Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Hansard source

Clearly, we have a spurious point of order now being made in an attempt to slur the Labor Party and leading members of the Labor Party. We have heard from Senator Scullion. He asked: why is it so different for Indigenous communities? Why is it so different, he asks! What an extraordinary question for a senator representing the Northern Territory. I put it to you very simply; it is poverty. It is simple—it is poverty. You ask what is so different. Think about the difference between the community on Wadeye—from what I understand, a town of a little under 3,000—and a town down the road, say, Tennant Creek, also a town of about 3,000. One has a number of doctors, one has none. One has numerous telecommunication systems, one does not have a public telephone. One has a high school, one does not. One has a garbage service, one does not. One has basic fire services, one does not. You will be surprised to hear that the one that does not have those things in those examples is the Indigenous town of Wadeye.

So Senator Scullion asks: what is the difference? The fundamental difference is the inherent racism that we have seen being spread throughout this country for generations. Why is it that we have a situation where a town of 3,000 people does not enjoy these basic services? What do we hear from the minister for Aboriginal affairs? We hear that this is a problem created by the government of the Northern Territory. What a load of nonsense. That is a government that has been in office for a couple of years; these are problems that go back a generation, two generations and to the formation of white settlement in the Northern Territory.

So you ask yourself why is it that such circumstances are allowed to continue in this country. Why is it that we have a situation where, in Indigenous communities, there is overcrowding of one house for 17 people? Where else in the country is that sort of situation tolerated? What are the consequences of having overcrowding of that dimension in Indigenous housing? What are the consequences for educational achievement? What are the consequences for the health of the people who live in conditions such as that? What are the consequences for the social development of those communities? I ask a simple question: how is it that we allow those situations to continue?

Senator Scullion asked the question: why is there such a difference? We have a simple proposition here—the figures are very, very clear: Indigenous Australians make up 2.4 per cent of the Australian population but Indigenous people make up 8.5 per cent of the homeless, and 19 per cent of all the people in Australia sleeping rough are Indigenous people. That is 19 per cent for a population that makes up 2.4 per cent of the total population of Australia. ATSIC estimated $2.2 billion is required just to deal with the housing problem, not to mention all the other matters such as education. A recent housing ministers conference—of white housing ministers from across the country—identified the figure as being $3 billion. It is a very rare circumstance where an organisation that was set up and organised to directly assist black people would come up with an estimate less than the estimate made by a mainstream organisation. But that is the situation here.

What is the government talking about? They are talking about providing $6 million for a trial of innovative housing options in Indigenous communities and a budget for services of $150,000 per house. It is a known fact that, for the 18,000 dwellings that we are short in this country for Indigenous people, the cost of providing that would be at least $2.7 billion—on the minister’s own figures. But what does he do? He provides $6 million. So Senator Bartlett is quite right. What we need is constructive engagement. We need a situation where the Commonwealth addresses these issues in a genuine way and does not seek to pass the buck to other levels of government. We have to see that the Commonwealth government—