Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

On the day that the Prime Minister made the announcement which has resulted in this legislation, I was in the office of Senator Siewert—my Greens colleague from Western Australia. In her office I met a group of Indigenous women from the Northern Territory, who had come to Canberra as part of a national speaking tour to talk about how they did not want a radioactive nuclear waste dump on their homeland. Each of the women in the group was from a different site where the federal government is proposing to build a radioactive nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory.

It was just a few hours after the Prime Minister had made his announcement that I met these women in Senator Siewert’s office and they were all very quiet. I do not know why they were quiet. Maybe they were contemplating the enormity of the announcement that the Prime Minister had just made. Perhaps they were still a little bit in shock. Perhaps they felt disempowered because they did not know what to say or how yet to respond, but one of the women, as she was leaving Senator Siewert’s office, turned to me and said, ‘I’m from the stolen generation.’ She said it as if to offer me an explanation. It was as if she was saying to me, ‘I understand; I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen this firsthand.’

It really struck me and it made me think that I do not want to see future political leaders in this country five, 10 or 20 years from now apologising to Indigenous Australians for the decisions being made here today in the Senate. When governments in the past made decisions to take Indigenous children away from their families they were well intentioned and paternalistic. I do not want to see that again. I do not want future political leaders to be apologising for the decisions that are inherent in this piece of legislation and this proposal by the Prime Minister.

We all want to see an end to young Indigenous children experiencing sexual abuse, in the same way that we want to see an end to all children, whatever country they are from, and whatever nationality they have, experiencing sexual abuse. We all want to see less alcohol abuse, less drug abuse and less violence occurring in Indigenous communities, as in other communities around Australia and around the world. There is a whole raft of people who have been working, for almost their entire lives, to improve the lives of people in the circumstances that some Indigenous communities are experiencing. They have been dedicated to these projects. They are the people that the government should be talking to and listening to in coming up with a proposal about how to tackle the violence, disadvantage and sexual abuse that occurs in some Indigenous communities.

The Prime Minister appears to have made his announcement with no consultation. I think that the very clearest lesson that white Australians can learn from the history of the way in which we have engaged with Indigenous Australians is that you must consult. You must engage in a genuine discussion with Indigenous Australians. If that does not occur, and if Indigenous Australians are not leading that process then whatever you are trying to achieve will not work. The history of Australian governments engaging with Indigenous Australians shows that if you do so without consultation and without genuine engagement you will fail. And that is what we are seeing here again from this government.

There are numerous studies which show us that the best way to deliver services for Indigenous Australians is to have Indigenous Australians leading and driving that process. We have set up Aboriginal medical services and Aboriginal community controlled health organisations in this country because we recognise that is the best way to deliver health outcomes for Indigenous Australians. I was on the Senate inquiry that was looking into the government’s proposal to abolish ATSIC. When the President of the Australian Medical Association, the AMA, appeared before the committee, I asked him for the AMA’s view about how Aboriginal community controlled health organisations worked in terms of being able to deliver health outcomes. He was very glowing in his response. This is what he said:

I think the model that they have there is a model we need in the non-Indigenous delivery of primary care, because they deal with it in a holistic way. They do not deal with it in a symptom way—you come in with a sore threat and they say, ‘Here’s your script; get out’—but they deal with the whole: who are you, who is your family unit and what makes you up? They actually deal with the whole person. They deal with the physical and psychological needs. The way the AMSs [Aboriginal medical services] are structured—

And he said ‘Don’t tell them out there!’ presumably referring to his doctor colleagues—

is probably how we should structure the non-Indigenous ones.

That is, the non-Indigenous medical services. Similar studies about the effective way to deliver health outcomes to Indigenous Australians have come up with the same results in countries all around the world from the United States to Canada and throughout the Pacific. Having visited Aboriginal community controlled health organisations, the outcome of those studies makes perfect sense when you see how Indigenous Australians are driving their own projects to improve their own lot in life. We know that Indigenous Australians are far more likely to access government services, whether it is health care or Centrelink, if they can talk to another Indigenous person. The government has set up some models recognising that this is the way you deliver services.

But not only does the provision of services for Indigenous Australians by other Indigenous Australians deliver better health outcomes it is the very basis of the idea of self-determination. The United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights talks about the importance of self-determination. Australia has signed up to that; countries all around the world have signed up to that. And similarly that commitment to self-determination can be found in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The international community has recognised the importance of self-determination: it is about Indigenous people being able to control and drive their own future in their country.

After the Prime Minister made his announcement about the Northern Territory, I decided that I wanted to go and visit Indigenous organisations in my state of New South Wales that I knew were doing fantastic work to help their communities tackle the problems that they face. I did that because I want to see this issue addressed seriously, and that means needing to learn from the experience that is out there about what works when Indigenous people are leading the way.

I went to visit the Katungul Aboriginal Medical Service in Narooma on the New South Wales south coast. They provide health services for Aboriginal communities from Ulladulla all the way down the south coast, yet they do not receive enough funding from the federal government to be able to employ even one full-time GP. They do not get any money from the federal government or from the state government to ensure that they can provide Indigenous Australians from Ulladulla to the Victorian border with dental care. I met an Aboriginal man who lives near there. He was talking to me about the Indigenous children in his community whose teeth have rotted down to their gums because they have no access to dental services and they have such poor nutrition.

Indigenous communities on the south coast of New South Wales are trying hard to improve their health, but they are not getting the support that they need from the federal government or from the state government. Some of the issues that they face are similar to those horrible stories that we have heard about from communities in the Northern Territory. Indigenous Australians all around this country need support. They need to be able to have access to mental health services, to dental services and to drug and alcohol services that are run by Indigenous communities for Indigenous communities.

I also went up to Lismore in the north of New South Wales where I visited an organisation called Rekindling the Spirit, which is an incredible organisation run by an Indigenous guy who himself was a victim of sexual abuse. He used to work for the Department of Community Services in New South Wales as a child protection officer and he experienced racism from his colleagues who were also child protection officers within that department. But in some ways the Department of Community Services was quite good to him in that they lent him a car. He would then drive around and pick up all the Indigenous men and drop them to the alcoholics anonymous meeting that was happening that night and then drop everybody home again that night—all the people who did not have transport would not have got to the meetings if he had not been doing that. He was working incredible hours until the early hours of the morning to help his community, his Indigenous brothers and sisters, be able to attend those meetings. The next day he would rock up to work again for the New South Wales Department of Community Services. He did that for many years before setting up his own organisation, which is an Indigenous-run centre for Indigenous communities in northern New South Wales. They work with a lot of people who are referred to them, including men who are referred to them from the New South Wales Department of Corrective Services. They are men who may have been perpetrators of violence. The Rekindling the Spirit organisation works with those men to help them deal with their lives, to deal with the problems that they have had in their lives and the violence that they have engaged in. They also work with the families as well as with women and children who have been victims of violence. They have a long-term strategy of dealing with the cycles of violence that exist, because they work with both the victims and perpetrators of that violence.

After visiting Rekindling the Spirit I went to Southern Cross University, which is also located in Lismore, where I met up with a class of masters students who are studying a degree in Indigenous studies. It is a unique course operating at Southern Cross University and is being run by Professor Judy Atkinson. I know they are keen to see it expanded and run elsewhere. I was sitting in a room of masters students—they were predominantly Indigenous and all were women—and they went around the room telling me who they were and what their experiences were. After they had done that, I realised that I was sitting in a room of about 12 Indigenous women who had each been working for about 30 years on child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities. This was a room of experts, and I wished that it had been the Prime Minister and the Indigenous Affairs minister sitting and hearing the stories from each of these women about the work that they have been doing for their entire working lives with Indigenous communities to tackle sexual and family violence occurring in those communities.

There were two women from the Kimberley area, and Professor Judy Atkinson said to me that the program that they were running to tackle sexual violence in their community was the best program that she had seen anywhere in the world to tackle Indigenous violence in a community. I asked her what made it the best program available, and she said that it was because the program dealt with the issue of violence and sexual abuse of children by working with the whole community. It did not work with the model that we see in Western medicine of one-on-one counselling; it was about working with the whole of the community so that the community together could work on that issue.

It is the same thing about Indigenous communities being able to be the providers of the answers to the problems that some Indigenous communities in Australia face. Self-determination is the approach that we find in successful Indigenous programs. I want to stand here today to vote on a piece of legislation that recognises the great work that is being done by Indigenous people, often women, in their community to tackle the problems that they face. It did not take me very long in the six weeks since the Prime Minister made this announcement to visit a raft of Indigenous organisations in New South Wales run by Indigenous men and women who are doing great work for their community. They are the ones we should be listening to and supporting. I would love to be asked to vote on a piece of legislation which is about supporting those people to achieve the fantastic outcomes that they have been able to achieve in their communities and allowing them to drive the process. I want to vote for a bit of legislation that ensures that the Lapa Bummers, which is a youth group in La Perouse in Sydney, gets the funding that it needs to be able to continue to do the work that it is doing.

I met a 24-year-old guy at La Perouse, who is the acting CEO of the land council there. He told me that when he grew up in La Perouse there was no youth group. So many of the young Indigenous boys that he grew up with lost their way because there was no support, and he talked to me about the stark difference that he has seen amongst the young boys in the La Perouse Indigenous community because of the presence of the youth centre. That youth centre and the programs that it is running are being replicated by Indigenous communities right around Australia, but their funding from the federal government runs out next year. I think it would be disastrous if they were not able to continue to do their work, which has become a model for youth programs in Indigenous committees right around Australia, because they were not able to get the funding that they need to be able to continue and to make a difference to the lives of young Indigenous men living in La Perouse.

I want to see this government supporting programs like the Blackout Violence program. It is run by the Mudgin-Gal Aboriginal Women’s Corporation and the Wirringa Baiya women’s legal centre, which are based in Redfern and in Marrickville in Sydney. They came together as a result of some sexual violence that had been occurring in Redfern in the Block and they put together a program to address this issue. The women organised a rally and then they put together their program Blackout Violence. They launched it at the New South Wales Aboriginal rugby league knockout in Redfern, where all the communities come together. Players from 85 rugby league teams went out onto the field wearing purple arm bands to show their opposition to family violence and to sexual assault against women. I want to see the federal government supporting programs like that.

It has not taken me long to find many, and I know there are many more, fantastic Indigenous groups, not only in my state of New South Wales but all around the country, who are doing really amazing work to tackle the problems that the government talks about wanting to address. They are the experts; they are the people who have lived with and had experience of those things. They know what works and they are the people who should be driving this process. If we really want change and if we really want to ensure that young, Indigenous Australians do not experience violence, sexual abuse and drug and alcohol abuse, then we need to adopt the programs that have worked in Indigenous communities around the country. The people who have been running those programs are Indigenous Australians, so they need to drive this process and they need to be given the opportunity to be supported for the fantastic work that they are doing.

I think about the women whom I met in Rachel Siewert’s office on the day that the Prime Minister made this announcement. Those women come from communities where this government wants to dump radioactive nuclear waste. Their job to protect their land and to ensure that their land does not become a radioactive nuclear waste dump has been made harder by this legislation. They should be able to have a say in determining the future of their land and what happens on their land, and this legislation takes that right from them away. It is paternalistic. It may be well intentioned, but the same motivator—well-intentioned paternalism—led governments before this one to make the decision to take Aboriginal children away from their parents. I do not want a debate occurring in here in however many years time about the need to apologise to Indigenous Australians for well-intentioned paternalistic decision-making by this government. I want to see us support positive Indigenous initiatives that are already occurring in this country. That is what the Greens wish we were able to stand here and support. They are the stories that I think are important to tell here, because there are answers out there and we should be following those answers and supporting the Indigenous women and others who are doing fantastic work in their community to truly address, in a long-term sense, the issues that the government says it wants to address by this legislation.