were many people on my side of politics and in the community more broadly who were concerned about the approach. I am pleased that in this report we see that the government has refocused on its responsibilities under the response and that the way it targeted the funding and the resources that were deployed as a result of the response has seen some really positive outcomes. In the health area, for children there have been ear, nose and throat consultations and surgery and nearly 2,000 dental services.

Education is an issue that has been highlighted by almost every speaker on this report. It is a very important part of giving young Indigenous kids the opportunities that unfortunately their parents, grandparents and other ancestors never had. Education plays a fundamental part in redressing the gap and trying to create a better balance of opportunities. I am really pleased to see a couple of practical approaches that have emerged out of this report. The Sporting Chance Program, an academy for kids where there is encouragement to participate in sport—something we know that most kids love doing—is linked to attendance in schools. Nine thousand students have gone through the Sporting Chance Program and as a result there has been an increase of around six per cent in attendance at school. We know that sitting in a school is not necessarily the way that you are going to learn if you do not have the nourishment and sense of wellbeing to absorb and process the information being presented to you, so throughout 67 Indigenous communities there have been delivered 2,600 breakfasts and 4,400 lunches. A fundamental part of any child’s learning is that they are well nourished and have the capacity to sit and concentrate in the time they are at school. Once again, this is a great and very practical initiative, and the spin-off is that 197 people—79 per cent of whom are local Indigenous people—have been employed to deliver those meals.

There are some very positive trends in this report that show that the government’s commitment to this very important issue is not just one of symbolism; it is a very practical approach which is delivering real outcomes. Housing is an area which has been focused on and which some people have tried to cast in a negative light. At the end of January this year 7,700 dwellings were under construction and 475 had been completed—and that does not necessarily include the 50 houses that have been built as a result of the response and the 60 that are under refurbishment. There have been changes to the CDEP, with employment programs that mean Indigenous people are being paid proper wages for the work that they are doing. In fact 1,500 properly paid jobs have come out of the reforms that have been made to the CDEP.

Before I conclude, I also want to acknowledge quickly the development of the minority business supply council. This is an issue that is very dear to my heart. As a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs I participated in the inquiry which made the recommendation to the government that it establish this council. To our credit, the minister did respond positively. The supply council has been developed and, as a result, 3.3 million contracts have been signed with Indigenous businesses since last September—a massive figure. It is a reflection once again of a very positive policy having great results. But it is also a reflection of the enormous amount of enterprise within the Indigenous community and among Indigenous people in remote, regional and urban areas. They were already out there working hard to try and develop their own enterprise skills to develop businesses that would support their family and the community. Through a significant government policy, 3.3 million contracts were signed within the space of just a few short months—a very significant achievement.

Of course, Closing the Gap is not simply about the government providing services to Indigenous people. It is about acknowledging the very important contribution of Indigenous people to developing our society and it is about restoring respect and showing a proper appreciation of their role in this country. I therefore applaud the development of the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples. I applaud the minister’s lifting of the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act and I acknowledge the significant number of cultural and heritage programs, particularly the support for Indigenous languages, which are also referred to in this report. I commend the Prime Minister’s report to the House.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to address this issue. Some years ago, at a bipartisan forum at which some members of the then Labor opposition were present, I made the point that, if you looked at Australia over the last 30 years, the greatest area of systemic failure by state, territory and federal governments, both Liberal and Labor, was the inability to close the gap between Indigenous people and the rest of Australia in life expectancy, education and employment. I maintain the view that the greatest area of systemic policy failure over the last 30 years has been the failure to close that gap. There have been good intentions on all sides but a welfare and poverty trap has been created. That trap has led in part to the failure to remedy an underlying problem. It did not cause the problem; it simply exacerbated and continued the trend. I compare that with my view, expressed in the House this week, that the single worst policy by government in terms of a systemic impact and result has been the home installation program, because nothing else has had an impact on 250,000 houses as this policy has.

I want to look at the last three decades and where we should go from here. When you look at the last three decades, there has been some progress in some areas, including employment, and the Closing the Gap report sets that out. I commend the former minister and also the Prime Minister for continuing this initiative. In particular I commend the former Minister for Families and Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, for whom this is a passion, a focus and a concern—it has become his life’s work. Against that background, what we see is a systemic flaw, which is a culture of entitlement and dependency. That culture was built against a background of inherent disadvantage. The disadvantage is the product of the transition from Indigenous Australia to settled Australia and the unresolved tensions that have lasted and developed over a century and a half. There was the period of the stolen generation—some have questions about it, but I think it was a dark period in Australian history and I am deeply sorry that it ever occurred. No matter what the intentions, the effect was catastrophic.

Against that background, we are now going through a process of endeavouring to provide a sense of hope and opportunity for the future. The three main areas are these: education, employment and quality of life. I want to present just one suggestion for us as lawmakers in this House to consider. I do it through the experience I had as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Environment and Heritage in the previous government. One of the finest programs which I have seen and which I would wish to see advanced is the Indigenous rangers program.

The Indigenous ranger and junior ranger programs offer a very simple concept which can be refined and advanced: they provide land management training from a young age. I saw this in Kakadu National Park where the Jabiru school and other schools were focusing on this, and I saw it at Booderee National Park, where young Indigenous kids were working in that area. It gives a sense of traditional teachings within a formal educational framework. It has provided, by all accounts, an incentive and a sense of aspiration for those kids in primary school to have respect for their culture and land management, and to give them an option for where they would like to go in life.

Carried through secondary school, it leads to specific training. It is an inspiring program—whether it is in land management, ranger programs, support systems through vehicle maintenance, or other things which would contribute to the whole process of land management, ranger management and support. On a career basis you can see the long-term careers which the Indigenous ranger programs provide to people. I have seen the success it has had in the Dhimurru Indigenous Protected Area, in the Laynhapuy Indigenous Protected Area, which is south of Nhulunbuy, and also in the Anindilyakwa Indigenous Protected Area on Groote Eylandt.

These are three shining examples throughout Australia of how Indigenous communities which have had serious and systemic problems with alcohol, violence and listless drift have been able to draw together a sense of purpose. Not all of the problems are solved by any means, but real and significant progress has been made. Firstly, it has given people a sense of employment, task and duty. That could be in clearing away drift nets in turtle and dugong management and in dealing with invasive species. Secondly, in terms of practical land management and the outcomes, you can see the difference in the quality of land maintenance in Indigenous protected areas and in which there are strong supporting Indigenous ranger programs. And thirdly, above all else, the sense of hope, aspiration and possibility that exists in these communities.

Dhimurru is an extraordinarily high functioning Indigenous community with strong leadership models, coupled with the high level of culture and the strength of that culture. As many of the locals have told me, the capacity of the Indigenous ranger programs to provide practical options in an area where people want to work is the important thing. I have one contribution to this debate and that is all it is. I recognise and commend the work of people on both sides of this House but I think an untapped area which can be built upon significantly is the expansion, development and bipartisan commitment to the Indigenous ranger programs.

I have been fortunate to talk with Noel Pearson about extending these programs in a major way up and down the Cape York Peninsula. I have seen how they have worked in Arnhem Land and in the gulf, and I think that these programs can make a real difference.

I commend the report. The opposition have expressed their reservations in areas such as the liberalisation of pornography. I think that liberalisation is a mistake. But above all else, there is bipartisan commitment and I would like to see and I will continue to support the expansion and development of the Indigenous ranger programs as a critical means of closing the gap for Indigenous Australians.

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

In making my contribution to this debate I commend the member for Flinders and support his comments on Indigenous ranger programs. The Caring for our Country program and the Green Corps traineeships have been well supported by Indigenous people in my electorate. Our government will continue to support these programs. I think Indigenous people have an innate sense of the environment and the land and it is important that they are given opportunities to work in this space.

I strongly support the Prime Minister’s ministerial statement made on 11 February on the Closing the gap report. The government’s policy on Indigenous affairs has focused on closing the substantial gap that exists between the socioeconomic outcomes for Indigenous and for non-Indigenous Australians. Two years ago, on 13 February 2008, the Prime Minister made a formal apology in the parliament, on behalf of the government, the parliament and the people of Australia, to the Indigenous people of Australia, particularly to the stolen generation. At the time, he said:

Today’s apology, however inadequate, is aimed at righting past wrongs. It is also aimed at building a bridge between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians—a bridge based on real respect rather than a thinly veiled contempt. Our challenge for the future is to now cross that bridge and, in doing so, to embrace the new partnership between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians … the core of this partnership for the future is the closing of the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians …

On that day the Prime Minister pledged to lead a new national effort to close the gap in life expectancy and life opportunities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. For the first time, a bipartisan commitment to closing that gap was made. We acknowledged the failure of successive governments to deliver to many Indigenous communities. Together we demonstrated that closing the gap is a national priority that should be above partisan politics and together we recognised that closing the gap would take not a parliamentary term but possibly a generation or even beyond a generation, as has been pointed out many times in this place.

When we came into government the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians’ life expectancy at birth was an estimated 17 years. Indigenous children in many parts of Australia were 3.6 times more likely to die before they reached the age of five than non-Indigenous Australians. Almost one in 10 dwellings in remote and very remote Indigenous communities was in need of major repair or replacement.

I would like to put on record again my support for the commitment to closing the gap. It is a shared commitment by both sides of parliament and it is led by the government from the Prime Minister down. Jenny Macklin, as the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, has a tremendous amount of work to do and is working very hard in trying to deliver programs into remote communities and facing the challenges that these programs in their delivery often have. The programs being delivered by the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, in the education and employment area, helped by the Minister for Employment Participation, Senator Mark Arbib, are having real results on the ground. We have the commitment by the Minister for Health and Ageing, Nicola Roxon, to closing the gap in health outcomes. A 17-year gap in life expectancy is something that we as a country cannot be proud of and it is something that we need to address. Certainly as a Territorian, as someone who has lived amongst Indigenous people all my life and as someone who has five Indigenous children, it is an issue that is close to my heart. I have buried many friends. I have just celebrated my 40th birthday and I have a number of friends who passed away before they reached the age of 40, a lot of them from generic heart disease or problems that might have been caused either through gingivitis as a child or through rheumatic fever.

This morning, I had the pleasure of meeting with the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, and with Luke Bowen, Chief Executive Officer of the Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association. He presented Minister Burke with a framed picture depicting a program which our government is funding, a program delivering Northern Territory wide Indigenous employment, aiming to facilitate the employment of Indigenous people in meaningful jobs in the pastoral sector and to provide along the way mentoring and industry-driven training in areas such as low-stress stock handling, certificate levels I to IV agricultural and beef cattle, welding, smart train transport and safe use of chemicals, weed eradication programs, numeracy and literacy, first aid, machinery and vehicle skills. I commend that program and also the employers who have taken on Indigenous workers.

The government can do only so much in putting money forward but at the end of the day that money makes up a small amount of the cost involved. So I commend the pastoral industry, the Cattlemen’s Association and the cattlemen of the Northern Territory who have a long history of working with Indigenous people. There are some great stories out of the north, from pioneering days, of some fantastic Indigenous and full-blood Aboriginal cattle handlers. They had a very good sense for working with animals. These programs need to be supported by government but they would not get off the ground and they would not get results if it were not for the private sector. Many of these people, in employing Indigenous people in the cattle industry, are doing so out of their own pocket. They are also developing very good workers and very good human beings at the same time.

This program saw 45 participants advanced through 2009 to be ready for the 2010 season, along with the new crop of trainees in March. This program has been able to ensure maximum flexibility and delivery of mentoring support beyond year 1, giving participants the best opportunity to stay in employment and become valuable industry members—an example of practical partnerships achieving real results. Indigenous school retention rates, from start of high school to year 12, have risen from 30.7 per cent in 1995 to 46.5 per cent in 2008, a 6.4 per cent increase.

I want to mention briefly the Clontarf Academy. I know that Gerard Neesham, the founder of Clontarf, was in Canberra earlier in the week. Clontarf is a school based sports academy tackling poor attendance and outcomes among Indigenous students through sport and recreation with some great results, including school attendance rates of more than 80 per cent and improved academic performance. I was out at Casuarina High School recently and presented some flags from my office—an Australian flag, a Thursday Island flag and the Aboriginal flag—to the boys of Clontarf. By the end of this month, 2,300 students in 36 schools across three states will be signed up. Clontarf is one of the academies funded through the Australian government’s Sporting Chance Program to support Indigenous students’ engagement with school. Overall the program has achieved an average attendance rate of 79 per cent, six percentage points above average rates for all Indigenous students. I was very excited when I heard the Prime Minister announce that an additional 17 sports academies will be established across Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Victoria. Ten of those are new academies and they will be focused on girls.

I know that an academy will be established at the Palmerston High School, in my electorate of Solomon. As well, the Clontarf Foundation will operate seven new football academies: at Jabiru and Gunbalanya, in the Northern Territory, and at Bairnsdale, Warrnambool, Swan Hill, Robinvale and Mildura, in Victoria. Certainly, I commend Gerard Neesham, Andrea Goddard and the other staff, as well as the staff at the schools in my electorate. They have been doing a fantastic job in working predominantly with the urban Aboriginal youth and are now setting up academies for girls. We know that the girls are at risk a little earlier in life than the boys, and addressing what is going on with the girls is long overdue.

In the health space in my electorate we are fortunate to have had a commitment from the federal government, through Minister Roxon, to a doctors college in Darwin. In training our doctors in Darwin I believe that some 40 spots will be at the facility, starting next year. We will have 40 doctors graduating by 2015, and that will alleviate a lot of the problems we have with retention and recruitment of doctors in the Darwin area. Many of these people are local people. That is a $30 million commitment by the federal government. A lot of our problems are around Indigenous health. There is a commitment from the Commonwealth to the Menzies School of Health for further research in blood borne diseases, in particular, that affect Indigenous communities. This is the Commonwealth government doing something practical to make sure that we research things properly and then have the conduit joining research to the policies being implemented by the government.

Minister Roxon has also committed to a 50-bed hostel at the RDH. Very often a lot of our Indigenous brothers and sisters come in from communities and are admitted to hospital. But, when they have left hospital and may have a week to two weeks of outpatient type services to be accessed, often they will go and live with family or, if they cannot get a bed, will live rough or live in the ‘long grass’, as we say. Having this hostel will mean that people can be housed properly in a safe, clean environment, which will not only aid their recovery but also take the pressure off family, so that families that are in a routine, with kids going to school, kids going to bed early at night and kids eating good food, are not impacted at all by visitors from communities. Committing to a hostel on the campus of the Royal Darwin Hospital, in my electorate, is another great initiative by the Rudd Labor government.

Finally, I want to turn to oncology services. It has been a long time coming but I had a great deal of pleasure recently to open the new oncology unit with the Prime Minister. A lot of our Indigenous people just will not go away to have treatment for cancer. To our great shame up there, often they would decide to stay home instead of fighting cancer away from family and friends. Having an oncology unit in Darwin will make it easier and better for them to have treatment in Darwin and, hopefully, to beat the dreaded cancer.

In his statement the Prime Minister asked Indigenous leaders in families and communities and across the nation to step up and take responsibility for restoring strong social norms in their own communities, and that is happening all round the country. There are too many examples and not enough time to go through them all but I will say, as has the Prime Minister, that there are many Indigenous people around Australia who do not make the headlines but who are quietly making a difference, making fundamental changes in their own communities.

As Australians we need to be committed to closing the gap. It is as simple as that. As a nation we can never really hold our heads up high until we have achieved this. Ninety-one per cent of non-Indigenous Australians and 100 per cent of Indigenous Australians surveyed by Reconciliation Australia said that the relationship between the two peoples is important to this country. Ten years ago, in May, 250,000 Australians walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge, and 750,000 people around the country, in support of reconciliation. Ten years along, there remains a long journey ahead of us to lift Indigenous outcomes in health, housing, schools and jobs. But as a government and as a people we can now see a path ahead and we are determined to move forward—not like the past, where it was non-Indigenous Australians seeking to lead Indigenous Australians, but instead walking together: First Australians alongside all Australians, towards a stronger and fairer Australian nation.

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In noting the document entitled Closing the gap, I remain really pessimistic. I do not see a lot of evidence of the gap closing. And that really concerns me because my heart goes out to Indigenous Australia, looking at the severe disadvantage that exists in those communities. We have got to do more. A million words have been spoken about this. A million words have been written about it. All sorts of groups have had views—the do-gooders and the radicals; the Indigenous themselves—and little changes.

In my electorate I have Palm Island, an Indigenous community of about 4,000 people. If we do not do something, along the lines of what I am going to articulate to the parliament this afternoon, soon, Palm Island is going to be the same as it is now in another hundred years—and that is unacceptable. There are all these high-minded ideas and so on, but nothing changes.

I have always said that the ‘three Ls’ are important. They are, firstly, leadership from Indigenous Australians, and the will to follow leadership in the community; secondly, respect for law, order and governance—and that covers a plethora of things, from respect for the law and the police and so on to issues of domestic violence, and nepotism in how councils run these places; and, thirdly, land ownership. Until those three things are addressed, nothing is going to change; it just isn’t.

But I want to go one step further and tell the parliament how things can change. It is one of the very great privileges of members of parliament that you can travel. In the latter part of last year I drove the Plenty Highway. The Plenty Highway goes from Alice Springs over to Winton in Queensland, right across the centre of Australia—640 kilometres of dirt; you do not go to sleep, I can tell you! But along the way there are Indigenous communities in the middle of nowhere. I was travelling with Senator Ian Macdonald and we were promoting the great Outback Way, taking tourists from Townsville through to Perth, straight across the centre of Australia, and this was part of the great Outback Way.

We called in to an Indigenous community for breakfast, because we had started in Alice Springs early in the morning. As I said, this was in the middle of nowhere. We found this takeaway place in the back of the community. My instant instinct was to think, ‘This community is clean and tidy—looks right.’ When we found the takeaway it was a white woman who was running the thing, but all of her labour was Indigenous. The takeaway shop, kitchen, whatever, was as clean as a new pin. The way the shop operated was like you would see a shop operating anywhere that had good customer service. The prices were good, too, and the quality of the food was fantastic.

I said to this lady, ‘How long have you been working in Indigenous Australia?’ She said, ‘All my life. I wouldn’t live anywhere else.’ I said, ‘I am a member of parliament; you are a person who has lived in Indigenous communities all your life. You see the tremendous disadvantage and problems in Indigenous communities—what is the solution?’ She said, ‘It’s easy, but nobody listens.’ It was only two sentences, and it was pretty confronting. She went on, ‘Forget the current generation; you’ll never change them.’ That was a bit confronting! She said, ‘Get to the kids—get them to school, keep them at school and educate them.’ And further, ‘That will change Indigenous Australia for the better, forever. It’s long term, it’ll be generational, but you’ve got to start somewhere.’

I have a feeling deep down that she is right because, when you talk to principals in Indigenous schools, they will tell you the same thing. They will tell you how important it is for Indigenous students to go to school and to stay at school. In addition to all of the things that the parliament does for Indigenous Australia, perhaps we need to do much more in relation to getting the kids to go to school and to stay at school. Indigenous Australians are just as capable as any other Australian at succeeding in and contributing to life. If you go to the James Cook Medical School in Townsville you will see that, in every medical school intake, there are four Indigenous students. None of them fail. They make fantastic doctors. They go out into their own community and look after it. They can do it. All of us in our time have met really capable and impressive Indigenous leaders. But there can be more of them and there has to be more of them. I charge the parliament to think about what I have said today. I charge the parliament to think a little bit longer term, to strip away all of those who would say that this is racially discriminatory or that we should be able to make our own decisions, and to actually do something. Deputy Speaker, we can close the gap.

Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Clearly, the member for Herbert has not read the report Closing the gap, because targets 2, 3 and 4 are all about education from early childhood onwards. I would suggest that the member for Herbert get a copy of the report and actually read it before he tries to lecture this parliament on his views.

The report Closing the gap, which was tabled in the House by the Prime Minister, outlines the path to change. It demonstrates the challenge of producing accurate data to track our progress in closing the gap and thereby reaching our targets. Progress is slow but it also demonstrates that, whilst that is the case and progress may not be as fast as some expectations, there is action in communities right across Australia—action by governments, action by Indigenous communities and action by the wider Australian community.

The government set six targets in 2008. It is important to continue to look at these targets. We must not, for a moment, let them out of our sight if they are to remain realistic targets. The government’s first target is to halve the mortality rate of Indigenous children under five years of age by 2018. In 2008 the gap in child mortality between Indigenous children and non-Indigenous children meant that 205 out of 100,000 Indigenous children died before the age of five, compared to 100 non-Indigenous children—a difference of more than 100. Indigenous children are twice as likely as non-Indigenous children to die before the age of five. This simply is not good enough. It is a shameful statistic. For all parents it is shocking and confronting. While the 2009 data to measure progress against this target is not yet available, other data sources can provide some measure of change. We know the gap in infant mortality rates in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory has been on the decline over the past decade. This decline has been particularly evident over recent years and now stands at 5.3 per cent. We must continue to act to see this decline accelerated and our target reached by 2018.

Towards that goal, the government has already rolled out 40 new services for mothers and babies. Under the $90.3 million Mothers and Babies Services program, a total of 11,000 mothers and babies will be supported over five years with services including improved antenatal and postnatal care, advice on nutrition and health checks. Earlier this month the Prime Minister announced that nine new services will be funded, including in the Northern Territory, South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland. In addition to these services, the Australia government is supporting pregnant women to improve their own health through establishing five new sites under the $37.4 million Australian Nurse-Family Partnership Program. We have provided a total of 390 ear, nose and throat specialist services and a total of 1,990 dental services to 1,429 children who live in the Northern Territory Emergency Response communities in the six months from July to December last year alone. And the Red Cross is working with Outback Stores to bring more fresh fruit to Indigenous kids in the Territory through breakfast clubs in 33 communities and 13 homeland centres.

Our second target is to provide access to early childhood education for all four-year-olds in remote Indigenous communities within five years. We know that getting the best start in life begins early. Early childhood education is essential to getting the right start in learning and preparing for school, but the best available data shows only around 60 per cent of Indigenous children are enrolled in an early childhood education program in the year before school compared to around 70 per cent of all children. The good news is the trend is in the right direction. More Indigenous children are being enrolled and we are seeing the fastest preschool enrolment growth in remote communities, increasing by 31 per cent between 2005 and 2008.

We are expanding early learning opportunities for Indigenous children through the establishment of 36 children and family centres, bringing together important services including child care, early learning, and parent and family support programs. Twenty-one of these 36 centres will be located in regional and remote areas, including at Kununurra in Western Australia, Mornington Island in Queensland and Walgett in New South Wales. Another will be located in Yuendumu in the Northern Territory, where the Yuendumu Early Childhood Centre is already held up as a model of successful early childhood education. Every day between 40 and 60 children along with their parents and extended family go along to the centre to paint, read books, ride bikes and play. The children have breakfast and lunch there, the community nurse visits, and they go on excursions to the pool and the bush. The 14 local Aboriginal childcare workers who look after them say the children are happy and healthy.

With more children benefiting from early childhood education, the flow-on effect will help us meet our third and fourth targets: to halve the gap in literacy and numeracy achievement between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and other students within a decade, and to halve the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in rates of year 12 attainment or equivalent attainment by 2020. These two targets are critical to closing the gap because it is education above all that will improve the life chances and unlock the potential of Indigenous Australians. The evidence is unambiguous. Finishing year 12 transforms students’ future opportunities. It builds pathways to more secure, better paid and more fulfilling jobs. The learning basics, literacy and numeracy, are fundamental to all Australian children. And they are critical to healthier, happier and longer lives. The evidence shows the gap in meeting literacy and numeracy standards between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students is large. These gaps are evident from as early as year 3, with the largest gap in 2008 being 29.4 per cent for year-5 reading. Literacy and numeracy scores vary across grades. In 2009 there was an improvement in the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students reading for years 3, 5 and 7. For year 9 students, the gap increased.

The government is taking action to expand opportunities for Indigenous children at school. Around 78,000 Indigenous students, almost half of all Indigenous primary and secondary school students, will benefit from the government’s $1.5 billion investment in 1,500 low socioeconomic schools, as well as substantial investments in literacy and numeracy. And we are seeing great results from the Stronger Smarter Leadership Program of Dr Chris Sarra, whose ‘clear expectations, high expectations’ philosophy for educating Indigenous children is delivering remarkable results among the 44 schools signed up to this program.

The government provided Stronger Smarter Learning Communities in September 2009 to support an initial 12 hub schools in New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia. We expect this to grow to 60 hub schools over the next four years supporting between 180 and 240 affiliated schools. One school that has already signed up is the East Kalgoorlie Primary School in Western Australia. Faced with what she described as significant challenges, Principal Donna Bridge used her experience of the Stronger Smarter Leadership Program to enlist the support of parents and the community to bring about change. Five years later, attitudes have changed, school attendance is up and there have been significant improvements in literacy and numeracy. In Cape York in Far North Queensland, school attendance is also up, driven by the Cape York welfare reforms created by the Indigenous leader Noel Pearson and supported by the Commonwealth and state governments. Under the reforms, welfare payments are linked to parents taking responsibility to care for their kids and make sure they go to school.

In 2006 only 47.4 per cent of Indigenous 20- to 24-year-olds had obtained a year 12 or equivalent qualification, almost half as many as non-Indigenous young people. Indigenous school retention rates from the start of high school to year 12 have risen from 30.7 per cent in 1995 to 46.5 per cent in 2008, a 6.4 percentage point increase. With a concerted government effort and the contribution of organisations like the Clontarf Foundation, we are working to close the gap. Clontarf based sports academies are tackling poor attendance and outcomes among Indigenous students through sport and recreation with some great results, including school attendance rates of more than 80 per cent and improved academic performance. By the end of February, 2,300 students in 36 schools across three states will be signed up. Clontarf is one of the academies funded through the Australian government’s Sporting Chance Program to support Indigenous students in engagement with their school. Overall the program has achieved an average attendance rate of 79 per cent, six percentage points above the average rate of all Indigenous students in schools. Earlier this month the Prime Minister announced that this year an additional 17 school academies will commence across Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Victoria. This will support about a thousand students and bring the total number of students in the program to some 10,000. Ten of these new academies will be for girls. As well, the Clontarf Foundation will operate seven new football academies in the Northern Territory and in Victoria.

Our fifth target is to halve within a decade the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and other Australians. With regard to this goal, there is a positive trend. Between 2002 and 2008 the Indigenous employment rate rose from 48 per cent to 53.8 per cent. This is still well below the non-Indigenous employment rate, so that in 2008 the most recent available data indicates there was a 21 percentage point gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous employment. Over the past year the government has replaced Community Development Employment Project jobs with more than 1,500 jobs delivering government services to Indigenous communities. These for the first time are now sustainable jobs; they are proper jobs. The best way to accelerate growth in Indigenous employment is to give people the skills to get and keep a job. Seven schools in the 29 remote communities targeted under the National Partnership on Remote Service Delivery already have trades training centres under our $2.5 billion national investment in trade training to give school students early opportunities to develop skills for a profession in the trades and to help them complete year 12 or an equivalent qualification. I was proud to announce trade training centres in my electorate of Dobell, where we have a much higher percentage of Indigenous students than most other areas and where such training centres will be of the utmost benefit to young people to gain the skills they need to find jobs and to keep those jobs.

But it is not only the trade training centres where we are endeavouring to close the gap. In communities like Hermannsburg, dedicated teachers have lifted school attendance rates to 90 per cent in the junior school. To be successful these young people need to be actively engaged beyond the primary school years. The government is now acting to improve access to first-rate education facilities for students in schools where there are remote Indigenous communities. Intensive support and assistance will also be given to schools from the 29 remote service delivery priority locations that have not already had funding from the trades training centres program. Schools in remote communities with large Indigenous student populations will also be provided with extra flexibility to deliver training targeted at the needs and education levels on these communities, including prevocational and certificate I and II qualifications.

We are also working with the private sector to create business employment opportunities. The government is also investing $3 million to support the new Australian Indigenous Minority Supplier Council, which helps certified Indigenous businesses to win contracts in the private and government sectors. After only five months the council has signed up 31 major corporations as backers. Already it has helped secure $3.3 million worth of contracts for 15 Indigenous businesses. These efforts are in addition to the work of the Australian Employment Covenant, through which some 16,000 Indigenous jobs have been committed over the coming years from Australian businesses.

All these efforts culminate in our sixth and final target, to close the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a generation. We know that with the very latest figures available the life expectancy gap is 11.7 years for men and 9.7 years for women. An Indigenous male born today is likely to die at just 67 years of age, and an Indigenous female at 73 years. This is less than the 17-year gap that we thought existed a year ago.

This is good news, but it is a result of having more reliable data rather than any real improvement on the ground. In the past we have not had reliable information on Indigenous life expectancy, so we have not reliably known the size of the gap between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. There is evidence to suggest that some progress may have been made, but the progress is clearly too slow. Closing the life expectancy gap is a cumulative target relying on our success in meeting each of the other targets for achievement. Obviously the health of Indigenous people is a major factor. Tobacco, obesity and physical inactivity are leading risk factors accounting for around 45 per cent of the total health gap. Since 2007-08, Indigenous specific health spending has increased by 57 per cent. This includes nearly $1.6 billion over four years to fight the treatable chronic diseases that account for two-thirds of premature Indigenous deaths, and it includes $14.5 million for an Indigenous Tobacco Control Initiative, a package of 20 innovative antismoking projects in urban, regional and remote Indigenous communities.

There has been much said about the legacy of decades of government failure still endured by Indigenous Australians. That is why it is all the more critical that we are vigilant about what is working and what is not. When evidence emerged of unacceptable delays in our major Indigenous housing program in the Northern Territory last year, the government took unprecedented action to get the program back on track. That action has delivered results. This is a timely report to remind us of the work that we need to do and the task that is ahead in terms of closing the gap. By working together in a non-partisan way, by making sure that both the government and the opposition work together on this project, we can truly close the gap, and that is something that all of us here in this parliament should aspire to.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not think there is a more important topic that faces this parliament than closing the gap between Indigenous Australia and the rest of Australia. It is a shameful matter that there is such a large gap, particularly when it comes to protecting kids in this cohort of our community. I am reminded of my experience of 2007, when in a former existence I was working for the then Prime Minister on the Northern Territory government report—which, shamefully, they sat on for two months; it was released in late June—which led to the Northern Territory intervention. That report, which recounted stories and showed what was going on in the backblocks of our country, revealed an utter disgrace and led to what I think was a breakthrough policy and a breakthrough moment in our country’s history. We recognised that we had not done enough, that we had allowed a situation to develop that was appalling beyond belief, particularly when there were stories of kids under five being sexually assaulted on a regular basis out in these communities. They were stories that for too long had been ignored by too many.

For too long we have focused on a generational debate about what was said or done generations ago—things that we cannot change now; we never could—rather than trying to genuinely improve outcomes, particularly for the next generations. The work we need to focus on is getting to the next generations of Indigenous kids so they can help themselves get out of situations in regional Australia, hidden away from mainstream people, that are unacceptable in the extreme. This is the problem I have with what the current government is doing. Most of the work is well intentioned, and the report to parliament every 12 months—as the Leader of the Opposition described it, a state of the union style report—on outcomes in Indigenous communities is a valuable thing and something to be welcomed, as is the commitment of the Prime Minister and his government to focus on these issues.

What worries me is that at the heart of the government’s approach is government—government programs being there to fix all the problems—whereas, if we look back over the generational mistakes that we have made, they have always been that government has been too involved. One of the reasons that we have such significant issues in these communities is that for too long there has been, as Noel Pearson identifies, the corrosive combination of generational unemployment and welfare dependency. People have come to expect that the government will hand them money and houses—the means to live their lives. There has not been the incentive for them to take their lives in their own hands and try and do their best, as there has been in mainstream Australia. That has led to some of the circumstances hidden in regional Australia, which for too long we did not acknowledge and we did nothing about.

The first, and I think most important, issue that was addressed in the Northern Territory intervention was law and order. Without it, you cannot possibly improve educational outcomes for early childhood, which is vital. I agree with the comments of the member for Dobell in that respect. It is absolutely vital that we get these kids into education early—that is, into good, solid education that retains them at school. We need to not just have their names ticked off the roll every day but to make sure they are actually getting an education. You cannot educate a child who is being abused at home. There is no possible way that a child is going to take anything in when they will be going home to a situation where they are not safe, where they are being abused by those closest to them—and they might be suffering from substance abuse. That is a generational problem. In some communities the exploitation of children has become acceptable; it should never be acceptable. The 2007 report that spurred the Northern Territory intervention highlighted just how disastrous the situation was and how we had failed the kids for too long.

We must first get the law and order situation right. We must ensure that women and children are safe in their own homes. I am reminded of a committee trip I was part of in late 2008 to Wilcannia, which is a well-known town with a largely Indigenous population. Wilcannia has for many years had trouble with law and order and problems with health outcomes, educational outcomes and long-term, generational unemployment: the very same problems that beset Indigenous communities right across the country. I grew up in Mildura, which is about four hours south of Wilcannia by road, and I remember that it was always the story that Wilcannia was a dangerous place to travel to because of the law and order situation.

When the committee visited Wilcannia, we met with some of the local Indigenous people who were working very hard to resolve these situations. One was a health worker, a nurse, from Broken Hill, who was doing a tremendous job travelling up to Wilcannia and the surrounding settlements as well as working in Broken Hill itself. There was also a young guy who was formerly part of a dance troupe—whose name I forget—which performed for some time in the 1990s. He had a genuine interest in improving the lives of the kids and had set up a community drop-in centre. He was working very hard on the problems that challenged those areas—one being access to fresh food at reasonable prices, which of course is one of the major challenges out in these communities and which, I think, there are still some genuine problems with. The nurse pulled me aside at one point after a discussion and we talked about the 2007 intervention. She pleaded with us to keep the intervention going, saying that it was protecting the women and children and that, while they would always be reluctant to talk—because of fear of retribution and so forth—for too long women and children in her community had been in fear of going home. It is an absolute and utter disgrace that in our country women and children are fearful of returning home. Home is supposed to be a sanctuary, a place where you are meant to be safe.

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This is where we must focus, and I urge the government not to lose sight of the importance of maintaining law and order in these communities, because that is the very first step, the first building block, to ensuring that we close the gap. All the well-intentioned promises and direction of the government and the Prime Minister on this issue will be undone if we lose focus on ensuring that people are safe. If they are safe then we can start to address the health, housing and educational challenges and the opportunities to improve the lives of the next generation. This is a 20-year challenge that this parliament must maintain its intention to fix. In that respect, the yearly report is a great idea and one that is supported by both sides of parliament. I note the Leader of the Opposition’s address in response to the Prime Minister’s statement. He very clearly articulated that he thinks this is a worthwhile move and something he intends to do each year from the time he becomes Prime Minister later this year.

It is important at this time to reflect on the outcomes we are achieving. I agree with the member for Dobell that it is early to be looking at the results. Many of the results have been affected by improvements in data collection. They are important improvements, there is no doubt about that, but we make a mistake in starting to pat ourselves on the back too early when clearly some of the improvements are simply due to the improved collection of data in the early stages of this project.

I stand committed, as someone who wishes to be here for some time, to maintaining an interest in and focus on making sure we as a country get this right. I think it is a great shame that we ever allowed ourselves to get to a situation where women and children in communities were not safe, were not protected in their homes and had nowhere to turn, nowhere to go. We cannot allow that in our civilised society. We are the best country in the world. This is a black spot we need to fix. It will take us 20 years, if not longer. I commend the government for focusing on it and I hope that we continue to do so going forward.

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

I rise today to speak on Closing the gap—Prime Minister’s report 2010. It is a great honour to be a member of the Australian parliament and a great honour to be a member of a government that is very committed to making a difference in the lives of all Australians but particularly those of people from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds. The statistics show that overwhelmingly they have lower life expectancy, worse health outcomes, worse educational outcomes and worse employment outcomes. As a government we are very much committed to ensuring that we work on the practical responses to those issues. But, importantly, we also recognise that in working to develop plans to fix these problems we need to recognise the hurt in Aboriginal communities because of successive governments’ failure to apologise for past policies that really damaged many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

This report has been given in the second year after the historic apology that was part of this government’s first sitting. As a new member of the class of 2007, I participated in that historic day, when the Prime Minister and the then Leader of the Opposition, Mr Nelson, came together to apologise on behalf of the parliament to Indigenous Australians. It is very fitting that the Prime Minister should report at this time, just prior to the anniversary of that day, two years on from 13 February 2008. As the member for Leichhardt, representing so many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, not only in the city of Cairns but up through remote communities in Cape York and the Torres Strait, I look forward to participating in a celebration of that day and that event.

I was very lucky this year to be invited to an event being held by the Wuchopperen Health Service—a very well-established and respected health service in my electorate—of Cairns, and its chairperson, Ms Julieanne Boneham. I sat down with elders and others who really experienced the benefits of that apology and talked about how it impacted on their lives and what it meant to them. I think what people are really looking for now is the practical measures that we are taking to build on what was a very important day a couple of years ago. The government is very committed to making a practical difference to Indigenous people’s lives. The Prime Minister in his speech, as he went through the statistics, recognised that this was going to take a long time but also that good things were happening. We are improving school attendance in Cape York Peninsula. We are improving school attendance in the Northern Territory through the Northern Territory emergency response, in which a bipartisan approach was taken. We are looking to put that response on a more sustainable footing with legislation being debated in the other place. We need a bipartisan approach to dealing with Indigenous affairs. We need a bipartisan approach to closing the gap in Indigenous life expectancy. The legislation that is before the House will ensure that welfare reform moves forward and moves beyond Indigenous communities. We are looking for support from the opposition because the benefits will flow to others in the broader community, as well as continuing to flow to other Indigenous communities that currently are not benefiting from the opportunities that welfare reform income management provides.

Last week I was lucky enough to travel up to the Cape to visit Bamagoo and Injinoo, where I opened some facilities at the Injinoo Primary School campus which were a direct result of our Building the Education Revolution funding and part of our economic stimulus package. It was great to get up there. Their school is doing a great job. I congratulate Ken Maclean, the Head of Campus for the Northern Peninsula Area School, Trish Blackman the Head of Campus for the Injinoo Junior School campus, and also Jeffrey Aniba, who could not come along, who is the chair of the local community education council and who is doing a lot of work to ensure the committee is working effectively with the local school. It is right—and I know opposition members have been making comments on this point, and I do agree—that we need to provide a great education environment and new facilities are part of that. Providing additional funding to improve quality through our SES funding to the schools which particularly need additional support is important and many schools in my electorate have received that funding. But we also need to make sure that kids come from families and housing that provide them with an environment which enables them to get an education. Our land reforms—and we are working in partnership with the Queensland government in my electorate—our investment in new Indigenous housing and our welfare reforms are all critically important. We need to take a holistic approach to closing the gap in Indigenous life expectancy. It was great to get up to Injinoo and to Bamagoo to talk to people about what we can do in the education sector.

Last week I also visited Lockhart River on the way back to Cairns—it was a busy week, last week. I was down in Canberra by Friday for the hearing with the Governor of the Reserve Bank. I know that people are looking to see the new housing in the Lockhart rolled out expeditiously and are looking forward to the benefits of it. We have not seen these sorts of investments in housing previously under any former government that I am aware of. It is a historic investment and housing is critically important to closing the gap. To do that we need to complete our land reform process in partnership with the Queensland government. We want to move away from a collective ownership of land in Indigenous townships and ensure that we can get 40-year leases and 99-year leases that enable more social housing to be built in places like Lockhart and all of the communities in the Cape York Peninsula. They have never seen this sort of investment in housing previously. We want to see those houses being built and we are working in partnership with the Queensland government on that critically important task.

As I said, income management is being trialled in four welfare reform communities in Cape York—Aurukun, Coen, Hope Vale and Mossman Gorge. That work is rolling out. It is about making sure that families are spending their money on food, clothing and school expenses and getting their kids to school. Alcohol management plans were in place in Aboriginal communities in the Cape York Peninsula long before the Northern Territory intervention. That was the work of Noel Pearson and the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership working in partnership with the Queensland government. Those reforms need to continue.

When you put in place those sorts of reforms you need to provide services to support them. That is why we built wellbeing centres. That is why we are funding the Royal Flying Doctor Service at Apunipima Cape York Health Council to deliver support services as part of these reforms. They are critically important in an overall plan to make a difference to the lives of Indigenous people.

The government has also brought in reforms in relation to CDEP so that people do not get caught in a program that is not leading to longer term employment. Given history, their circumstances and the numbers of jobs that are available, there will be people who will get caught in a longer term welfare dependent situation. But we need to make sure that young people in particular are not moving into that, and that is what our CDEP reforms are about. We need to do more to make sure that Job Services Australia agencies are working effectively with the new CDEP contracts. There needs to be more work done on that.

I congratulate Minister Macklin. Whenever I take up an issue with her she is keen to listen to me and look at how we can respond and do things better. I know that Minister Macklin and Minister Arbib will continue to make sure these reforms are rolled out and improve the lives of Indigenous people.

If we can create better housing and other infrastructure in communities we can ensure that law and order is in place. That has happened in Cape York with alcohol management plans, and there is an increased investment in policing, with new police stations and police housing being built in these communities. If we can ensure that welfare payments, where people are dependent on them, are being spent on food and clothing and that people are getting their kids to school, then we can ensure that in the longer term people’s health will improve. That is what the statistics show. More kids will go to school when they get a better school environment. We are building infrastructure and providing support for schools to employ new teachers and improve curriculum.

It is not going to happen this year or next year, but in the next 10 to 20 years we will see the statistics improve. As the reports come in year after year, we will see the gap in Indigenous life expectancy, education outcomes and health outcomes improve because the government has embarked on a holistic approach around housing, health, education and employment. It is really about a significant partnership between us and Indigenous Australia. I am committed to that. I want to have a long career in this place. The former member I think had 12 years. If I have that long—and, touch wood, I will; there is an election later this year—I want to be able to look back as the member for Leichhardt and see a significant change in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in the communities in my electorate. Hopefully, I will have made a small contribution to that.

In the end individuals change their own circumstances and lives. What governments can do, though, is enable that change to happen, and that is what the Rudd government is committed to doing. We want to partner the opposition when it comes to important issues like income management and welfare reform. We want to work with them cooperatively. That is what I encourage them to do—make a difference and work with us to close the gap for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Debate (on motion by Mr Craig Thomson) adjourned.