Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands across my large electorate of Indi, the Waywurru, Dhudhuroa, Bangerang and Taungurung peoples. I honour the resilience, wisdom, scientific knowledge, stories and art of the world's longest surviving culture.

It's always an honour to speak in this place as the representative of my communities. But today it's a particular honour to speak on this very important Close the gap report. It's the 12th such report and it highlights that from here the focus will shift to a much stronger partnership between government and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This is important and it is right. The report tells us that the gap in life expectancy has not narrowed and the target of achieving this by 2031 is not on track, so a new approach is needed. But we must be cognisant always that life expectancy is determined not simply by the presence or absence of disease but by the social determinants of health, such as education, housing, employment and racism, which are estimated to be responsible for at least 34 per cent of the health gap.

My aim today is to bring to the House some voices of the Aboriginal people from Indi who spoke to me of closing the gap and what it means for them, and who told me what is working in their communities where they are determining programs and listening carefully to what their families are asking for. I want to be clear that there's no single Indigenous voice I can claim to represent in Indi. I speak from a position of humility, as someone who is here to listen and to learn. I do so too as a person of optimism and hope because I know the strong proud culture of Aboriginal people holds the keys to closing the gap, provided our system, laws, and attitudes are enabling rather than disabling of self-determination.

Today I will speak about the work done on the ground in Indi to close the gap. I will share what I heard about the health targets and touch on aspects which local people tell me can bring better outcomes. Firstly, I want to thank the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups in Indi, who have been so generous with their time and reached out to me as their representative since I was elected last May. I have benefited from sharing meals together; attending flag-raising ceremonies; touring health services and kindergartens, returned soldier events; and having a yarn with individuals. This is generous, because I recognise that many Indigenous people have great distrust and cynicism about government. As their representative in this place, a place that has historically contributed to many problems they deal with daily, I acknowledge how difficult it is to trust government, any government, including representatives such as myself. Trust, rightly, is hard earned when the history of dispossession, tragedy, and pain is so recent and recurring. I thank those who have worked with me and my office so far. I look forward to deepening my engagement with Indi's Indigenous communities throughout my term.

There are community groups and services doing powerful work all across the electorate of Indi, including the Albury Wodonga Aboriginal Health Service, Mungabareena Aboriginal Co-op in Wodonga, Gadhaba Local Indigenous Network in Mansfield, the Dirrawarra Indigenous Network in Wangaratta, the Wodonga Aboriginal Network and the First Nations Senior Advisory Group. They do diverse work, from delivering health services to supporting youth networks, organising NAIDOC Week celebrations, establishing gathering places in community and consulting with the Victorian government on implementing their 10-year Aboriginal education strategy known as Marrung.

In October 2019, I was a guest of the Wodonga Aboriginal Network and received a tour of Burraja, an Indigenous cultural and environmental discovery centre located on Gateway Island in Wodonga. I had a walk through the new native garden. Burraja is an important site for the local Aboriginal community and I was honoured to attend. The generosity in sharing culture and stories was appreciated and I learnt so much of the strong people who lived along the river that we now call the Murray. I leaned so much of the strong communities of Aboriginal people who still live there.

As part of preparing this speech I spoke with many of these organisations and they have told me of three key concerns. First, for many, Closing the Gap is distant and symbolic from their everyday activities. The targets are seen by service delivery organisations as a responsibility imposed on them but for which they receive inadequate support in meeting. As one local woman told me: they are doing it to us, not with us.

Second, there's concern the aggregate statistics of Closing the Gap are not showing the full picture. Victoria doesn't track two of the seven targets. Furthermore, as one outreach organisation told me, many Indigenous people remain reluctant to identify as Indigenous in the census or to local services and this holds back the outreachability of many services, as well as limiting the representative accuracy of the data for the five remaining categories. Finally, many recognise the current approach is not working and we do—and they do—very much support a refresh. There's also a wariness that governments have promised collaboration in the past and rarely, if ever, delivered on true partnership.

My consultation with local Indigenous groups revealed how important it is to ground national statistics with local experience. The Closing the Gap report shows that Victoria is on track for early childhood education, with Victoria achieving full enrolment for Indigenous children in 2018. When I asked local Indigenous service organisations about this achievement, they said the reality is a little more complicated than the statistics suggest. They say that Indigenous childcare providers simply do not exist at the density required to ensure Indigenous people can access culturally safe care in their communities. Costs are still prohibitive for many families. While state-run programs, such as Koorie Kids Shine, are doing good work, it remains the case that services on the ground are simply spread too thin.

In relation to other Closing the Gap targets, neither life expectancy nor childhood mortality are tracked or measured in Victoria. Because of this, the aggregate figures provide no quantifiable insight into the progress that's being made locally. As one exasperated local Indigenous woman told my office, 'How can you track it if you don't have it?'

At a local level, Indigenous health organisations tell me that improvements are being made in infant mortality, thanks to locally led Aboriginal antenatal care programs and an increased rollout of father-inclusive models of pregnancy care. This is fantastic news and a real testament to these organisations. The 2016-17 Victorian Maternal and child health service annual report shows that north-eastern Victoria has the highest attendance rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children for their 12-month, 18-month, two-year and three-and-a-half-year health checks. The work of many local Indigenous organisations has contributed to these positive outcomes.

The programs of AWAHS have been so successful in Wodonga that the City of Wangaratta approached them to bring a maternal child health program to their town. Sadly, though, AWAHS have neither the capacity nor the funding to carry that out.

The chair of AWAHS, Craig Taylor, tells me this is just one manifestation of sector-wide issues with funding uncertainty:

The issue we face is ongoing secure funding to keep these programs going. If we want to continue to close the gap and create generational health change then we need a secure stream of recurrent funding above and beyond what is currently in place. Being funded on the whim of a political cycle is not supporting the health and wellbeing of our next generation of Aboriginal people.

This is just one local story, but our local organisations and policymakers both need secure funding to generate reliable hard data. Without it, we can't know what's working on a granular level and why.

What we do know, however, is that closing the gap is bigger than the targets set out in this report. At its core it's about a broader inclusion which seeks to remedy the effects of past injustices. The gap exists because long-term injustice has created social, economic and health disparities for Indigenous peoples.

The Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, or VACCHO, states that closing the gap must aspire to creating a future:

… where families and communities thrive and live long lives and where systems advance their inherent right to self-determination.

Self-determination needs to be the foundation on which stable and steady progress can be made towards closing the gap.

Genuine recognition of Aboriginal peoples and their history and culture will underpin true self-determination. In Victoria the treaty process to recognise Indigenous Victorians is an important first step. The Prime Minister himself recognised at the opening of the 46th Parliament the intrinsic need for recognition of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and committed to recognising Indigenous Australians in the Constitution.

In conclusion, I am honoured to represent diverse and proud Indigenous communities in my electorate and I commit to doing all I can to listen and learn from them as they determine a future that brings equality and equity in health outcomes.

Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last Sunday evening I sat down with my three teenage children and watched the Adam Goodes documentary, The Australian Dream. The documentary deconstructs racism, racial politics and discriminatory treatment of Adam Goodes throughout his AFL career and of many other Aboriginal players. It's not easy to watch, but I think it needs to be seen by everyone. As it ended, my family and I sat there in disbelief. How could one of our greatest Australian sportsmen be treated so abhorrently by football fans, media commentators, anonymous trolls online and many in the public? As a former athlete I know it's hard enough maintaining your fitness and preparation for competition, let alone dealing with disgusting racist taunts and vilification for so long. To every person out there: imagine being booed every time you go to work or play sport for your local team, all because of what you look like. Sadly, the Adam Goodes story is not unusual for Aboriginal people living in Australia, and we should be ashamed of that.

Only last week, social media was flooded with support for a young nine year old Aboriginal boy, Quaden Bayles. He has a dwarfism and was being relentlessly bullied. His mother, Yarraka Bayles, posted a video on Facebook of Quaden crying and threatening to harm himself after yet another bullying attack by children at his school in Brisbane. In the video, Yarraka said that many people didn't understand how Quaden's treatment was a double-edged sword, by being both Aboriginal and living with a disability. The heartbreaking video has now gone viral and on Saturday young Quaden led out the NRL All Stars onto the field for the All Stars match, receiving support from celebrities around Australia and internationally. These included Hugh Jackman, Piers Morgan and American comedian Brad Williams. But how did we get to this? How, as a society, do we need such a tearful video and such extremes for us all to stop in our tracks and actually take notice?

Racial vilification is not okay, and neither is the conscious or unconscious discrimination against Aboriginal people in our country. This treatment infiltrates and erodes every aspect of life, which is demonstrated through the annual Closing the Gap scorecard. That was delivered in the last sitting week and it paints a dire picture. Aboriginal children are still far behind non-Indigenous children in literacy, numeracy and writing skills. In its key findings, the report shows that only two out of seven outcomes are on track: the early education and year 12 attainments. The outcomes that weren't on track included child mortality, literacy, numeracy, employment, school attendance and life expectancy, and that is just the most shocking one of all.

It's hard to believe that this is the 12th year that the report has been tabled in parliament, and yet the outcomes are not improving. Prime Minister Scott Morrison conceded that the outcomes for closing the gap should come from someone within the Indigenous community rather than from a top-down, government-knows-best approach. I completely agree.

The outcomes are disappointing, but I do believe there is hope. Last week I ran around Lake Burley Griffin here in Canberra with the Indigenous Marathon Foundation. It sponsors Indigenous runners and it's a health promotion charity that uses running to celebrate Indigenous resilience and achievements to create inspirational Indigenous leaders. I'd like to thank Rob de Castella, who established the Indigenous Marathon Project many years ago. This first lead to four Indigenous Australians making history by running in the world's biggest marathon, the New York City Marathon.

Since its creation, the project has had 86 graduates finish a major international marathon, including the New York, Boston, London, Paris and Berlin marathons. It's programs like this, which celebrate Indigenous achievement and positive outcomes, that we should be promoting and supporting. Ironically, it uses sport to encourage positive messages—the very same arena where it was not afforded to Adam Goodes during his AFL career. 2020 is the year to stand up against racism and for knowing that we need to do better. It falls on everyone of us to take responsibility and to do more. Thank you.

Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I begin my remarks by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which our parliament sits, the Ngunawal and Ngambri people. I also acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which my electorate of Macnamara is based, the Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin nation. I pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging, and indeed I pay my respects to all Indigenous Australians.

It is a profound honour to be an elected member of the Australian parliament, which meets on land which has always been and always will be Aboriginal land. This parliament has spoken a lot about Indigenous affairs but has not listened enough to Indigenous Australians. I particularly want to acknowledge the contributions that have been made since the Closing the Gap statements were made and the responses by the Minister for Indigenous Australians, the member for Hasluck, and by the member for Barton.

For the first time in our nation's history we have an Indigenous Minister for Indigenous Australians, and an Indigenous shadow minister for Indigenous Australians. It should not have taken until 2019 for that to become the case, but it is nevertheless a good thing. I won't praise the current Prime Minister much in my time in this parliament, but I commend him for appointing the member for Hasluck to be the Minister for Indigenous Australians. I hope he listens to the member for Hasluck more often when it comes to Indigenous policy. I also want to acknowledge the contributions in the other place that Senator Dodson and Senator McCarthy on our side and Senator Lambie on the crossbench have made to this parliament.

One of the most meaningful events I attended during the past election campaign as a candidate was not held in my electorate. It was 6 December 2018 and I joined hundreds at Flagstaff Gardens to go on a very special march. It had been organised by Jewish and Indigenous communities in Melbourne to honour a man called William Cooper, whom the electorate of Cooper has been named after. Eighty years earlier to the day, just weeks after the Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass in which over 90 Jewish people were murdered in a brutal pogrom in Nazi, William Cooper went on a march on his own. An Indigenous man led the world's first and possibly only private protest against Hitler's and the Nazi's treatment of Jews. He marched on the German consulate in Melbourne and attempted to deliver them a letter on behalf of the Australian Aborigines League condemning the atrocities that they were committing. I marched proudly that day, 80 years later, with William Cooper's grandson Alfred Turner, better known as Uncle Boydy. At a time when Australian Aboriginals didn't even have the right to vote in their own country, an Aboriginal man stood up for the Jewish people—including my grandmother who had left Germany only a week earlier in the darkest hour.

I am proud to be a Jewish member of parliament and I stand here to restate that it is not only my desire to advance meaningful reconciliations as a Jewish Australian; it is my duty. In the years since William Cooper marched, Jewish and Indigenous Australians have continued to share a powerful and compelling connection throughout our nation's history, from Eddie Mabo's senior counsel, the late, great, humans rights lawyer Ron Castan, to a man who has been co-chair of many of government's councils on Indigenous reforms, Mark Leibler AC. I also acknowledge the member for Berowra, who together with Senator Dodson, co-chaired this parliament's Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

A number of fine Jewish Australians have tried to fulfil this duty to repay William Cooper's courage and bravery in the pursuit of justice. A year before William Cooper marched on the German consulate for the Jewish people he wrote a letter about the plight of his own people to then Prime Minister Joe Lyons. He had a very simple request: 'Give us a voice in our own affairs.' Eighty years after that letter that William Cooper wrote, the Uluru Statement from the Heart was delivered to then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, with much the same request. Their request was also very simple, but it was practical and meaningful. It was a practical and meaningful proposal to break out of the seemingly endless cycle of our failures to achieve real reconciliation, constitutional recognition and improvements in the living standards of Australia's Indigenous people. They asked the government to advance a referendum to create a First Nations Voice to the parliament, enshrined in the constitution to give them a real say in their own affairs. Their scope and function would be within the control of the parliament. It was nothing like a third chamber, yet that was the dishonest reason that then Prime Minister Turnbull give for rejecting it out of hand. It isn't good enough and it will be a stain on our history.

We have heard in these responses to the Closing the gap report that we have failed as a nation in almost every target that we have set. We need to break that cycle. We need to be prepared to talk about the things we have failed and the things that we need to address. The answer doesn't lie in changing our targets; it lies in changing what we have done—things like treaty and things like truth-telling about what was done to our First Australians, the world's oldest civilisation, who were colonised and against whom great atrocities were committed. Maybe we even need to be prepared to talk about how and when we celebrate our national day and who we are as Australians, but, first and foremost, we need to advance this nation through the difficult and meaningful process of a referendum to create the First Nations Voice. We need to be prepared to make the case that Indigenous Australians should have a real say in their own matters and the policies that affect them. We need to be brave and we need to be bold. We need to stand tall for Indigenous Australians and fight for their justice, just as William Cooper stood for Jewish people and stood for my grandmother 80 years ago.

I am ready and the Australian Labor Party is ready. It is time to recognise the 65,000 years of history of our great nation. It is time to build a more inclusive future. It is time to be ambitious for the idea of what it is to be Australian. It is time that we undertook a process of including our First Nations people in the very fabric of our nation. It is time that we did better in closing the gap.

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Cities and Urban Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to be able to make a brief contribution taking note of this important document. I'm particularly pleased to have been in the chamber for the contribution of my friend the member for Macnamara—a beautiful and important contribution to such an important debate. Before beginning my remarks on the report, I want to acknowledge that I am making them on the land of the Ngunawal and Ngambri people and make clear my view that this land and all of the land that is Australia always will be Aboriginal land.

This is an important debate. As we deal with it every year in the parliament as we have done since that wonderful occasion, that promise that was the apology, we are required to confront some hard truths. This report does again put before us some hard truths. It is a prompt for greater truth-telling and a prompt to look beyond the numbers in the report and the language of its foreword, the language of the Prime Minister—which I will turn to in a moment—to think about our substantive obligations and how much we have failed them.

In thinking about closing the gap, we think about the targets and we think about the data but we also must think about what it means for us as a nation. The concluding remarks of the member for Macnamara encouraged us—hopefully, those on the government side as well as on our side of this House—to think about completing our work in responding to the Uluru statement, in enshrining an Indigenous voice to the parliament and in completing our Constitution.

In making this contribution on taking note and making some remarks on the detail of the report, let's not forget about that. This report and this debate are drivers towards truth-telling in this place and accountability to the Australians who send us to this place. They demand that we do better, and First Nations people in particular are entitled to demand that we do better on the metrics that are before us and on the broader commitments that we have failed to realise, to our enduring shame.

I am concerned by the tone of some of the remarks of the Prime Minister. I note that this is a report that has been broadly characterised by bipartisan engagement. That's something we would like to continue, but we will never stand for bipartisanship at any price. We will never ignore the half-billion dollars cut from Indigenous programs at the start of this government. So it's fine for him to speak of a new era and of true partnership, but this can't be spin, because we're not going to have true partnership without a constitutionally enshrined voice, without listening to the views of First Nations people on how a fundamental democratic arrangement should be framed. That's just more marketing and falls so far short of the aspirations of, I believe, all Australians as to be risible.

So I turn to the report itself. We note that across the journey since 2008 progress against the targets has been mixed at best. We have seen some progress and we should acknowledge that. We can see signs of improvement now in key areas, but we can also see, more particularly and more concerningly, areas of great concern that require more work and more action, particularly from those of us in this place, particularly on the government's side, which has the capacity to deliver real change.

I do note some important notes in the report that go beyond the targets—particularly the challenge of better defining our goals through better data-sharing arrangements with the states and territories. This is important, but it can't be a distraction. It can't be a distraction from recognising that we are missing halving the gap in child mortality rates by 2018. We have seen some progress in maternal and child health, but improvements in mortality rates have not been strong enough to meet the target. The target to halve the gap for Indigenous children in reading, writing and numeracy within a decade passed two years ago. It has driven some improvements in these foundational skills, but considerably more progress is required if we are to meet our aspirations, if we are to secure equality—recognising, as I think all of us in this place do, how fundamental this is not just to success in learning but to success in life. There has not been improvement in school attendance rates, despite this being a particular feature of the approach driven by former Prime Minister Abbott. We have failed to close the gap there.

The national Indigenous employment rate has remained stable against the target to halve the gap in employment outcomes. That's just not good enough. As the member for Maribyrnong highlighted very effectively in the previous parliament and the parliament before that, there isn't a justice target. I'll touch briefly on that. That is another failing of Australian public policy, because it is a huge challenge.

It is encouraging that two of the continuing targets are on track. One is the target to have 95 per cent of Indigenous four-year-olds enrolled in early childhood education by 2025. That is heartening and is important as a foundation on which we can and we must build. I note in this place today, as I have done on so many occasions, the wonderful contribution of Lisa Thorpe and the Bubup Wilam Aboriginal early childhood centre, in Thomastown in my electorate. I'm inspired by the work they do every day and by the confident, strong Indigenous young people I meet so regularly. I look forward to getting back there soon and to hearing more about what they are doing and how we can work harder to support their work not just as an early childhood centre but as a thriving hub for Indigenous Australians in Melbourne's northern suburbs. I note also that the target to halve the gap for Indigenous Australians aged 20 to 24 in year 12 attainment or equivalent by 2020 is on track. That's two. We recognise those achievements, those collective efforts that are bearing fruit, but they stand in stark contrast to how far we have to come across the board. This progress does show us what is possible if we have the political will and the preparedness to listen and to match that listening with investment.

I am very sad to say that the target to close the gap in life expectancy by 2031 is not on track. It's insufficient to say that isn't good enough, because there is really no more fundamental marker of how we are and who we are as a society than that we are failing so fundamentally on this marker.

In so many areas we can, should and must do better. I mentioned earlier the absence of a justice target. The rates of First Nations people in custody are way too high. First Nation adults make up just two per cent of the population but they make up more than a quarter of Australia's prison population. It often has been said of Indigenous young men that they are more likely to end up in jail than studying in a university, and that is a terrible indictment of our society. Suicide of course, particularly among young Indigenous people, is shockingly high. That, I think, is recognised by all of us as a national tragedy, as something we need to redouble and refocus our efforts on. The number of First Nations children in out-of-home care is also a national shame. We have to acknowledge that that is a consequence of policy failure of governments from both sides of politics. It's another area where we must do so much better, or we will be condemning too many of our children to a life without real choice, to a life without real agency.

It's on that note that I conclude my remarks, because what we want for all of our First Nations people, and particularly First Nations young people, is real agency and equality in every aspect of their lives. That won't happen without recognising them as they should be recognised, as they have asked to be recognised, with a voice in this place and in our Constitution. Thank you.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Scullin for his excellent contribution.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Each successive Closing the Gap report has shown that we are falling short of closing the gap. For those that are not aware, I am the longest-serving minister for First Australians in the history of the Queensland parliament, and I wasn't there for all that long. They don't last very long.

I have often wondered why our administration of the First Australians has been so absolutely appallingly bad. There is a recent book by Professor Sarah Maddison—Deputy Dean of Political Science and History at Melbourne University, one of the four sandstone universities, and a highly distinguished academic—The Colonial Fantasy: Why White Australia Can't Solve Black Problems. I have an enviable reputation for enormous success in that portfolio in Queensland. Everyone watched 60 Minutes in those days; its watching audience was unbelievable. We had five 60 Minutes in that period of time. In those last three years, we were effectively hitting our straps. I was a super hero.

Before everyone starts thinking I'm getting carried away with myself, I should say that I deserve none of that credit—none whatsoever. When I read this book, I thought, 'Well, why were we so successful?' It was because every single decision I made, it wasn't actually me that made it. I said, 'Let's go to the blackfellas and ask them.' There is a problem, because really you have to be one of those people to be able to get them to communicate with you. I see it again and again. People say, 'Oh, they didn't say anything. They didn't get back to us.' 'But you're not our race. You are a foreign'—I use the word 'invader' with question marks, but you're foreign in every way to these people. I'm not. When I got the ministry and I was asked, 'What are your qualifications for this job?' I said, 'Quite frankly, it's because I've played rugby league all of my life.' It's pretty hard to feel superior to someone after he's buried your face down nine times on a football oval. I think it was a good call.

So let me be very specific. I asked Greg Wallace, who has two of those 60 Minutes programs. It was the first time 60 Minutes had ever done a repeat program, because of the enormous positive sentiment that swept out of his first interview. Greg is an extremely quiet person. He is one of the Rosendales in North Queensland. The vast bulk of Australia's population of First Australians is in North Queensland. The Rosendales are the most prominent family. Lester Rosendale is a very close friend of mine. He was on the Napranum Aboriginal Shire Council. He was elected as one of the two from Queensland every year—for nearly 20 years, I think. So They're the dominant family. Most of you will know Noel Pearson's name. He is a Rosendale, the first Aboriginal person in Australian history elected to parliament—Eric Deeral—was a Rosendale.

This Greg Wallace I'm talking about is a Rosendale. I could go on. But let me just say that Greg Wallace was No. 2 on our Senate list. When Greg did the interview, being announced as a Senate candidate, he said: 'When I was CEO at Napranum, all CEOs in Cape York were black. Now all the CEOs are white. You've gone backwards. When I was CEO at Napranum, we had 36,000 head of cattle in Cape York. Now we have none. When I was CEO at Napranum, we had the rights to timber, to water and to quarrying. Now we have no rights to timber, no rights to water and no rights to quarrying. When I was CEO at Napranum, we had 2,000 jobs in Work for the Dole in Cape York. Now we have none. When I was CEO at Napranum, 700 of those Work for the Dole jobs were in house building. Now the jobs don't exist and the house building program doesn't exist. When I was CEO at Napranum, We had market gardens on every community. Now there are no market gardens. When I was CEO at Napranum, whitefellas were allowed to drink and blackfellas were allowed to drink. Now we have racial laws and only whitefellas are allowed to drink.

He said that the net result of that, of course, was that they couldn't get jobs. What he meant by that was that if they got a conviction they couldn't get a blue card, and if they couldn't get a blue card in Queensland they couldn't get a government job. My son, who is a state member of parliament, rants and rails about the blue cards all the time. In one community—one of the biggest First Australians communities in Australia—every single adult woman cannot get a blue card except for two. About 2,000 or 3,000 people live in that community and all of them have criminal charges. Did anyone stop drinking in the United States when they banned alcohol? No! All the politicians who voted against it were down at the speakeasies, and that's a matter of public record.

The government has imposed a prohibition, but the net result of that is that happening in all community areas in Queensland—and about 25,000 people living community areas—so that's for all of our 'proper' black population. I claim to be a blackfella, but I'm not a proper blackfella. There are leading Australian spokesmen who I would not consider to be blackfellas in the sense that I mean it.

Now, he did not mention that you could get a title deed, that you could actually own your own piece of land. In North Queensland, where most of the First Australian population of Australia are concentrated, we have 3½ million hectares of land. Or, more accurately, we had—past tense—3½ million hectares of land. By the simple device of walking in, getting a form at the council chambers, filling it out accurately with a description of the land that you wanted, handing it in and putting in $20, if the community council did not object over a two-month period, then the title deed was sort of automatically issued. So at Yarrabah, you went in and filled out a form. There were two council meetings and you now owned two acres of land, which is now worth $300,000. So you've gone from being a poor old pauper-stricken blackfella who isn't worth two bob to being worth $300,000.

Well, who was poorer? Was anyone in Australia poorer because of that two acres—which was of their own land which has never, ever been taken off them? That was thanks to the missionaries, I might add. The much maligned Christians are the only reason that any of us still exist; we'd have all been murdered or raped out of existence. That is a matter of public record, and it's not very pretty to say that but the fact is that it's true. But we were Christians who came to this country, and we believed in Christianity. We said, 'No one is going to do this to these people.' We protected them in the community areas and we provided market gardens for them so that they would have the nutritional requirements that they need for good health. The market gardens are gone and the nutritional requirements have gone. And I'll just mention three extremely ugly facts.

If First Australians proper—not people like me, but real fair dinkum blackfellas; and I'm not confining that to community areas, I'm saying real fair dinkum blackfellas—if we are an identifiable group, then we have the highest incarceration rates on earth. That's of any identifiable group on earth. If we are a separate and identifiable group, we have the highest stolen children rate on the earth, and the least life expectancy— (Time expired)

Debate adjourned.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 11:54