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

If you have been talking about it for five years then you have not done very much, and now you want to stop us taking even two weeks to look at it properly. It is the typical, bizarre reverse logic that the government apply to everything. It is five weeks since the government announced their intervention—probably closer to six now. I was in the Territory just last week talking to as many people as I could over the course of that week. The vast majority of them do not know what is happening. There have been lots of statements made, lots of media releases, lots of comments to camera and lots of impassioned statements. That is good; it is an issue that deserves passion. But it also deserves reason and it also requires listening; and we have not had that. As the National Director of Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation, Gary Highland, said in a release yesterday—and nobody doubts the minister’s sincerity; the minister’s problem is not that he does not care—his problem is that he does not listen. I think that could be applied even more so to some others in the government.

This is not about the government, it is not about the opposition and it is not about the minor parties. How about we all just accept that we have all failed? We heard in Minister Abetz’s contribution earlier on today that somehow or other everything is always everybody else’s fault. The government has been in power for 11 years, but is it still everybody else’s fault—it is the Territory’s fault, the states’ fault, ATSIC’s fault, Indigenous people’s fault, the Democrats’ fault, the Greens’ fault, Labor’s fault. We should all share some responsibility for this and that is what we should be doing in working together on this in partnership. Instead, all we get is the same old cheap shots. And now we have Senator Ian Macdonald on the government benches playing that role. Forget it. I am not interested. I am interested in trying to get the best outcome for Indigenous people.

Let me quote from Noel Pearson, who wrote in the Australian on 23 June:

Howard and Brough will make a historic mistake if they are contemptuous of the role that a proper and modern articulation of Aboriginal law must play in the social reconstruction of indigenous societies.

He also stated:

Aboriginal law, properly understood, is not the problem, it is the solution.

I see part of my role and the Democrats’ role here is to do what we can to make sure that Mr Howard, Mr Brough and the government, and we here collectively in the parliament, do not make a historic mistake. We have already made plenty of them, frankly, as a nation and as a parliament. People who refuse to even endeavour to examine what we are doing here to make sure we do not make that mistake, are culpable in its perpetration.

There are a range of measures in this legislation and, as I said before, they vary in the merit that is applied. It has to be emphasised that there are measures here that are essential and important, and need to be implemented properly. But it is a package and the package should be examined properly and fully. The Democrats have extreme problems with the abolition of the permit system. We have this bizarre logic from the minister that, because the permit system is in place and child abuse exists, therefore the permit system has not stopped child abuse. It is ludicrous, bizarre—