Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that both Commonwealth and state governments have historically shared responsibility for the delivery of services to remote Indigenous communities;

(2) condemns the government for cutting $500 million from Indigenous programs in the 2014-15 budget;

(3) notes that contrary to previous assurances by the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, there has been an impact on frontline services;

(4) acknowledges the disastrous effect these cuts will have on people living in remote Indigenous communities; and

(5) calls on the government to restore the funding, and prevent the loss of frontline services.

Last year, we saw in the Abbott government's first budget, 2014-15, cuts of some $549 million to Aboriginal funding for programs around the country. They were, in my view, consistent with other cuts we saw in that budget whereby the Abbott government targeted some of Australia's most disadvantaged people and low-income families when it came to trying to balance its budget. It was, indeed, referred to as a very unfair and unjust budget. And rightly so; we saw a backlash against it right across the country.

What was particularly concerning was that some of those cuts did indeed disadvantage further some of the people in this country who are already at a terrible disadvantage. We saw from the debate then and the report of the committee that is steering closing the gap policies around the country that we are still far short of closing the gaps on a number of targets that we have set ourselves, whether it is to do with life span, education outcomes for early childhood and later on, work and employment opportunities for Indigenous people and housing and other measures that we quite often use. To then have $549 million cut from a program where we are already not meeting the targets that we set ourselves is in my view one of the most heartless cuts I have ever seen by a government in the time that I have followed politics.

It was particularly heartless because amongst the cuts will be cuts to front-line services such as power and water to remote Indigenous communities. I know that is going to affect communities in my home state of South Australia, but I also understand it will affect even more the communities in Western Australia, where some 270-odd Indigenous communities will be directly affected and where at one stage the Premier of Western Australia had indicated that some 150 of those communities may well close down.

It is all right for the Prime Minister to say that he understands the plight of Indigenous people in this country because he spends a week in a remote community or to say that the government cannot continue to fund lifestyle choices of Australian people, but the reality is—and it appears from these cuts—that what the government is really saying is that it does not care or simply does not understand the impact that these cuts will have.

So concerned were the Indigenous people about the cuts to remote communities that they indeed took the matter to the United Nations, and only last month it was debated there. My understanding is that the Australian government was, embarrassingly, condemned by an international body for its treatment of Indigenous people here in Australia.

I understand that in my home state there has been a temporary arrangement and some funding has been provided, but the truth of the matter is that even that only came to being because the Indigenous elders met a couple of months ago in desperation and forced the government to come to the party and do the right thing. It is no good for the government to simply say that these are state or territory matters and that it can offload its responsibility onto the states and territories.

My concern is this: for those remote people, in many cases that is the place they were born. It is the place they understand, and their connection with their land is paramount in their lives. Just as importantly, when they are pushed off their land, where do they go? To the fringes and outskirts of larger communities where sometimes they are unwelcome. Even if they are welcome, the truth is they find it hard to integrate and settle down. It is much more difficult to provide them the services when they are in camps on the outskirts of the communities than if they had remained in their own communities. Inevitably, it leads to other kinds of social problems, including at times petty crime and the like, which in turn means we clog up our court systems, our jails and our police operations.

This is short-sightedness on the part of the Abbott government that in the end will cost more money than what it saves and badly affects Indigenous people across this country.

Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak at a later stage.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Makin for bringing this motion to the House. I think the electorate of Parkes possibly has, after the Northern Territory, more Aboriginal people living in it than any other. Indeed, for a rural electorate, I represent more Aboriginal people than I do farmers. It is a job that I take very seriously and with a great amount of pride. I think the greatest discrimination and injustice we have shown to our Aboriginal brothers and sisters is that of lower expectation, and what we have seen with changes to the budget and the Abbott government's philosophy of managing our Indigenous communities is an area of responsibility. Over the years, we have seen programs that have been put in place, set and forgotten. While that might benefit some of the people who manage to get a job in management, more often than not the trickle-down effect to the people that need that help the most does not get there. It is with great shame and regret that even today an Aboriginal child born in the Parkes electorate has a much lower life expectancy than a child of another background.

This government has been implementing policies that have outcomes attached to them. We are supporting Indigenous businesses and work programs in the western part of my electorate which are putting many people into work. A couple of weeks ago I was in the Pilbara in Western Australia where, at one of the mines, over 300 Aboriginal men and women are earning good money. Many of those people are the first in their family, through many generations, to have meaningful employment.

Through the indigenous schools program we are encouraging children to attend school because it is known that, without an education, inequality is very difficult to eliminate. I have now been in this place for eight years. Over that time I have seen former ministers come to my electorate, speaking in slow, measured voices so that the local people can understand. For too long we have measured our commitment to things that we are trying to do in dollars and cents, without real commitment. This government and my philosophy in particular is to take ownership, to work with the people to give them what they desperately need.

In the last 12 months we have seen funding come to my electorate for the Aboriginal health organisations which are at the cutting edge in places like Bourke, Condobolin, Coonamble, Walgett and Wellington, particularly with the drug and alcohol strategy. The funding that has gone into Moree for the refurbishment of Roy Thorne House enables rehabilitation facilities to be put in the community where they are needed. The program I would like to highlight today is the Clontarf Foundation. The coalition government, state governments and the corporate world is funding Clontarf, where young boys right throughout Australia are encouraged to stay at school. I would particularly like to mention a couple of young lads from Coonamble who are working with Leightons Construction in Sydney and are very proud to do so. The former school captain of Brewarrina is doing a fine arts degree at the University of Newcastle this year because of the work of the Clontarf Foundation. This is not an academic debate from me; this is something I take very personally. The people I represent are relying on me to deliver programs that will make a real difference to their lives, not just measuring this in dollars and cents.

Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the outset, could I recognise two constituents, Paul Myers and Sister Kerry McDermott, who have lobbied me about remote Aboriginal settlements. Each year, Sister McDermott runs a memorial for the Appin massacre close to my electorate. This morning she held a service in Minto, which my wife attended on my behalf. They have both lobbied me against the proposal in regard to remote settlements. And in contrast to the comments by Nigel Scullion, the minister, that this is an historic agreement, Western Australian Premier Barnett said that in contrast it will cause great distress. Furthermore, Reverend Sealin Garlett, chair of the Uniting Church indigenous committee, said:

This is not just a ‘lifestyle choice’—

to live in those areas—

but part of our cultural and spiritual identity.

This of course relates to the question of federal funding. In the 2013 book Spoken Here, by Mark Abley—I recommend it to you—which dealt with the disappearance of languages around the world, the author started an international survey with the example of Patrick Nudjulu, a speaker of Mati Ke. It is one of the 200 languages still spoken in this country, and only 20 of those are not on the endangered list. Yet, the government, in a budget where there is billions of dollars, decided last year to take out $9.5 million in regard to the preservation of Indigenous languages.

I heard the previous speaker talk about waste. We all know that there is waste throughout the private and public sector in this country. But one has to question priorities that would see 200 languages further threatened. I did not hear any reason as to why it was inept or incompetent and a waste of money. We see a situation in this country where on the health front babies born to Indigenous women are twice as likely to die in their first term than those born to non-Indigenous women. We have a situation where 39 per cent of Indigenous Australians aged over 55 have diabetes. And, as we all know—it has been quoted for decades but there has been a slight improvement—Aborigines have a lower life expectancy, lower that the age to which this government wants people to work until they can get the pension. Yet they can scrap hundreds of millions of dollars in the $543 million reduction last year in the health budget for Aboriginal people, including measures in regard to smoking. Despite the prevalence amongst Indigenous Australians of cardiovascular problems, I did not hear an account saying that in this massive budget, with very extensive increases in Defence expenditure, we cannot find the money to keep these services going, without there being any examples as to why they were so inefficient.

On the question of criminality and over-representation in jails, and, for that matter, over-representation in deaths in custody—

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have—the Institute of Criminology. Anyway, you are going to speak next. Ten to 17 year-old Aboriginals are 24 times more likely to be incarcerated. They are three per cent of the Australian population and yet 13 per cent of homicide deaths and 11 per cent of homicide offenders are Aboriginal. They are the latest criminal statistics. Despite the prevalence of involvement in homicide, despite the over-representation in incarceration, despite deaths in custody, and despite objections otherwise, we have a situation where amongst the decisions made in the last budget was the one to strenuously cut legal aid. These people do need representation. We do not want a system like in the United States, where people are jailed simply because they have inept or no legal representation. You cannot tell me that a significant number of people in that situation do not go there for that reason.

So we have a situation where, after these federal reductions, the Barnett government at the moment is cutting $30 million to $60 million from health services. Because of those decisions last year, and the agreement to turn this issue back to the states, we have a situation where these remote settlements are now threatened. Perhaps it is a lifestyle that many of us would not want to live in a million years. Perhaps there are some people who could benefit from it. We have a situation here where land is important to these people. If the previous speaker feels quite emotional about it, I can also testify to it. My wife is Indigenous and I feel a great involvement in these affairs locally. I have a very strong commitment. It is not good enough to say that there is waste and an ineffective trickle-down effect here. The situation is that if these schemes are so dreadful and so unjustified, I would have liked to have heard individual defences last year as to why these particular measures had to be reduced. There might be other measures that I have not quoted from the budget that there might be more reason for.

Mal Brough (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before the member for Makin leaves, I want to preface my comments by stating that I do not doubt for a moment the genuine nature of his intent and nor that of the member who has just spoken. I do very much, though, want to draw his attention first of all to the comment he made about deaths in custody. It is really important that we do not continue to permeate and repeat misconceptions. The fact is that the royal commission on deaths in custody established very early on in the piece that there were no extra numbers or an additional percentage of Indigenous deaths in custody when compared with non-Indigenous. What should have been in the report is how we stop all deaths in custody. I will just leave that there.

As far as these other issues are concerned, I want to deal specifically with the provision of services in remote communities. I dealt with this as a minister. We looked at the time as to why the Commonwealth was involved in the provision of water, sewerage, electricity and rubbish collection. We are not in any other municipality, yet we are there. No-one could find, historically, through the department how the Commonwealth became involved. It is important we understand. The best we could come up with is that you had Commonwealth members of parliament across the political spectrum over a period of time lamenting the fact that state and territory governments had not done enough to look after and provide provision of services which is their responsibility through local governments. So, bit by bit, the Commonwealth became involved. Back when I was the minister, we started this process—I am not sure whether my predecessors had or not—but I know for a fact that the member for Jagajaga, who succeeded me as the minister, continued to try to find an answer to ensure that both Commonwealth and state were not involved in an area which is and should be simple to administer. That is why there have been arrangements made with South Australia, Queensland and WA, which is underway.

I make it very clear that no-one is suggesting that communities be closed down by the Commonwealth; quite the contrary. But unfortunately the member for Makin again repeated a statement we hear all the time: this is people's land; this is their homeland. This is a very emotive term: homeland. It brings to the mind that this is where me and my family and my ancestors were all brought up, but if you go to places in the Tanami Desert you will find that these communities were established in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Why? Because they were trying to remove the trouble, the problem, out of the bigger towns such as Kununurra and push them further afield. It was not because of care, love or affection; it was to get them out of sight and out of mind. We should not run away from the cold, hard reality that that is where those communities came from.

The member opposite talks about the deplorable level of health in the Indigenous communities—putting more money back into places which do not have an economic basis, where no-one can have a job, where you say to a child, 'Go to school, get an education and maybe even go on to university, but don't ever aspire to work in this community. Don't ever aspire to have a business in this community. You won't get an apprenticeship in this community, because the land tenure doesn't allow it.' So we actually set people up for failure. I repeat this message time and time again, because, until we are honest enough as politicians who sit on both sides of this chamber to have that conversation with people and say, 'Education does not leave you to being able to be self-sufficient in your own community you choose to live in,' we are living a lie and we are denying them the rights that every other Australian has.

The most disturbing comment I have heard in this debate today was from the person who has instigated this, the member for Makin. I know he does not mean ill by these comments, but he says that the concerns are that these people—Aboriginal Australians—will move from those communities to be fringe dwellers or long-grass dwellers, that they will clog up the jails and they will clog up the court system. That aspiration, that concern which looks like an aspiration, is where we go so horribly wrong. I aspire these people to do as Noel Pearson says: be able to live and hang onto their language—it is their right and their responsibility to do so, as so many other communities in Australia do—but also to have the rights and responsibilities to fend for themselves, to protect their families and to be safe. You do not do that by shutting down a community or by funding a community that is dysfunctional and having people living in the long grass around Tennant Creek, Alice Springs or any other place. When we do that, you, the members of the Labor Party and we the members of the Liberal Party, fail. So what we should do is look at this in a far more serious faction, community by community, seek out the answers with them—they are there—and take them on the journey with us. Debates about money miss the point. This is about people: people's past and people's future.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I participate in this debate as someone from a metropolitan area, but also as someone who is proud to represent one of the largest Aboriginal populations in an urban environment in the country, in Chifley, which sits in Darug land but has become home to people of all different nations within the lands of the Darug. Whenever these types of discussions come before parliament, I will instantly want to be involved because of the fact that I represent so many but also the fact that I feel strongly about the types of issues that I believe prevent people in my area from reaching their full potential. I note here the presence of the member for Hasluck, who, along with other members, visited the area of Chifley earlier this year as the chair of the committee investigating the recognition of our first peoples in the nation's Constitution.

I want to deal with some of the things the previous speaker, the member for Fisher, touched upon, because, as much as this has an impact on, or is a focus on, remote communities, what happens is that people from other lands move into an urban setting. The issues, I feel, are bound by a common thread across a number of areas, be they education, which in some cases, if it is not strong enough, prevents people being able to exercise their economic opportunities and progress in their own way, being able to draw off a basis of skills. There are other issues as well, such as the support services that are required to help people maintain their potential.

The types of things we are concerned about are often in terms of when the Abbott government cut the IAS—the Indigenous Advancement Strategy. Suggestions were being put forward that this was being done for improvements or to cut out waste and inefficiencies—nearly half a billion in funding has been cut. If we are serious on a whole range of areas in dealing with the type of things that have prompted some of the comments that have been extended in this debate you cannot do it by sheer will alone. You need to have the resources to back it up, which is why I feel strongly when, for example, people rightly say, 'unfair, debacle, lack of consultation' as being the themes that have come out in the way that the Indigenous Advancement Strategy has been managed, and the way that the funding has been cut. You cannot do a serious job on this strategy if you are cutting the funding in the way it is being done. Critical front-line services have been held in limbo since the last budget—not this budget the last budget. There are organisations that are trying to negotiate new funding contracts more than a year since the actual strategy itself was implemented.

Withdrawing federal funding for municipal and essential services in remote communities is not only concerning for those areas. But, from my perspective, I worry about the downstream impact, particularly when 500 of the 964 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations that received funding see the way the program is being managed. A new mandatory incorporation requirement will see 56 of the successful organisations receiving more than $500,000 being required to incorporate rather than to opt to incorporate. There has been a lack of consultation and engagement with communities about the strategy as a whole.

In my area I have seen, for example, some of the biggest organisations that would have benefitted from this funding—for instance, the Butucarbin Aboriginal Corporation. It has been around for nearly 25 years, managing nearly 13,000 cases. Through a combination of IAS and funding cuts they are at risk of losing their continuation of funding. They have only been guaranteed funding for the next year, into 2016, and they have recently faced substantial cuts and threats to their services from the state government as well.

Organisations like Learning Ground, in Bidwill, also have a high proportion of young people from Aboriginal backgrounds and face their funding being cut. We have those funding cuts plus the Gonski arrangements, which would have directed higher levels of funding to my area, taking into account young Aboriginal people going into the schools there. When you see all the cuts that are happening, how do you skill people up, how do you prepare them for work, how do you prepare them for proper engagement in communities?

Where I do have economic growth that is happening within the electorate itself, and where we are working to get people involved, you cannot do these things just by wishing them to occur. They need to have support, they need to have the funding and they need to have a commitment that backs that up to ensure that people can do the best in areas like mine and in areas that are the subject of this resolution.

Ken Wyatt (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Makin for his motion. In discussions I have had with Premier Barnett; Minister Collier, the Western Australian Aboriginal affairs minister; Minister Helen Morton, the Western Australian Minister for Mental Health; and Terry Redman, the minister for regional Western Australia, all four have given me a strong commitment that there will be no closure of Aboriginal communities. There will be no closure without consultation. What they have raised with me is the concerns that I have seen over my lifetime: access to services, facilities and career pathways for children. Even when I was involved in many of the early reports that were tabled in either state or Commonwealth parliaments, the message consistently was: 'We will choose to live in certain areas, but we also accept that there are areas where governments cannot provide funding. It is our choice.' That choice is important.

But what I have found since the Hawke government is that there has been a decline in the practice of consulting on the ground and talking about what is needed. In fact, when I was in Health I worked with Shane Houston to develop a measure in Health that looked at community functioning. It was designed to be a tool that would enable Commonwealth and state agencies to go into a community and look at the programs and services that were being provided. This came off the back of my thinking in respect of an earlier inquiry by the Commonwealth Grants Commission on Indigenous expenditure and a couple of very salient points they made. They said—they made this point quite strongly—that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander funding was supplementary to mainstream government services. They went on to say that government agencies at both the state and federal levels relied on Aboriginal budgets to provide services to communities and to organisations, instead of saying, 'They are citizens of Australia; they are entitled to have access to funding.'

I have always found in agencies that, when you are planning, they say, 'What's in the Aboriginal bucket?' When I was in Health, I asked the then secretary of the department what was the representation of the Aboriginal dollars in Aboriginal health against the total health budget. I asked for a pie chart to be shown to us. That slice of the pie chart, when you considered the total Commonwealth budget for health, was as thin as a strand of somebody's hair. It was insufficient. Yet people should be accessing the range of government services. We should not talk about mainstream services; they are government services to all citizens.

I know that my four parliamentary colleagues in Western Australia are considering that issue in the context of the planning that they have in mind for the engagement with Aboriginal leaders within each of those communities, and they have given a genuine undertaking. Terry Redman, when he met with me in my office, talked about an orbit community around a central hub and how they could provide and look at job opportunities in the future. He was certainly looking at agriculture, particularly in the Pilbara and in the Kimberley, given the northern Australian strategy as a way of proceeding. But it was also the intent of CDEP and many other training programs to train people in particular skills that would give them pathways into jobs that any other Australian could walk into. Instead, what we saw was that those programs became enmeshed in, as Noel Pearson says, sitting down for the dole. The training that was supposed to come did not happen. Had it happened, communities would then have been better positioned to take care of their infrastructure. There would have been jobs.

The intent of programs and services has significant merit, but I find it fascinating when I walk into an organisation and I am being told that they meet their KPIs yet, when I get permission to walk through a community, I do not see the change that is supposed to have happened. I think all successive governments, including future ones, need to look at outcomes on the ground so that education, employment and health become the priorities and we give people choices as to where they live. But if they choose to live in a family context on country then there must also be the reciprocal understanding that they then access a hub within the orbit arrangement.

There is hope and opportunity, but I think that all members of this parliament have to set aside their positions and work collectively to achieve the changes that we need to make a difference for the next decade, because if we do not then nothing will be achieved.

Debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 13:44 to 16:00