Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Regional Enterprise Development Institute, otherwise known as REDI, are a service and jobs provider to the Indigenous communities in western New South Wales, with a proud 25-year history. They work and they have worked diligently to close the gap for the people that they represent in western New South Wales, sometimes quite innovatively. They have been very successful in their shearing program, teaching younger Indigenous men and women skills for the shearing industry and the wool harvesting industry, so much so that young Tyron Cochrane from Goodooga beat the Kiwis in New Zealand at the Golden Shears last year—the first time since 1962. They work in hospitality, training young people through their Wilay Cafe, through their coffee cart and through their sandwich shop down in Macquarie Street in Dubbo. They work in security, even helping out the National Rugby League when teams come to Dubbo for those matches that are placed in regional areas. There's a whole range. A classic example is they took on the supermarket at Wilcannia that was ripping off the people out there. The residents of Wilcannia had a 500-kilometre roundtrip to buy their groceries; now, they have a modern, clean supermarket with fresh food and groceries at an affordable price.

During the debate around the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, the CEO, Peter Gibbs, was quite strident in his opposition. Clearly, REDI has a mindset of local solutions driven by local people, and they were not supportive of a Canberra-based group of people that they felt would not represent their issues. Mind you, 80 per cent of my electorate felt the same way, including many of the people that REDI helps. They've got about a thousand people on their books at the moment whom they're helping. Guess what shock they felt when they got a letter from the National Indigenous Australians Agency this week saying that their contract had been terminated!

All the Indigenous job programs will change next year on 1 July, and a tender process will take place. Rather than leaving REDI in position so that they could apply—whether they would be successful or not—they are terminating them at the end of October this year. If you look at the time frame, we've got October then November, then we're into the Christmas period and into the New Year. Basically, those thousand people that are relying on REDI for their work placements, the people that work in REDI and the locals in pretty well every town in western New South Wales are going to be cut off at the knees.

The issues, apparently, are minor compliance issues—not corruption, or not meeting targets, but minor compliance issues. I've been around for a long time, and I smell a rat. I feel that the Regional Enterprise Development Institute and all the people that they support are going to be victimised because of a position that they took in a democratic country where we have freedom of choice, and the Aboriginal people in that organisation decided they would rather manage their issues more locally and did not support that. They were basically voicing the concerns of the people that they represent.

I've made Minister Burney aware of this. I met with her office and members of the department today. Quite frankly, I'm not satisfied with the explanation. The people in western New South Wales are going to be outraged when this becomes public. I've very rarely seen such an act of discrimination because of someone's political views. Someone that was doing a great job, a community leader, has been cut off at the knees.