Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I will lead off in speaking to the Corporations (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) Bill 2006, the Corporations Amendment (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Corporations) Bill 2006 and the Corporations (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) Consequential, Transitional and Other Measures Bill 2006 by noting their importance. In some ways, legislation that deals with corporate regulations, whether they are for Indigenous organisations, associations or other things, can be seen as fairly dry and unexciting, but it is crucial. It is crucial for the purposes of accountability but it is even more crucial for the effectiveness of the many and varied organisations and associations around the country.

This legislation seeks to dramatically update the existing legislation regarding Aboriginal councils and associations which goes back to 1976. It has had a fairly long gestation. The original piece of legislation—the foundation piece—was introduced in June 2005. Even though it is a little while ago now, I am fairly sure that it was a Democrat initiative to get that legislation referred to a Senate committee. This process again highlights the importance of having an effective committee system. As I said, that legislation was introduced in June 2005, which, whilst it seems a long time ago, was actually before this government had control of the Senate. It gained control of the Senate on 1 July.

The committee’s examination of the legislation highlighted the very simple fact that the legislative framework was not ready. When you are making major amendments to laws and procedures that have been in place for nearly 30 years, you want to make sure that it is quite clear what the new framework you are moving to is. The problem was that we had a proposed core bill which relied on a lot on the details being filled in later via regulations and transitional provisions. It was not the first time that this had occurred—where you had legislation where the real impact was impossible to determine because you could not see what the regulations were that were going to be put in place once the law was passed. But I was pleased that on this occasion, I think as a direct consequence of the work of the Senate committee, it really became clear that it would be a huge leap in the dark to be passing that initial piece of legislation without having a much clearer idea of what the regulatory framework and the transitional provisions would be.

Putting in place legislation in this area is actually quite difficult. Everybody supports, and Indigenous people more than anybody else support, ensuring that the associations and organisations are accountable, that they operate effectively and that people get value for money out of them. But, as is the case with the wider community, it is actually quite a difficult balancing act to ensure that you have sufficient regulation to ensure proper and due practice and just competence without generating so much red tape and so many obligations and reporting requirements that it becomes impossible for small organisations to function.

This is a problem in the wider community. I know from my own experience—and I imagine many people here have been members of community organisations and associations—that, over time, the obligations on people who in many cases are volunteers on steering committees or boards that run associations with relatively small budgets can be quite enormous. It simply becomes a big disincentive to get involved in community based organisations when people who are basically volunteers end up having very significant legal obligations and, potentially, quite significant penalties imposed if they are found not to be complying with all the requirements. Of course, the difficulty is that you have such a wide range of organisations. This was noted in evidence to the committee—there are the largest corporations or service providers with quite huge multimillion-dollar budgets, significant staff numbers and a wide range of responsibilities right down to the tiniest community corporations. Trying to cover both those situations within legislation is quite difficult; and, with the consequential provisions and other proposed amendments to this bill that were provided to the committee, a view was taken that a reasonable attempt has been made to do that here.

But no matter how much you try to nail down in advance the operation of a new set of procedures, which everybody acknowledged needed updating, you will need to have a bit of a ‘suck it and see’ approach. I was pleased with the committee’s recommendations around the importance of monitoring the practical interaction of the bills with other legislation, particularly the Native Title Act, and reporting to the parliament at the end of the two-year transition period about the operation of the act. I hope we get a commitment on the record from the relevant minister during this debate that that recommendation will be followed because, once we put in place these changes, it is very important to look at how they operate in practice.

Everybody wants to see the necessary level of accountability. I think there is a bit of a myth going around about how inadequate existing accountability is in Aboriginal organisations. There are certainly problems from time to time, but an impression is sometimes created that there is just a mass of unaccountability or incompetence out there when the vast majority of organisations perform amazingly well, particularly given some of the challenges that some of them have to operate with. Everybody wants to have adequate accountability and to ensure value for money, and putting in place a new legislative regime to make that more likely to occur is important, but we want to make sure that it is not counterproductive. That is always the balancing act with any form of corporate regulation. Whether you are dealing with big corporations, voluntary associations or anything in between, getting that balance right is important because if you get it wrong it becomes counterproductive. In such situations the associations cannot even do their job adequately because so many of their resources are tied up with accountability and compliance measures.

So monitoring the operation of those changes is important. The Indigenous representatives who appeared before the Senate inquiry, and no doubt some people within Indigenous communities, feel apprehensive about these changes. That is understandable as we are shifting to a new regime. Whilst there is potential for more complexity here, which is potentially problematic, if the implementation, administration and transition is done appropriately and with sensitivity and common sense, there will be a positive shift and development.

The Labor senators on the committee also put in place an additional recommendation that, for the next three financial years, ORAC include in its annual report a review of the operation of the new legislation and results of a statistical survey of stakeholder satisfaction. That recommendation also goes to the need to monitor how these changes work. The core test has to be whether it means improvements on the ground for Indigenous people—that is what all of this should be about, not just a theoretical exercise so everyone can feel happy that things are nicer and neater at the end of the day. It should be about getting better results on the ground for Indigenous people. I am sure that is a desire that we all have across the political spectrum.

As you know, Madam Acting Deputy President Moore, I try to be balanced in these things whenever I can. I think we do share a common view across this parliament about the need to get better results on the ground. That is the intent here, and the key challenge is to make sure that the intent actually becomes a reality. We cannot guarantee that reality here and now with what we pass in this place; we can only guarantee it by properly monitoring how it is implemented and how it works on the ground and by having a preparedness to make changes if necessary rather than just a stubbornness to insist that we got it all perfectly right the first time around. There is a fair chance we will not get it perfectly right the first time around. We need to have the willingness to listen to people on the ground about problems in the transition phase and be prepared to make changes if necessary.

I am not convinced that there is always as much skill in listening to people on the ground in Indigenous communities as there should be. We might all share a commitment to get improvements on the ground, but my view is that you are less likely to achieve those improvements unless you do more listening to what is actually happening on the ground rather than just pontificating from on high. We need to avoid that trap.

The only other point I would make is to once again emphasise the importance of Senate committees. They have once again proven their worth. I have already said on the record, and will say again, that the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in particular has developed a reputation as being the most effective of the Senate committees for a whole bunch of reasons, not just because of its excellent chair but also because of all its other excellent members and its preparedness to look at the issues on their merits. It is one that I would urge a few other committees to seek to aspire to in order to reach those same heights. I also say that because I always try to take the opportunity not only to compliment Senate committees when they do their work well but also to use that to highlight the importance of keeping the committee system alive and functional in as effective a way as possible.

I obviously have views that that has not been occurring in the period since the first of these bills was introduced back in June 2005. But, as this example shows, it does still work well from time to time. Hopefully, it will work even better through the government listening to what the committee said. One of the key recommendations was to follow through with monitoring what happens. I hope the government commits to adopting the other recommendations that the committee has put forward in its report.