Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a few brief comments on the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment (2007 Budget Measures) Bill 2007. I do have a particular interest in this bill, as I have travelled regularly throughout the Kimberley, Pilbara, Gascoyne and Goldfields regions of Western Australia since 1979. In this time I have met so many wonderful Indigenous people who are well aware of the challenges their communities face in finding a way forward for their young people. Their words have left a lasting impression on me and they motivate my comments today. The purpose of this bill is to appropriate additional funding, and to expand on and improve the options and facilities available to Australia’s young Indigenous people.

In my home state of Western Australia, there are no fewer than 289 remote Indigenous communities. As a Labor senator from Western Australia, I am very much aware of the conditions and challenges faced by many young Indigenous people in these communities. Last week I travelled once again through the Kimberley region of Western Australia and spent time in seven remote Indigenous communities. When debating this bill in the other place, my Labor colleagues made the crucial point that goals and targets that are set must be realistic and achievable within a generation, and Labor calls on the government to give a genuine commitment to overcoming Indigenous disadvantage.

I speak today in favour of this bill, but I do not believe that this bill demonstrates a genuine commitment to overcome Indigenous disadvantage. I remind honourable senators that we in Australia are smack bang in the middle of a massive economic boom driven by a global demand for our mining and resources commodities. The tragic irony that we cannot under any circumstances ignore is that a significant source of our current national wealth is the land, and on that land is where the most disadvantaged members of our community have lived for thousands of years. Furthermore, it is amongst these people, living on that land, that we see the highest mortality rates, the highest poverty rates and the lowest educational attainment in this country.

And what has this government done for the traditional owners of that land at a time of great economic growth? I will tell you what it has done. It has made a one-off pre-election promise to beef up programs that have not yet even been the subject of a publicly available evaluation. More so than ever before, the Commonwealth government has had the opportunity to enable Indigenous communities to move out of the cycle of poverty and disadvantage and to create economic sustainability. But, sadly, it has not seized that opportunity. Even worse, the government has adopted a CBD mentality for Indigenous affairs. Middle-class, city-centric views are not the answer. Creating expectation on the journey toward a meaningful future then aborting the trip halfway through is not the answer.

I acknowledge that the Minister for Education, Science and Training has taken a step in the right direction by bringing this bill into the parliament, but sadly it is nothing new. It simply looks to be an extension of funding for existing programs that we are not even sure are of lasting value. We as senators have an obligation to meticulously examine the programs and goals set out in this bill with a view to whether they will deliver something meaningful for young Indigenous people. There is no doubt about it: the Commonwealth programs at the heart of this bill create enormous expectations of participating young Indigenous people in their communities. Yet you get the impression that the Howard government thinks that, by sponsoring these sorts of programs, young Indigenous people will then take over the burden and pressure of leading the way for others in their community. The expectation is that these young people will solve the problems that the government has consistently failed to. There is no indication that the government is entering into a meaningful partnership with young Indigenous people to advance the quality of life, health and economic wellbeing of their communities—and that, to my mind, is an abject betrayal of an entire generation of young Indigenous people.

What I want to know is: what is the government’s expectation of young Indigenous people after funding has been expended through these programs? Where will the government be when these young people return to their communities to face the real-life challenges? You could not expect to have a senior Howard government minister spending any serious time in a remote Indigenous community. After all, it is a bit hard in the desert to find the pristine white robe and the matching fluffy white slippers that may come with a booking at the Sheraton, let alone a poolside bar to sip almond daiquiris from. Instead, you are confronted with the struggle and despair that is born out of two centuries of dispossession.

In the last 11 years, there has been a real opportunity for change and for the government to achieve constructive reconciliation. Instead, the Prime Minister has managed to wash away a taste for reconciliation left by the previous Labor government. In completing this manoeuvre, the Prime Minister has done it with the same ease as gargling Listerine to mask a cheap wine—or, for the benefit of senators opposite, gargling red wine to mask the taste of Listerine. From my experience, as recently as last week, the programs that the bill before us seeks to expand are failing young Indigenous people and more broadly failing Indigenous communities.

Senators have a right to know whether there was any consultation with Indigenous communities before this bill was brought into the parliament. Sadly, I suspect there was not, particularly as the results of an evaluation of the programs to be expanded by the bill are absent from the explanatory memorandum. The government claims that the additional funding it is now seeking to appropriate will be used to convert Community Development Employment Projects, otherwise known as CDEP, program places into ongoing jobs in the education sector. How? Particularly as the proviso has already been set by the minister in the other place where he said:

Approximately 200 Indigenous people will benefit from the provision of funding of $5.3 million to convert, where government and non-government education providers agree, Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) program places into ongoing jobs in the education sector.

This is exactly what I am concerned about, and so too should other senators. There is no real commitment from the government once the money is handed over. I suspect that the additional funding is all about enabling the Howard government, on the eve of an election, to stand up and cry about a marked increase in the number of young Indigenous people receiving funds from the Commonwealth. This is a desperate ploy by ‘Mr Sheen’, beavering around the tarnished silver with his magic spray to make everything sparkle. But what happens after the election if the Howard government is returned? If this lot gets back in, Australia’s Indigenous population will find out pretty quickly that the magic polish only lasts a few days.

There is an enormous need for young Indigenous people to have the opportunity for training in the wide range of skills that Australia is so desperately short of. As part of this bill $14.1 million is being used for the provision of infrastructure funding to enable boarding schools catering for significant cohorts of Indigenous students to repair and replace aged and deteriorating facilities. In my home state of Western Australia, we have a serious shortage of skilled labour—a situation presided over by this incompetent and inactive government. On the surface, $14.1 million may look like a lot of money. But with the serious skills shortage in the construction industry, coupled with the economic boom in WA, I cannot for the life of me see the money being stretched very far at all.

In this place on 10 August 2006 I stated:

The Howard government has continued to reduce the overall percentage of the federal budget spent on vocational education and training, and it stands condemned for the skills crisis it has created.

You might ask: what has changed? Sadly, not much. Australia continues to suffer from a lack of action from this government. I reiterate an article by Steve Lewis in today’s Australian as reported through the national media over the past few days. The article stated:

... the Business Council of Australia and the Australia Chamber of Commerce and Industry confirmed plans for an advertising campaign in support of Work Choices ...

Isn’t that ironic! Fair dinkum, I was rolling around my room this morning as I was reading the paper. Fortunately I did not have to change my pants, but I did have a cackle at these two representatives of industry, and mates of the government, who have to be dragged kicking and screaming if it is suggested they may have to invest in Australia’s future skills training but here they are investing huge amounts into a re-election campaign for the Howard government. They stand guilty through association with this government.

What have the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry done, firstly, to avoid the crisis we now face, and more importantly, to address the current sad state of affairs? The hypocrisy of these two groups is incredible. They will not invest in training but they will throw potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars into an election campaign. The mining industry in Western Australia, for example, is screaming out for skilled tradespeople and labourers. The government’s response to that has been to encourage increasing numbers of migrant workers on short-term visas while there has been a potential significant workforce just outside the mine gates. Where is the government’s program to initiate trade skills training for young Indigenous people, particularly in remote regions? This is the sort of practical measure that would open up a whole economic vista for the young Indigenous generation. We know the jobs are there. Why has the government not given priority to ensuring access to skills training for all Australians?

The Howard government is intent on creating the illusion of serious investment in Indigenous communities. This is why I believe this bill is a continuation of the Howard government’s piecemeal, superficial, CBD mentality. I refer senators to Patricia Karvelas’s article in the Australian on 8 June 2007 on the waste associated with the funding of Indigenous programs. It stated:

For every dollar the Howard Government spends on indigenous people, it spends up to another dollar on bureaucracy ... it cost the Howard Government an average 40c to spend a single dollar of indigenous funding, leading to a staggering amount of taxpayers’ money going to bureaucracy.

Senators need note that the Indigenous Youth Mobility Program and the Indigenous Leadership Program were 2004 Liberal election commitments. However, places were not offered with respect to these programs until 2006. How much money then was wasted under the guise of these programs between 2004 and 2006? Further, how much of the $26 million proposed in this bill will stay in Canberra to pay the bureaucrats? According to the article quoted in the Australian newspaper, it could amount to no less than $10 million of what we are being asked to approve today.

Indigenous people want investment in their communities that generate real jobs. Ecotourism, agriculture and aquaculture are just three examples of what is already being achieved in some of Australia’s remote Indigenous communities. As was told to me recently, Indigenous elders want to get away from the notion and mentality of ‘sit down’ money and start having a role in creating their own prosperity. We could not expect the Howard government to understand this desire, particularly as they are a government happy to see large numbers of Indigenous people disenfranchised by recent changes to electoral enrolment laws. There is no doubt that these changes have created unfair hurdles for traditional people living in our remote areas to be able to exercise their right to elect their government.

If the government had the will to give Indigenous people a genuine mechanism to determine their future, they would be investing resources into getting more Indigenous people on to the electoral roll and not the reverse. There is no justification for the number of Indigenous people on the electoral roll to be lower than that for the rest of the Australian population but that is what we have. But there is an even greater travesty: it is now easier, thanks to the Howard government with the support of senators opposite, to make secret donations to a political party than it is to enrol to vote. But, then again, it is highly unlikely that Indigenous communities would make donations to the Liberal Party, even in the spirit of reconciliation. So it is not hard to work out why the right of Indigenous people to vote is well down the list.

Unlike the Howard government, Labor have made a real commitment to Indigenous Australians. Wouldn’t it be tremendous if the Prime Minister and his cronies finally got out of Labor’s way so we could move forward and turn our commitment into reality? Labor support this bill despite its monumental inadequacies in addressing the lack of economic opportunity for young Indigenous people. I would not want to see any funding taken away from Indigenous programs but the government has to improve its performance in the way the money is spent and what it actually provides on the ground.

I would like to close with the words of one elder who spoke to me in one of the communities I visited last week. He said to me:

We are not just dumb black fellas stuck out in the bush; we have ideas.

We need to have these very words at the forefront of our minds as we stand here as representatives of the entire Australian community and legislate for the future of Indigenous people.