Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Around 19 per cent of males in the Northern Territory between the ages of four and 40 either play or participate in some way in Aussie Rules. My understanding is that that is the highest participation rate percentage of all states and territories. Nothing excites Territorians quite like Australian Rules football. It is not just a game in the north of Australia; for some it is a way of life—a great form of entertainment and a passion. For those who play it, coach it or manage it, it is a terrific form of exercise and a source of much dedication and love.

Last Saturday, on 25 March, I was very proud to be amongst the ecstatic crowd of more than 5½ thousand people watching the Northern Territory Football League’s grand final. This was played at the oval now to be known as the TIO stadium, thanks to the generosity of the corporate donation provided by TIO, the Territory Insurance Office. I just want to mention on the public record my thanks to TIO for their investment in footy in the Northern Territory—a 10-year sponsorship deal worth $1 million; $100,000 a year with five years up front. No doubt this money will go to an upgrade of the oval and its facility.

I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the Darwin Football Club, the Buffaloes, who won their first grand final since 1989 when they booted nine of the last 10 goals of the match and won by 42 points. Since arriving in Darwin in 1985, my family and I have been supporters of the Buffs, and although I offer condolences to the Saints—that is, St Mary’s—and their supporters, who put up a magnificent fight, Buffs and Saints have been old rivals, so I cannot say I am sorry they lost.

I want to acknowledge Darryl White, who was awarded the Chaney medal on Saturday; the captain of Buffaloes, David Parfitt; the coach, Ian Smith, who, if my memory serves me correctly, also coached the team when they won their last grand final, in 1989; and players like Joey Anderson, Timmy Roe, Corey Kurnoth, Ben Ah Matt and Matthew Hooker. I also want to recognise the efforts of the president, the committee, the trainers, the runners, the volunteers and the supporters. I know only too well the hard work and dedication that those people have put into this team over many years—from raising money and recruiting membership right down to providing the banner that the players ran through last Saturday. Their work and dedication often goes unnoticed, but I want to make sure it is noticed in this speech tonight. My special congratulations also have to be given to the amazingly talented Indigenous players who play Aussie rules and who played in the grand final—particularly Ephrem Tipungwuti from the Tiwi islands, who managed to score four goals in the grand final, which was a pretty mighty effort.

On Sunday I was also fortunate to get across to Bathurst Island, to the Tiwi islands AFL grand final. I had a weekend of Aussie rules, you could say. The grand final was played between Mulluwurri and Pumaralli at the Stanley Tipiloura oval. I watched what was, despite the rain and the mud, one of the most incredible games of AFL, from two of the most fiery and passionate teams. It sent the spectators into pandemonium, with streamers in team colours, frenzied shouting from the sidelines and a great day of football fun.

I want to acknowledge the people of Bathurst Island and Melville Island for being so passionate about their football and recognise the efforts of the coach, Gavan Tipiloura, in getting Pumaralli to win the flag last Saturday. Anyone who has ever attended a Tiwi islands grand final or ever watched a game of Aussie rules played by Indigenous people in the Northern Territory will already know how passionate communities are about footy and how important playing footy is for young kids. The Tiwi islands grand final is one of the most successful sporting events on the Northern Territory sporting calendar.

This leads me to talk about what I really want to mention, and that is the AFL program known as Kickstart. Anyone who has ever been to an Indigenous community anywhere in Australia would be aware of the serious problem of Indigenous truancy, getting Indigenous kids and families to see the value of education and how important it is that we work to encourage kids in communities to go to school and, more importantly, stay at school. Just take a glance at the figures in the last national report to parliament on Indigenous education and training and see the huge difference between Indigenous truancy levels and non-Indigenous truancy levels in both primary and secondary schools.

Strategies have been formulated to deal with this crisis in Indigenous education, and one of the many different strategies that have been developed to combat Indigenous truancy has been the hugely successful AFL Kickstart program. It commenced in 1997 in the Northern Territory, the Kimberley region and North Queensland. The program provides opportunities for kids to play the game and to focus on the lifetime value of education and attendance at school, and it provides forums on health and social issues.

The cornerstone of the program is school attendance and participation. This is paramount to the success of the outcomes and the benefits of the Kickstart program. It is really simple. It is a behaviour management program. The message is delivered by changing the way kids behave. If you turn up to school, you get a sticker. If you get five stickers, you might get to go to the disco. If you get 50 stickers, you might get a poster. After 100 stickers, you might get that all-important elusive football in your hand and then probably a jumper and a backpack. It is based on providing goods to kids with an AFL theme, provided their participation in the program is matched by attendance and participation at school. It is promoted by high-profile Indigenous AFL heroes like Michael Long, Andrew McLeod and Darryl White.

In 2000, research conducted by the Curtin Indigenous Research Centre discovered that the AFL Kickstart program actually increased self-esteem and confidence, community cohesion and sense of purpose, individual wellbeing and awareness of healthy lifestyle issues and, of course, school attendance and academic achievement. I have seen it with my own eyes at Galiwinku on Elcho Island, where, once the Kickstart program was introduced into that community, the school attendance almost doubled, to the point where the school was bursting at the seams, needing new classrooms, refurbishment, extra teachers and houses for those teachers. So it works. I have seen this program actually deliver outcomes. The research also proved that not only did the program increase positive aspects in the community; it decreased community level vandalism, alcohol and substance abuse and antisocial behaviour.

You may be aware that in many communities throughout the Northern Territory young people have limited access to sporting and recreational facilities, due to the sheer remoteness of their community as well as a lack of personnel with the skills and confidence to deliver such programs. But all around the Territory, from Yuendumu in the Western Desert of Central Australia, to Yirrkala in Arnhem Land—my old home—and to communities in the Barkly region and on the Tiwi islands, Indigenous boys and girls are being exposed to regular healthy lifestyle opportunities through the AFL Kickstart program. This is not just about footy. This is also a vehicle that is bringing Indigenous kids in remote areas back to school. It provides an opportunity to pass on healthy lifestyle messages to a captive audience—important messages about self-esteem, nutrition, substance abuse and family wellbeing.

The AFLNT has four development managers in regional locations to implement this program. The AFLNT is able to reach over 20 remote communities annually, providing more than 100 visits each year. Since 2002 they have provided clinics in remote areas for over 12,000 children, with 2,500 regularly participating in the AFL. Gone are the days of waving the flag with one-off visits which served little purpose. The AFLNT is serious about providing the necessary support and training for local people, particularly Indigenous youth, so that each community becomes self-sustainable in the long term.

This is a program about partnership—a major sporting body and Indigenous communities walking side by side with government bodies and business. None of this activity would be possible without the tremendous backing of our corporate and government partners, and I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the energy and commitment of one of the major corporate supporters, Thiess. Thiess is one of Australia’s leading engineering and service providers and is currently involved in working on Northern Territory projects such as the Darwin LNG tank and the Darwin LNG marine.

Since 2004 they have been the major corporate partner of the AFL Kickstart program. Importantly, Thiess are committed to making a positive difference in the communities in which they operate. In addition to their ongoing support of 32 AFL junior teams in the Top End, 2006 will see Thiess become actively involved in AFL Kickstart healthy lifestyle carnivals in regional centres. I felt quite privileged when Mr Phil Kesby from Thiess’s head office in Queensland took up the invitation to travel with us on Sunday to Bathurst Island and witness and be part of the Tiwi Islands grand final because I think he was able to see first-hand exactly where the company’s money is going and to see the enormous benefit it is in those communities.

As I said, the game or the program would not survive without partnerships. Since 2002, when the program first started, over 10,000 Indigenous boys and girls have participated in AFL school clinics in the Northern Territory. Over 5,000 Indigenous boys and girls have been involved in structured programs in remote areas, and over 700 Indigenous youth and adults have been trained as footy coaches, umpires and administrators. This means that a whole swag of kids, who might not have normally been excited or even interested about going to school, have had a real incentive to turn up so that they can go to these school clinics or programs in their communities. But also there are now 700 Indigenous young people and adults that have the training to be able to develop the sport.

The Kickstart program was, at its inception, a program developed through a partnership of ATSIC, the Northern Territory government and the Australian Football League. But, of course, here is the sting in the tail. Unfortunately, for the last two years the federal government has slowly walked away from this highly successful program. In 2002-03 the federal government through ATSIC provided $200,000 for the funding of the Kickstart program. The same amount of money was again provided in 2003-04. If you examine the previous funding that was received by the AFLNT, it was obvious that under ATSIC there was a greater contribution to the program. This has declined in the last two years and, of course, has not been funded at all this year until I made representations to Senator Kemp some weeks ago.

Let us have a look at what has happened: in 2002-03 and 2003-04, $200,000 from ATSIC; in 2004-05, $100,000 from DCITA; and in 2005-06 the submission was actually declined until representation was made directly to the minister and he was able to find $75,000—but that is a story I will come to in a minute.

So why has this happened? Where is the confusion or the problem with funding such a highly successful program that is not only giving kids footy skills and increased self-esteem but actually getting them to school? The AFL centrally--—that is, its base in Melbourne nationally—did not receive any funding for the 2004-05 financial year. However, it will receive $200,000 from DCITA for the 2005-06 financial year. But in the Northern Territory the original grant for 2005-06 was not approved because it was thought, incorrectly, that the ALFNT submission was a duplication of the money that was being sought at the national level. This is an example of where DCITA has clearly not looked at the fine print and has clearly not sought to investigate exactly what the difference in the programs was between the national level and the local level.

A decision, I understand, was taken by DCITA in Darwin to actually support the AFLNT submission but in fact was overturned by DCITA in Canberra, on advice from who knows where. We will seek to find that out. They decided that the Northern Territory AFL should miss out. But the two submissions are significantly different and if anyone in DCITA had actually looked at the fine print and bothered to do some investigation they would have discovered that. They are significantly different because the AFL nationally seeks funds to develop the project and support the four projects that were detailed in their budget provided to DCITA. They write the curriculum and they provide the incentives that are given out to kids. They coordinate the national objectives and the strategies. What happens then is the local branches, like the AFLNT, put that in place by employing Indigenous development officers like the four I mentioned that are placed in regions around the Northern Territory.

Participation, coaching, umpiring, community development, talent and Indigenous programs are all managed centrally, including the policy, procedures and resources development. The funding that the AFLNT has received in the past, and would have continued to receive this year, has been utilised to help with the program’s delivery at the community level. It costs an awful lot of money to get out to places like Galiwinku if you are going to do it on a regular basis besides the other many dozens of communities the AFLNT reaches. And the AFLNT money is additional to the money that the AFL provides the Northern Territory AFL through its state development grants.

So where has this process gone so wrong that the AFLNT now only manages to scrape $75,000 from this government rather than the $200,000 that it originally sought? Senator Kemp, in a letter to me on 27 January, said:

The process of re-assessing unallocated funds under the Indigenous Sport and Recreation Program ... for 2005-06 was completed in mid-December ...

Wednesday, 29 March 2006

Why were there unallocated funds in the Indigenous Sport and Recreation Program at all for 2005-06? If you actually go to the four elements of the ISRP, this government now wants to see a bureaucratic document in the form of a shared responsibility agreement or a partnership agreement as the key concept underlying the Australian government’s new approach to funding programs. Is there in fact now a hold-up in getting footballs out to kids in communities because people have not signed on the dotted line? Why are we now facing such a bureaucratic nightmare when it comes to simply handing out money for programs for Indigenous kids in sport that have been known to be hugely and highly successful?

If this is about the government’s new era of funding Indigenous people in this country, in which I thought silos were to be broken down and Indigenous coordination centres were actually to pull together and diminish and abolish this bureaucratic red tape, then this is a system that is chronically failing. Why won’t the federal government not only get on board with this program and champion its success but also be the cornerstone to it? I fail to understand not only why there are diminishing funds being given to the AFL NT but also where the $125,000 is that they did not get this financial year. Who has got it and on what basis has that group or organisation or community got it? I want to be convinced when it comes to estimates time—and that DCITA can prove it to me—that whoever has that $125,000 has even more successful outcomes than the AFL Kickstart program. I seriously doubt that DCITA are going to be able to prove that to me.

I am not going to let up on this, because I fail to understand how a federal government that stands on a platform of pretending to improve the lifestyle and outcomes for Indigenous people and kids in communities can walk away very slowly from this highly successful Kickstart program. There are many questions unanswered here. Why does it get ticked off in Darwin? Who overturns it in Canberra? Where has the $125,000 gone that the AFLNT did not get? How do you expect to increase Indigenous kids’ participation at school in communities when you pull the rug from under their feet by not committing to funding a highly successful and motivating program like Kickstart? It is the core and centre of Indigenous communities. It is the one love Indigenous kids have out there. I cannot for the life of me understand why this government does not fund it $200,000 and also either double or treble that money in the coming year, get on board with this successful program and get on board with actually trying to prove to this country—(Time expired)