Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Health Services and Indigenous Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is important for every government to consult, just as it is for every one of us in this chamber to remember we are not here forever, but when it comes to Indigenous wellbeing we need to be doing more than consulting alone, and more, certainly, than sitting here in our public lives and seeing nothing changing. That is why yesterday's release of 'Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory' caused so much alarm, if not insult, in Central Australia. This offer by Minister Macklin to yet again consult on the Northern Territory intervention is more of the same. Minister Macklin can now be very proud that she has an entire page of links to reports under her tenure, looking at an examining the Central Australian situation. Is there a need for more reports and more consultation in the absence of action?

Mr Deputy Speaker, I put to you that it is one thing to talk about spending money but quite another to talk about changing the lot of those who are living in Central Australia. You may well be proud of every single one of these links that take you to reports written by committed authors, mostly now forgotten, but, in reality, what is changing out there? Go back two years, one month and one day, and an almost identically titled report was released promising again in not stronger futures but future directions to, yes, consult on the Northern Territory intervention. That was two years, one month and one day ago. We seem to see the word 'future' in many of these government documents because there is nothing to talk about in the present. And, of course, the past is something for which one only apologises on behalf of others.

As we look to the future with documents like this, I can see more promises to consult. How long do we have to consult about children not going to school? How long do we have to consult about people not taking up a completely reasonable job just down the road on a mine site? How long should we have to live with the watered-down, mutual obligation laws under former Minister O'Connor from 2008 when he put in the hardship clause, which said that if you had less than $5,000 in liquidity one cannot be breached. Who on earth who is facing breaching or mutual obligation, has a quick $5,000 in their bank account? No-one. It was a blanket exemption on mutual obligation. All that Indigenous Australians are asking for is some decision, some strength. It is one thing to be using the rhetoric of 'stepping up' and 'getting tough' when you are talking to people in the south, but quite another when you tiptoe around communities whispering that it is such an unfair intervention.

In reality, the only thing that has changed between these two reports is the adjectives. Even the photo shot of the minister is exactly the same. The only thing that has changed is the adjectives: back in 2009 the minister was talking about 'hurt' and 'betrayal', and then in 2011 she is talking about 'anger', 'fear' and 'distrust'. In the end, apart from the adjectives changing, the content is exactly the same. The great problem is: how can adjectives even change when nothing is happening, except an almost anthropological fixation of the Labor side of this chamber to watch the intervention and consult on it.

Yes, we as a coalition government brought it in towards the end of 2007 and, correct, we had just three months to consult. Let us accept that it could have been implemented far better.

Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You didn't talk to anyone, not even the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory.

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Health Services and Indigenous Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I accept that intervention, Madam Deputy Speaker. It could have been consulted even better. But certainly an Australian government receiving bipartisan support in November of 2007 could have started a process of consultation. But, no, like you are looking through an oven window at a rising souffle of frustration, you just sit there and measure the intervention and talk about it, but nothing has been improved. Despite everything that was promised in 2008 and 2009, in those interminable reports written by well-meaning people, there is a fundamental failure here.

Minister Macklin is quite happy to fund Noel Pearson to increase school attendance to 85 per cent. She funds him to increase school attendance but does not have the wit to take the ideas of Pearson and disseminate them anywhere else in the country. So in the rest of Central Australia we have school attendance rates that have stalled at 60 per cent and have barely changed one per cent in the following three years. The ideas are there, they can be easily disseminated, but they have not been taken up.

Deputy Speaker, I appeal to you. There have never been a lot of jobs in Central Australia. There has certainly been difficulty matching jobs to people. But with the mining explosion and the thousands of jobs appearing, there is no excuse for having remote Indigenous communities hyperendemically unemployed right next door to mine sites. There is a time when we have to match these good young people to job opportunities just down the road. The Kimberley has more jobs than it has working-age Aboriginal adults, but this government has not had the wit to put the two together for the simple reason that they find it impossible with their left-wing ideology to make someone do something if they do not feel like doing it at the time. That means you do not have to send your kids to school, you do not have to take up a job if you do not feel like it, you do not have to drink in moderation if you do not feel like it, and that is the fundamental problem with Labor's approach—they have been unable to apply mutual obligation to the challenge of Central Australia.