Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Over the last 12 months Senator Jacinta Price, a proud Indigenous woman, has led calls, Prime Minister, for a royal commission into child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities, and an audit of spending on Indigenous programs. These calls are supported by many other Indigenous Australians, and as Leader of the Opposition I've offered to work with the government to implement these measures. Why is the Prime Minister refusing to take these important, practical actions to address serious issues facing Indigenous communities?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a serious question which the Leader of the Opposition raises, and every member of this House, I would hope, and every member of this parliament should certainly find child abuse abhorrent—and that's true wherever it occurs. And it doesn't occur in just one group. It doesn't occur in just one place. Tragically, it occurs on a very widespread basis, and the statistics tell us that the highest prevalence is actually within families and by people that a child will know, tragically. No-one in this place is disputing the seriousness of this issue. But what we won't be doing is agreeing to stunts which are designed to whip up outrage as if this is somehow a partisan issue.

One of the issues affecting children, of course, in Indigenous communities was the issue of the stolen generation, for which there was a royal commission. And the royal commission, which we read out into this House, story by story, occurred, and it found that there should be an apology given to the stolen generations, and that's something that almost everyone in this chamber was certainly prepared to do—everyone was prepared to do. The apology that was given to those children stolen from their homes was important because some were also put into institutions where they were abused, and that is a finding of the royal commission into institutional child abuse—something that was supported by the Gillard government, a courageous decision taken by Prime Minister Gillard, and one that was opposed by many. On that, I think of people like my friend Senator Patrick Dodson, who as a boy hid in the long grass near Katherine, watching as the welfare officers and police took away his mates. I think of Aunty Pat Anderson, one of the authors of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, who has told stories about hiding children so they didn't get taken away from their families—in many cases, tragically, something that led to abuse. (Time expired)