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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked today.

Before I get to that I want to pay my deepest and most sincere regrets to the community of Oenpelli, who, as we know, lost two teenagers to the awful addictive habit of petrol sniffing last week. One of the four teenagers involved in this incident remains in a critical condition on life support at Royal Darwin Hospital.

In the intervening time between Senator Santoro’s answer to me and now, at five past three, I have had my office re-ring the community of Oenpelli. I notice that Senator Scullion during question time was trying to allude to the fact that Oenpelli has Opal fuel. In fact, I knew my sources were correct. It beggars belief that a minister in question time can have such inaccurate information when it comes to providing answers on such a critical national problem in relation to Indigenous people in this country.

The community council at Oenpelli has Opal fuel for use in its own council vehicles. There is no retail outlet of Opal fuel at Oenpelli—that is, nobody at Oenpelli can buy Opal fuel; it is only bought by the council for use in its own vehicles. So that would mean that in fact it is not accessible to the majority of the community at Oenpelli and it is certainly not available for retail—that is, for public and private use.

My sources tell me that on 28 November—only last week—the community council at Oenpelli approved a request by the service station and its owners in that community to apply for Opal fuel. That request was agreed to by the community council, which will now embark on a joint process with the service station to put in the paperwork to apply for the subsidy. But really the issue here is why this government did not, immediately on receipt of that news, send somebody from Health and Ageing or from Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs straight out to the community to say to them: ‘Don’t worry about the paperwork. Let’s get that done in weeks or months time, but let’s just get Opal rolling in here as fast as we can.’ But a week has gone by and there has been no activity on behalf of this government in relation to what is happening with respect to these young Indigenous people around our country.

In June this year the Senate Community Affairs Committee tabled a report called Beyond petrol sniffing: renewing hope for Indigenous communities. We have referred to this report numerous times. Six months on we are still waiting for this federal government to respond to this report. Let me take you to recommendation 22:

That Commonwealth Government discuss with BP Australia what role they may have to assist the distribution of information on Opal and the distribution of Opal identification stickers.

Recommendation 23 states:

That the Commonwealth and State and Territory Governments examine the procedure at Maningrida—

a community very close to Oenpelli—

whereby contracts are used to prevent contractors bringing regular unleaded petrol into their communities …

These are two recommendations I want to concentrate on in the next couple of minutes, as well as the fact that this report suggests that Opal should be rolled out as soon as possible. The kids at Oenpelli were trying to break into a shipping container of leaded fuel that was going to contractors, so another issue that has now come to light that we did not pick up on in our inquiry is that there could be immediate discussions with land councils about ensuring that nobody, no contractor, gets a permit to go onto those lands to do any work unless they are using unleaded petrol.

In recent weeks there was a debacle in Alice Springs with the shameful advertising and reporting in the media that Opal fuel somehow wrecks cars. We know from our inquiry that that is simply not true. We know that the federal government’s communications backbench is sitting on a strategy to roll out Opal fuel and to advise retailers and consumers in Alice Springs that it has no detrimental effect. We know that they met on 12 December and that nothing will happen until next February. (Time expired)