Marion Scrymgour (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak about a number of issues in my great electorate of Lingiari. Tonight I just want to quickly touch on a letter sent to me today by a young person in my electorate. Abigail is 10 years old, and she lives in Katherine. She wrote to me and spoke about the deep sense of fear in her community. Abigail wrote:

My name is Abigail and I live in Katherine, NT. I am 10 years old and I love where we live because our town has lots of lovely people and is a nice quiet town. Or so it used to be. I like playing sports, horse riding, fishing and camping. Our town is good, but I am worried about it. There have been some bad things happening that you may have never experienced and therefore do not know how scary and sad it is.

She went on to list a number of incidents that she had witnessed and experienced. The things she listed are things no young child needs to experience: rocks being thrown at them, getting broken into, being spat and sworn at, and her school being violated. It has been heartrending to receive a letter like this. It is critical for our young people to feel safe, to feel that their home is a place of security, connection and happiness, yet in many places in my electorate it is not.

All of us here in this parliament have an obligation to work to create a better future for our young people. For me, I will be standing firm and speaking out to make sure that the concerns of our young people, and particularly young people like Abigail, at 10 years old, are heard and actioned. As Abigail has said, we need action. We need systemic action. I wrote to Abigail and explained to her that I would take this letter to me in my work. I will raise it with ministers in the federal government. I've had a conversation and I have sent a letter on to the Northern Territory Chief Minister, who said she will look at it and make some change.

What I also want to say to Abigail is that the issues we face have been many centuries in the making. There is much work we need to do to address them. We need more housing, we need better services, we need to get people into jobs, we need to lift people out of poverty and we need to stop the neglect of our young people. But there are things—and I've spoken to the Chief Minister today—that we need to put in place, including tighter alcohol restrictions and extra resourcing for our frontline agencies like the police, youth services organisations, schools and healthcare workers. We need to create communities that are prosperous and safe, and we need our young people to be in schools, not prison. We need our young people to feel safe when they go home. We need the scourge of alcohol to start declining, not increasing.

I was happy to be sitting in a meeting with a number of organisations with the federal Attorney-General to talk about introducing justice reinvestment, a program to coordinate service delivery and reduce the levels of crime. I'm also doing substantial work with the Katherine High School, with the school principal, and with cultural leader and traditional owner May Rosas. That school is showing that they are providing a very strong framework for justice reinvestment. It is great to see the federal government investing in schools through Minister Clare. We are rebuilding our remote jobs program and investing significantly in housing.

These federal programs will make a difference, but I hear every day from young people in our communities who are hurting and are frightened like Abigail. I say to Abigail and all the young people in Lingiari: thank you for standing up and having your voices heard. It is so important for members of parliament to listen to young people and to represent their views. I've told Abigail my job is to come here and represent her views and the concerns of Lingiari, and that's exactly what I will do.