Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I acknowledge the first Australians on whose lands we meet and whose cultures we celebrate as the oldest continuing cultures in human history. I believe that our debates are stronger for our acknowledgement of country for this emerging Australian tradition of respect. I remember so vividly Matilda House’s words, speaking to all of us, when this 43rd Parliament began. She said:

… I express the hope of a united, reconciled nation, the oldest living culture joined with the many diverse cultures of a modern successful Australia.

I believe that, for all the democratic differences between us in this place, this is a hope that we all genuinely share.

I also remember so vividly when Kevin Rudd said, speaking for all of us when the 42nd Parliament began: ‘Sorry.’ With that one word Kevin Rudd made wonderful history for this nation. As an Australian and as a member of the government, I was proud to be here on that day. Then Kevin turned his intelligence and determination to closing the gap for Indigenous Australians, setting six specific ambitious targets for our nation to achieve: closing the gap in life expectancy; halving the gap in mortality rates for children under five; ensuring access to early childhood education; halving the gap in reading, writing and numeracy; halving the gap in year 12 attainment rates; and halving the gap in employment outcomes. I am proud to be here now, taking up the responsibility for the Australian government in closing the gap.

Today I make the third annual prime ministerial statement to this House on closing the gap. The parliament should be in no doubt that prime ministers will be reporting on closing the gap for decades to come. This work will go on. I do believe that Australians want our Indigenous people to have a better life. I also understand that many Australians wonder if our country can ever make that happen. I feel the force of these two Australian emotions: our deep dream of a better life for all and our deep fear that we can never truly achieve it. As I speak to this parliament today I feel the power of those two conflicting emotions.

I know our people think of the past, of the great policy movements and the passionate debates, of the money spent and the stubborn persistence of Indigenous disadvantage, and I know that sometimes we wonder: ‘Can we really make a difference?’ I am an activist and an optimist. For me, the answer can only be yes. The reality of change is never simple. Our knowledge is never perfect and action is never easy, but closing the gap has allowed Australia to move beyond anecdote and intuition and instead to act on the best evidence we can get. The closing the gap goals mean we know what we are trying to achieve in education, in employment and in health. The closing the gap strategy means we know how we are going to achieve it: improving investment, changing behaviours and working together with respect. This framework is in place and delivery has begun.

‘Closing the gap’ is the slogan of no political party. That is much of its power. The community, particularly the Indigenous community, made closing the gap a campaign. The government has made closing the gap its policy. In my own work, first as education minister and now as Prime Minister, I have come to see ever more power in closing the gap as a way of defining, driving and measuring improvements in the lives of Indigenous Australians, as a way of describing and understanding the government’s plans for the enormously difficult and complex social problems of Indigenous disadvantage. Because I believe a fair nation creates opportunities for all, I see closing the gap as a genuinely important national goal—that all Australians will have the same opportunities, that demography will not be destiny, that success will be defined by hard work, not postcode, and that this will be true for any Aussie kid, whether they are from the Red Centre, Redfern or Rose Bay.

Because I believe in tackling the big challenges in the national interest, I see closing the gap as a way of understanding the problems. It is evidence based, accountable and transparent. It tells us what needs to be done first and fastest and it builds a methodical approach. It allows us to build consensus in support of specific progress, instead of debating abstract ideas, to do what we can with what we have where we are.

Because I believe Australians judge governments on delivery, I see closing the gap as a way of working on solutions. It is a way of making specific, measurable progress. It is practical and cumulative. It gives us new information, which means we can invest where it will make the biggest difference, information which means we can be sure that government is meeting its responsibilities. So closing the gap is a way of saying that Indigenous people should expect from the government the same thing that every Australian expects: the building blocks all people look to government to provide and the necessary conditions for opportunity in life.

Closing the gap is a way of saying that Indigenous people should expect of themselves the same things all Australians expect as well. I also believe that with opportunity comes responsibility and that individuals only achieve progress through work and effort. So I see closing the gap as a call for changes in behaviour, a call to every person, to every family, to every community to take care of your children, to take a job when you can find one, to create a safe environment, to send your kids to school, to pay your rent, to save up for a home, to respect good social norms, to respect the law and to reach out to other Australians.

If I speak strongly it is because I have listened to Indigenous people who do these things already, people who speak even more strongly. I am talking about people like Chris Sarra, the inspiring Indigenous educator, whose creed of high expectations and words ‘stronger, smarter’ stay with me. I am talking about people like Noel Pearson, who pioneered the arguments for social and personal responsibility as drivers of Indigenous opportunity.

To borrow a phrase from President George W Bush, we should not give in to ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’. It is not only the well-known Indigenous Australians, the people we read about in our newspapers and see on our television screens, who are driving behavioural change. It is the mother in the city who feeds her children and gets them ready for school. It is the aunty in the country town who tells the stories to the young. It is the father in a remote community who sets an example of strength and gentleness to his sons. These are the hidden stories and hidden heroes of Indigenous Australia, the people who are leading the change more than anyone else.

I am certain that Australia will never close the gap without all of us committing to change. When this campaign began, the truth is that the most remote community and the most respected leader, the smallest shop and the biggest corporation, and the Australian government itself, all needed to change. We needed not to change alone but to change together. Saying sorry was vital for so many reasons. One that I want to reflect on today is the chance it gave us to break the cycle of blame between Australian governments and Indigenous Australia. In the worst moments of this cycle, Australian governments have sometimes seemed to say to Indigenous Australia, ‘Let us know when you’ve got your act together.’ In the worst moments of this cycle, Indigenous Australia has sometimes seemed to feel that ‘the Australian government has to invest before our behaviour can begin to change’. Both attitudes are destructive and wrong. Bad behaviour by individuals is never an excuse for government failure. The failures of government are never an excuse for bad behaviour by individuals.

If Indigenous kids in this nation are not getting a fair go, we share the responsibility for change. I do not mean as Indigenous people. I do not mean as non-Indigenous people. I mean as adults, politicians, bureaucrats, local communities, school leaders, teachers and parents—us. All of us and each of us share the task ahead. I really think we all now see it that way. In the past three years we have genuinely come together with respect and we have worked together with shared responsibility and genuinely broken the cycle of blame. Closing the gap is now more than a public policy. Closing the gap is now a national goal.

In the same way, I believe recognising the unique and special place of our first peoples in the Australian Constitution can be a wonderful national goal, an opportunity to recognise, in the founding document of our nationhood, our shared pride in being Australian and our shared pride in Australia’s continuing Indigenous culture. When that happens, I believe, it will be a wonderful, uplifting, uniting moment for our nation, a day of great national pride. I look forward to working with the expert panel, with all members of the parliament and with all Australians as we approach that national goal together.

But the work cannot wait until that day, and we will not let it. Since 2007 our nation has been working together to close the gap in health, in education and in employment, to overcome decades of underinvestment in services and infrastructure, to encourage and support personal responsibility as the foundation for healthy, functional families and communities and to build new understanding and respect between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. We have done an enormous amount of work together. First, we have invested in what we call the building blocks, those necessary conditions for opportunity: early childhood and schooling, health and healthy homes, safe communities and economic participation, as well as governance and leadership, reversing decades of underinvestment in services and infrastructure, delivering the things all Australians expect.

So we have invested in early childhood, delivering infrastructure, staff and programs in remote communities and town camps; making community based preschools more affordable; hiring extra full-time teachers to support Indigenous kids. Last year nearly 15,000 Indigenous adults and children visited one of the 45 Communities for Children services sites to receive assistance with early learning and literacy, parenting and family support, and childhood nutrition. Ten new child and maternal health services have been approved for funding across Australia. Two of these services have already commenced, in Warburton, Western Australia and Ceduna, in South Australia. Up to 11,000 Indigenous babies and their mothers will be helped by 2013. More than 6,000 children and parents meet regularly in 69 supported playgroups across Australia, supporting children’s development and giving parents a hand as well.

We are investing in schooling. The government is building new classrooms, science centres, libraries and resource centres in 29 remote communities across Australia. These projects are due to be completed this year. Last year more than 3,500 Indigenous young people who were at risk of not completing year 12 or an equivalent were personally helped under the Youth Connections program, which encourages young people to stay at school, get back to school or take up training and achieve their goals. More than 5,000 students were supported in academies such as the Clontarf Foundation football academies, the Former Origin Greats Queensland academy and other sports based academies in 2010. These academies reach out to school students at risk of not completing school. They teach and promote self-discipline and self-esteem, life skills and the importance of education, particularly through close mentoring and participation in sport. More than half of the participants reported improved academic performance and positive changes in attitudes and behaviour.

We have invested in health. The Indigenous Chronic Disease Package is training and expanding the Indigenous health workforce and tackling chronic disease risk factors. This has funded more than 300 new positions in the Indigenous health workforce—outreach workers and health project officers, regional tobacco coordinators and tobacco action workers, healthy lifestyle workers, practice managers and other health professionals. To tackle petrol sniffing, there are nearly 108 sites across regional and remote Australia supplying low-aromatic Opal fuel. Eleven new Indigenous communities, in the gulf region of Queensland, the East Kimberley in Western Australia and the Top End of the Northern Territory—home to nearly 9,000 people—will be getting access to Opal fuel through 39 new retail sites. This begins in 2011 and will be completed by 2013. Opal fuel has delivered a 70 per cent reduction in petrol sniffing across communities, with improved health outcomes, family function and community safety.

We have invested in healthy homes. The Australian government is making an unprecedented long-term investment to reverse decades of neglect, tackling overcrowding and homelessness, poor housing conditions and the severe housing shortage in remote Indigenous communities. People need a decent house to cook a healthy meal, to sleep at night, for children to wake up the next day ready for school, for parents to wake up the next day ready for work. That means that houses have to be built, and we are doing that. We have listened to communities and we are building housing to cater to different sized families—houses that cater for singles, young families and the elderly and houses that allow privacy. Last year 316 new houses and 828 refurbishments were completed. New and refurbished buildings are subject to new tenancy agreements which help tenants transition to rental arrangements in line with other public housing and to ensure regular repairs and maintenance.

We have invested in safe communities. The Australian government is helping protect Indigenous children from neglect and abuse. We are helping develop new family support services for families at risk, increasing the number of child protection workers and strengthening alcohol controls. The Australian government has paid for the construction of three permanent police stations in the APY lands in South Australia. These began operations late in 2009 and early last year, bringing a permanent police presence to those communities for the first time. Sixty-six Australian Federal Police officers have been deployed to the Northern Territory since June 2007. We funded 45 extra Northern Territory police recruits who have graduated since 2009 and commenced their duties with the Northern Territory police force in 16 communities from Maningrida to Yuendumu, and another 15 recruits should graduate in April. In child protection, new national standards for out of home care which apply to formal care arrangements including residential care, foster care and kinship care will ensure children get proper care no matter where they live.

We have invested in economic participation. Over 16,000 Indigenous Australians started employment and about 12,500 began training in 2010 with support from the Indigenous Employment Program. As part of the tailored assistance element of the program, work began on construction, retail, hospitality and mining projects valued at over $180 million. Nearly 2,000 Indigenous Australians were supported into employment over the last 12 months through the Community Development Employment Projects program.

Since starting in September 2009, the Australian Indigenous Minority Supplier Council has generated over $4 million in contracts and nearly $3 million in transactions between its members and certified suppliers. The council links corporate and government purchases with certified Indigenous suppliers of goods and services. Demand is growing and not only for Indigenous workers but for Indigenous business as well.

We have invested in governance and leadership. The National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples provides a central mechanism with which government and the corporate and the community sectors can engage and partner on policy design and implementation. In remote communities we are supporting community capacity building and leadership initiatives such as engagement workshops, leadership development workshops and community development training.

Closing the gap demands that the Australian government meets our responsibility to overcome decades of underinvestment in services and infrastructure. We are doing this. Closing the gap also demands personal responsibility, the foundation for the life of every family and community. Indigenous people are doing this too. Closing the gap means change in people’s lives and Indigenous people know that when a child starts attending school, when the drinker stops abusing alcohol, when the adult takes the job that is there, then change begins. And Indigenous people know that these decisions are not made by governments; they are made by people. The job of government and of communities is to support good decision so that when the child goes to school, there is a great teacher; when the drinker stops, they find a great counsellor; and when the adult takes the job, they have great skills. That is what we are doing across Australia.

In Fitzroy Crossing the leaders there and the surrounding communities of the Fitzroy Valley in Western Australia requested alcohol restrictions, and they were first imposed in 2007. Since 2008 the alcohol restrictions have been evaluated and reviewed annually. The reviews are good news. There is less tolerance for domestic violence and more willingness to report it. Families are purchasing more food and clothing and parents are taking more care of their own health and wellbeing and that of their children. Fitzroy Crossing is a quieter and more peaceful town for families to live in and a better place for kids to grow up in.

In Alice Springs, the Australian and Territory governments’ Alice Springs Transformation Plan is designed to meet very specific local needs. It is funding work on new roads, curbs and gutters, new power and water infrastructure and street lights. Eighty-five new houses are being built, with 18 new houses already completed and the remaining work to be completed this year. This goes with normal tenancy management arrangements where residents are expected to pay their rent and maintain their homes. In Alice Springs itself, there is now more accommodation for renal patients and people receiving other medical treatment and extra managed accommodation beds for homeless men. Health checks and family assessments are being provided to make sure that 300 Indigenous children are ready and able to attend school. And the successful Dog Control Program has been extended for a further two years.

On Cape York in Queensland, the Cape York Welfare Reform trial is a partnership between the Queensland and Australian governments, Cape York regional organisations and the four communities of Aurukun, Coen, Hope Vale and Mossman Gorge. The trial encourages people to take responsibility for community wellbeing by improving school attendance and child safety, tackling alcohol and drug abuse, gambling addiction and family violence, and improving tenancy management. Noel Pearson has driven these reforms on the cape over many years. Cape York is a strong example of the way government is working with communities across the country and supporting local design and control.

In Brisbane, Chris Sarra’s Stronger Smarter Institute at the Queensland University of Technology has delivered transformational change in Indigenous education. Chris has also led the Stronger Smarter Learning Communities project supported by the Australian government. This has brought new resources to drive improvements in schools, which our transparency measures show need help. This is giving principals and teachers across Australia the tools to improve performance in their schools—and not just the support but also the challenge to set the highest expectations and for Indigenous kids to deliver the best results. I said earlier that Chris’s creed of high expectations and his words ‘stronger smarter’ stay with me. By the very definition, government must be working to achieve stronger and smarter. Government cannot deliver personal responsibility, but modern government can create many incentives for personal behaviour and we can ensure that there are many opportunities to support good decisions. That is what we are doing now and it is helping to close the gap.

So today the government releases the third annual report on progress towards our closing the gap targets. At their launch we knew these targets were specific and ambitious. They are ambitious because we chose targets that would be difficult to achieve, and specific because we chose targets where we would know if we did not get there. The report tells us that we must keep improving investment, keep changing behaviours and keep working together with respect if we are to meet the targets to close the gap.

Here is what we know. We can be confident of meeting two of the six targets: to halve the gap in infant mortality rates for Indigenous children under five by 2018 and to ensure access to early childhood education for all Indigenous four-year-olds in remote communities by 2013. We should be confident that these two targets are on track.

We see improvement in three of the six targets and with faster improvement over time we believe that these can be reached: to halve the gap in reading, writing and numeracy achievements for children by 2018; to halve the gap for Indigenous students in year 12 or equivalent attainment rates by 2020; and to halve the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians by 2018.

The final target is the most challenging of all: closing the life-expectancy gap within a generation—that is, by 2031. This means the life expectancy of Indigenous men will need to increase by over 20 years and the life expectancy of Indigenous women will need to increase by over 16 years by 2031. This is a 30-year target. No-one thinks it can be achieved sooner. Indeed it will be extremely challenging.

I know we could never say mission accomplished three years into a 30-year process. But the message of this report is clear. Together, we can do this. Together, we have a plan for progress. We do see change for the better. And we know where we want change to continue. This is the power of Closing the Gap. We do not have a plan to do everything. Such plans rarely succeed. We do have a plan to meet six targets. Together, we can do this. With this evidence of where we have more work to do comes a responsibility to do more work now.

Closing the Gap is built on measuring improvement. Measurement needs to improve as well—so we will always know what works. For preschool access we use a new Australian Bureau of Statistics survey. For literacy and numeracy we use NAPLAN, which is also annual. It is a national dataset which is rich and rigorous. But our mortality, life expectancy, year 12 attainment and employment targets are based on the census, which happens every five years. So we need other ways to measure improvement between the censuses. And the census itself has not always reached Indigenous people or identified them well. So some targets are particularly difficult to measure today. Extra resources for the Australian Bureau of Statistics and for the states are making a difference. This year’s census will tell us more about Indigenous Australians as a result. This is an area where more will be done over time.

Today, I met with leaders of the Closing the Gap coalition and I acknowledge them in the parliamentary gallery today. Thank you very much for coming. Their campaign is approaching its fifth anniversary next month. They have a lot to be proud of. The Closing the Gap coalition have been important in advocacy for Indigenous health equality—and we talked about that a little bit earlier. They have become a united voice on what should happen to improve Indigenous health. But they have emphasised to me and to government that advocacy on the outside is not enough.

The Closing the Gap coalition, with the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples, are not just arguing for action but advising on what works where, and we thank them for that. This practical effort is to ensure services fit the conditions of specific people in specific places, to work together to deliver the right investments and the right behavioural changes and to translate good policy into real progress. It is the absolute essence of Closing the Gap.

This is the work which will go on and we will do it together: clear goals, measured progress, focused on the targets, government delivering what all Australians expect and Indigenous people doing the same. Together, we can do this. With passion and perspective, we are determined to deliver, all sharing our pride in Australia’s Indigenous culture and all sharing our determination to give everyone a better life. We can close the gap.

I present a copy of Closing the Gap: Prime Minister’s report 2011. I move:

That the House take note of the report.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That so much of standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Leader of the Opposition speaking in reply to the Prime Minister’s statement for a period not exceeding 31 minutes.

Question agreed to.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the Prime Minister for her statement. I congratulate her on the passion and commitment that she brings to this issue. One concrete, specific, tangible sign that the gap might actually be closing in one respect, if not in others, is the presence in this House of the member for Hasluck, Mr Ken Wyatt, the first Indigenous member of the House of Representatives. Without in any way making a partisan political point, may I say how proud I am that it was the Liberal Party that brought this fine Australian into this chamber.

I sincerely congratulate the Prime Minister on what was a fine and heartfelt speech. I thank the government and commend the government for so many of the measures and initiatives that she outlined in that speech. I have to say, nevertheless, that there is a sense of disappointment about some aspects of the speech because, let’s face it, we are about closing the gap in life expectancy, we are about halving the gap in mortality rates and we are about ensuring access to early childhood education. We are about halving the gap in reading, writing and numeracy. We are about halving the gap in year 12 attainment rates and employment outcomes—and there was very little specific information on exactly what progress has been achieved.

I accept the Prime Minister’s point that statistics are imperfect and incomplete. It may well be that it is very difficult to get a precise read on exactly how we are going here. Nevertheless, if we are fair dinkum, I do hope that successive prime ministerial statements on this important issue will give us more concrete data about specific outcomes towards these great goals that we all support.

On this subject we have heard a lot of fine speeches in this House over the years. There have been at least a generation of fine speeches in this House on the need for progress in this area. It is great that there are fine speeches; fine speeches are a credit to their authors. But the trouble is that talk in this parliament has not much translated into change on the ground and into progress in the lives of Aboriginal people. Good intentions are essential, and every single member of this House has an abundant well of good intentions in this area, but good intentions are not enough. The challenge is to turn good intentions into better outcomes. That is the test of our good intentions: do they translate into good outcomes? The Prime Minister, to her credit, recognises this; hence the attempt to get better statistics on all of this.

I do congratulate first of all the Prime Minister’s predecessor, the former Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, for the historic apology that he made in this House at the beginning of the last parliament. It was overdue. It was heartfelt. It was a great unifying moment for our country. As part of that apology he committed this parliament to an annual statement on closing the gap, and I congratulate the current Prime Minister for continuing that commitment. I also commend the Prime Minister for her recognition that this is a shared enterprise. The failures of government do not justify the failures of individuals and, similarly, the failures of individuals can never justify governmental neglect. That is an important recognition, a very significant principle, and I am pleased that the Prime Minister acknowledged that in her speech today.

We heard about more teachers. We heard about more visits to government services. We heard about more funding for maternal health services. We heard about supported playgroups. We heard about more encouragement for students to stay at school; more mentoring; more sport. I was particular pleased to hear about greater access to Opal petrol, because this was a scheme that I had much to do with myself as health minister in the previous government. There are more police stations—again, excellent to hear that this is finally happening; stronger alcohol controls—again, excellent to hear that this is going on; more people being assisted into work—what good news. But I have to say it would have been a more encouraging statement if we had heard more about how many people, having been assisted into work, are staying in work; how many communities with new police stations have seen an actual drop in violent crime; how many alcohol programs, having been introduced, have been accompanied by a reduction in substance abuse.

I know that there are thousands of people—public servants, people working with non-government organisations, volunteers—all working with high ideals and great professionalism to improve the lot of Aboriginal people. This is extremely encouraging. It is a tribute to the great spirit of Australian society. But I fear that not much is yet being noticed by people on the ground. I wonder how much real difference in the daily lives of Aboriginal people is being brought about.

The life expectancy crisis, the crisis which has spawned the close the gap movement, is a function of the educational crisis, the employment crisis, the housing crisis, the substance crisis and, in the end, the cultural collapse which, all too sadly, afflicts so many Aboriginal communities and so many people. This is what we need to address. And if all of these are not tackled, might we not be putting bandaids over the mortal wounds?

So I want to suggest, if I may, a slightly different approach, which the government might care to think about as it considers next year’s closing the gap statement. It seems to me that the basic test of any civil society is quite simple. Do the children go to school? Do the adults go to work? Is that community substantially free of the kind of trauma that indicates gross social dysfunction? Now we all know that for Aboriginal people school attendance rates are very low. We all know that for Aboriginal people unemployment rates are very high. We all know that this is exacerbated in Indigenous communities, and the more remote the community the worse the problem invariably is. Why don’t we set targets of 100 per cent school attendance? Why don’t we set targets of 100 per cent work attendance? And why don’t we say, ‘This is going to be achieved within 12 months’? Why can’t every Aboriginal kid in Aurukun or in Coen—where it is actually happening—be going to school every day of every week? Why can’t the standard that has been achieved in Coen and the standard which is improving in Aurukun be extended right around the country? And why can’t these statistics be published on a monthly basis so we know how we are going, not just in a decade, not in half a decade, but this month, next month, this year, next year? Why don’t we know how we are going? This, I think, would be a significant improvement in the way we measure performance in this area.

Another test of civil society is the maintenance of public order. How many Indigenous communities with significant social problems are still without a proper police station and are still without sworn police in residence? We need those figures. How many Indigenous tenants are paying even a social market rate for their homes? It was good to hear from the Prime Minister today that the new tenancy agreements provide for proper rental payments. How many houses are now subject to those new rental agreements? And how many of those rental agreements are actually being lived up to in practice? These are the sorts of statistics that we need if we are to be confident that all of our good intentions, all of our programs and all of our spending is having the result that all of us want to have.

How many trauma presentations are there at the clinics in Indigenous communities? It would be good to know these figures and it would be good to know how these figures are changing over time. I do not want to pretend that this is an easy challenge that I am suggesting to the government as an alternative. When I was the minister with whole-of-government responsibility in Cape York, I made these selfsame suggestions and, because most of these statistics were in the hands of the state governments, it was difficult to get hold of them. When I was the minister with whole-of-government responsibility for the APY Lands in South Australia, again I made these suggestions and, for much the same reasons, it was hard to come by these statistics. Frankly, these statistics will start off very embarrassingly, but we should move beyond our embarrassment to progress by collecting these statistics, publishing these statistics and improving these statistics. If that is what we really want to do to close the gap, that is what should be done.

The danger in all of this is that there might be an abundance of activity but not much change. The danger is that there might be too much philosophy and not enough common sense.  Again, I stress that I say this in a spirit of bipartisanship; I do not say this in a spirit of criticism of the government. Not only did I try to get these statistics collected when I was the minister; I tried to get senior officers of the government to live in these remote communities. How can you really understand what is happening in remote communities if you do not live there?  I regret to say my challenge to the senior officers of my former departments was not met with much enthusiasm. Still, if it is worth doing, it is worth persisting.

I agree with the Prime Minister that there is a new spirit and a new partnership in Indigenous affairs. I want to thank all of the people who have contributed to this encouraging new spirit, new partnership and new pragmatism in Indigenous affairs. The Prime Minister named some of them herself: Chris Sarra; Noel Pearson, who has been such a prophetic leader not just for Aboriginal Australia but for the entire Australian community; Warren Mundine, a former president of the Australian Labor Party and someone who I wish was in this parliament, who deserves the whole nation’s thanks and gratitude for his leadership in this area; Sue Gordon; Marcia Langton; and younger people like Wesley Aird. They all deserve our thanks and congratulations.

Yes, the former Prime Minister Mr Rudd deserves our thanks and congratulations, and even his predecessor, John Howard. He may have been a late convert to this particular crusade but he was sincere and part of the new spirit, the new pragmatism and the new partnership when it comes to Indigenous affairs.

I think that the new spirit is best enshrined in Noel Pearson’s resonant phrase ‘our right to take responsibility,’ which refers of course to his desire to have Aboriginal people empowered and in charge of their lives, not be as dependent as they have been for far too long on what other people have done for them. That is the great challenge for Australian government: how do we facilitate in the days, months, years and decades to come what Noel Pearson calls ‘our right to take responsibility?’

When the former Prime Minister Mr Rudd apologised on behalf of all Australians in this House, he said something which I think deserves to echo around this chamber again and again until this task which we are discussing today is complete:

…  unless the great symbolism of reconciliation is accompanied by an even greater substance, it is little more than a clanging gong.

I would suggest that there is nothing that the former Prime Minister has said which is truer or more significant than this.

I want to suggest to the government in conclusion one final practical step that could be taken to convert the great symbolism of reconciliation into an even greater substance, and that is to tackle the problem of the Queensland Wild Rivers Act.  The Prime Minister paid very appropriate tribute to Noel Pearson in the course of her speech. As I said a moment ago, I doubt Australia has had a better or more inspirational leader over the last decade than Noel Pearson. There is almost nothing that Noel Pearson is keener to do than to overturn the impact of the Queensland wild rivers legislation on his people in Cape York. In the eyes of Noel Pearson, this reverses the decade-long struggle for land rights. Having won real control over their land, it has been taken away in the name of environmental purity.

I do not want to smash up the Queensland legislation altogether. That is not my intention. All I am seeking to do with the private member’s bill currently before the House is to ensure that it only applies to Aboriginal land where the relevant Aboriginal owners consent for its application. It is a very modest and very moderate bill that seeks to give back to the Aboriginal people of Cape York and elsewhere what should be their birthright, what should be their native entitlement to empowerment in their lives by using their land. That is what my legislation seeks to do.

I accept that it is very difficult for the government to support legislation which will impact on the work of the Queensland government. But I do think it would be a great and fitting sign of good faith on the part of our Prime Minister if she at least prepared to entertain change on this issue. As I said at the start, there have been many fine speeches in this House on this subject—many heartfelt utterances, much depth of passion and great sincerity. But let us translate that into the very best that we can do for Aboriginal people in our place in our time. That is why I think the wild rivers legislation should be revisited. I think that it would be a good test of the real quality and the real commitment of this parliament if we could find it in our hearts to pass this particular bill. Thanks very much.

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To enable further debate to take place in the Main Committee on Closing the Gap: Prime Minister’s report 2011, I move:

That the House take note of the document.

Debate (on motion by Mr Pyne) adjourned.