Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

The Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill 2007 and the four associated bills are lengthy, radical, complex and far reaching. Contrary to the hype, there is no urgency for three of the five bills. The administrators, Army, police, health and other officials have moved in or are on their way. The much-needed emergency intervention is already happening. The only urgent need is for money to pay for it all. The two appropriation bills need to be passed at once. For the other three bills covering policy matters there is no reason whatsoever that a proper Senate inquiry and some decent consultation could not have occurred to report by the next sitting on 11 September, when the bills could pass. Instead, we have this manufactured urgency and have had the disgraceful sham of a one-day inquiry to examine five bills and 500 pages—yet another gross abuse of the coalition’s Senate control. We all know that rushed legislation produces mistakes. It is not as if there is any danger of the three policy bills not passing. The Liberal legislative lemmings will see to that.

In my own mind, I have separated the ambit of the bills into four broad areas: those measures that seek to significantly reduce the crimes of sexual assault of children and domestic violence; those measures that seek to improve social conduct and compliance affecting parenting, alcohol consumption, the regulation of pornography and school attendance; those measures addressing welfare, service delivery and welfare to work; and, lastly, those measures addressing land use.

This entire new policy edifice is built on a powerful emotional reaction to widespread child abuse and child sexual assault in Indigenous communities—finally, after reports stretching over not just decades but generations. Child abuse is the hook on which all this other policy hangs. I have my own prejudices here. I loathe those who abuse and assault children, and I have had much to say on that subject for my entire time in the Senate. So I am keen to see policies that end it. However, I struggle to see how changing land use leases and the permit system have anything remotely to contribute to ending the sexual assault of children. I have my prejudices on land issues too. Based on my knowledge of Soviet and colonial African practices, I have an instinctive reaction against the apartheid language of homelands and separate development, against permits and passes, and against systems which prevent freehold private land ownership—particularly in settled areas.

If you want to know whether the coalition or any government has my full support for ending the abuse and physical and sexual assault of children, for ending domestic violence, regulating pornography, regulating drinking and policing socially disruptive behaviour anywhere in Australia, yes, they do. These are not just Northern Territory issues. While the coalition is right to act in the Northern Territory, much more has to be done by them in every other state and territory. In many respects the coalition are acting and leading years too late.

Much has been said about the motives of this coalition government. When I watch and listen to Mal Brough, I see genuine belief and commitment. I see a man whose beliefs, determination and self-certainty may lead him into mistakes, perhaps grievous ones, but they will be mistakes borne of a genuine desire to make Indigenous communities better. When I listen to and look at the Prime Minister and many of his party, I am not as sure of their motives. There are people in the Liberal Party who are and have been active in trying to do something about Indigenous and non-Indigenous child abuse, child sexual assault and living conditions. However, in some—not all—of the Liberal leadership group’s reaction I suspect the influence of the coming election at work, with them trying to wedge Kevin Rudd and Labor and trying to get voter kudos, plus using this opportunity to bring on difficult policy agendas.

People question Liberal motives because it is an election year and because of the coalition’s long record of doing little to address this issue of the sexual assault of children past and present, of strenuously resisting having a royal commission into such matters and of refusing to introduce compensation, reparation or remedial measures to those harmed as children. It is easy to do a Hansard search to see if this is all sudden and new. Just check if those now engaged on this Northern Territory issue have ever before spoken about paedophilia, child abuse or child sexual assault, especially when those matters concerned ‘us whites’ not ‘them blacks’ or when the deviant practices of some churches or charities were exposed by the Senate inquiries into institutional care.

In speaking to these bills, I cannot cover all their content. I will leave that to our portfolio holder, Senator Bartlett. I will focus on what the intervention intends to achieve, that being the admirable task of protecting Aboriginal children in the Territory from sexual assault, abuse and neglect. Understand this: if there is no follow-up for the longer term, if local communities are not brought onside and if there is no sustained commitment, then these initiatives are doomed to failure.

Pleased as I was to hear the Prime Minister’s welcome announcement that the federal government would make a well-resourced emergency response to the circumstances described in the Little children are sacred report, I had mixed feelings. I was thrilled that finally national leadership in child protection was on the agenda. However, I was concerned that it was largely geographically and demographically quarantined. I was concerned that there was still no Commonwealth leadership on child sexual assault and abuse across the whole of Australia. This is urgently needed because the crimes of domestic violence, child sexual assault and other forms of child abuse are also happening—and have happened in the past—in cities, towns, villages and suburbs throughout Australia. Numerous media, government and other reports exist that attest to this, both in a contemporary and historical context.

For years, I have urged the federal government to show leadership. It has been a frustrating experience. Although we do have politicians who loudly proclaim their concern for families and children, when it comes to the dark and depressing issue of child sexual assault, too many remained silent. I have given numerous speeches and have circulated papers, with little result either politically or in the media. My campaign has largely been given form by the two Senate community affairs inquiries I initiated and was a member of—the child migrant inquiry and the children in institutional care inquiry. These inquiries generated the 2001 Lost innocents: righting the record report, the 2004 Forgotten Australians report and the 2005 Protecting vulnerable children: a national challenge report.

The most overwhelming and tragic finding of these reports is this: if you harm a child, you will, more likely than not, get a harmed adult and the consequences can run for decades and are often generational. Very few actually understand this. Most still think that the sexual and physical assault of a child is a crime, when it is a sentence. When hundreds of thousands of children are harmed, the long-term individual, intergenerational social and economic costs are massive. There is no sign that the government, as a whole, understands this. In the Northern Territory, all the young people and adults already harmed will need decades of remedial action, therapy, health care and support, not necessarily constantly but certainly whenever the demons rise up. What happened to the half million in care is directly relevant to this Northern Territory problem. Many children raised in care, then and now, suffered tragic childhoods, were born into families where poverty and welfare dependency was common, where alcohol-fuelled domestic violence and drug abuse were daily occurrences, where physical and sexual assault could be experienced and where abuse and neglect were common. Taken into care by the authorities, children suffer attachment disorders through the loss of the love and nurturing essential to their development. They suffer numerous placements, loss of identity, loss of self-esteem and confidence, and perform poorly at school. Some become the unfortunate victims of continuing assaults.

The evidence received by the Senate inquiries about the assaults suffered while in care was most disturbing. Here are a few quotes:

During my time at this home my sister and myself experienced directly and also witnessed many acts of cruelty, deprivation, sexual abuse, premeditated physical and emotional torture.

Another stated:

I have been flogged. I have scars all over my body inflicted on me by those bastards.

And another stated:

My brothers were sentenced to the care of monsters. They witnessed and endured terrible unspeakable brutality.

The Forgotten Australians report, at page 141, best sums up the cruelty inflicted on children in care by their carers, the religious sisters, the brothers, the priests and lay workers. I quote:

When do the oft-documented beltings and floggings become criminal assault? When did the ‘standards of the time’ change that condoned the perpetration of neglect, cruelty, psychological abuse, sadism, rape and sodomy?

Needless to say, when these kids left care their futures were often bleak. One wrote:

When I entered the boys’ home, the child that I was ceased to exist. When I left ... the man I had a right to become, would never eventuate.

And:

What was to follow was a life of violent youth drinking and drugging which landed both my brother and myself into the lockup.

And another quote:

No person can come out of these experiences unscathed and many of the girls from the home have had horrible lives. I saw more than one as street walkers and was told about attempts at suicide and destructive relationships. Others have learned to rely on alcohol and other drugs. None have realised their potential both emotionally and intellectually.

The litany of abuse and neglect suffered by these survivors has endured well into their adult years. Just like war veterans, they suffer post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other general health problems. Here are some more quotes:

My mum spent years in psychiatric institutions due to the atrocious abuse that herself and her sister endured for many years at the cruel hands of the so-called carers.

And:

I can’t get some of the terrible things he did to me out of my head, they loom in the shadows of my life and haunt me. This carer took my virginity, my innocence, my development, my potential.

Another wrote:

I’m spending the second half of my life sorting out the first half. The cumulative effect is so pervasive that today I’m 52 years old and still a state ward.

And finally, one 70-year-old woman wrote of the lasting effects in the following way:

Every now and then a door opens in the memory bank and the ghosts escape to make us lonely children again.

The point of quoting these excerpts from the ‘stolen generation’ and the Children in institutional care reports is to illustrate that if you harm a child you get a harmed adult. That has a direct relationship to the children that have been harmed in the Northern Territory. These quotes illustrate a huge societal problem. Together with the ‘stolen generation’ inquiry, the trilogy of Senate inquiries conservatively revealed that more than 500,000 children were removed from their families and placed in out-of-home care last century in Australia. A minimum of 20,000 of these were Aboriginal children—possibly even double that figure; the records are very poor. The rest of the 500,000 were child migrants and non-Indigenous, non-child migrant Australian children. Anyone who fails to understand that taking those Indigenous children from their mothers contributed to the present evils just does not get it.

The enduring legacy of child sexual and physical assault—indeed, the current and ongoing crisis of child abuse in Aboriginal communities—is directly linked to the effects of the ‘stolen generation’. The intergenerational effects of the trauma from the forced removal of children and of degraded family life are now being played out in Indigenous communities: substance abuse, welfare dependency, mental and other health problems, suicides, poor parenting skills, child abuse and neglect, social disruption and, sadly, the sexual assault of vulnerable kids. It is important to realise that the trilogy of Senate inquiries I have referred to are only a portion of a myriad of other inquiries dating back decades. And they continue to this day. One current inquiry nearing completion in South Australia has revealed extraordinary levels of sexual assault amongst the state ward population there. Since November 2004, Commissioner Mullighan, who is heading the SA Children in State Care inquiry, has interviewed over 2,000 people and unearthed hundreds of appalling examples of sexual, physical and emotional abuse of children in state care. Bearing in mind that the vast majority of adults sexually assaulted as children will never come forward, the possible numbers are frightening. And one problem of sexual assault of children is that, in a minority, it leads to them, in turn, becoming assaulters as adults.

I gave an adjournment speech on this phenomenon in 2002, and those of you who are interested can look it up. Briefly, here is how numbers can multiply. In the United States, Richard Sipe, an impressively qualified former monk, revealed in his Sipe report that five to seven per cent of US Catholic priests have molested children. If six per cent of 50,000 Catholic priests in the United States sexually assaulted an average of 100 children over a 50-year life span, you would be talking about 300,000 victims.

There is no research to tell us what the Australian percentage might be of abusers and how many victims that would translate to, whether the abusers are Indigenous or not. This is why the Democrats and many others from many parties have called for a royal commission to assess the scale and effects of sexual assault against children in Australia. All the evidence points to the fact that the long-term consequences of sexually assaulted children do not just impact on the individual; they also impact on their families, often for generations, and on society at large. Our prisons are full of those abused and assaulted as children. Our homeless population has a high percentage of former state wards or kids fleeing from abusive families. Psychiatrists and psychologists attest to the high incidence of mental health problems emanating from abusive childhoods.

All of this comes at an enormous drain on budgetary expenditures estimated to be costing taxpayers $5 billion annually. This was calculated in a historic national report on the cost of child abuse and neglect by the Kids First Foundation back in 2003. Has there been any serious political understanding and acknowledgement that a lifetime of pain and alienation comes from being abused as a child, that a huge aggregated social and economic cost results? Not really. Has there been any political will to seriously address this by the Commonwealth? Territory intervention aside, no. Has the Commonwealth agreed to the longstanding call for a royal commission into child sexual assault and abuse? No. Did the Commonwealth agree to the establishment of a national commissioner for children and young people, as recommended by the Protecting vulnerable children Senate report? No. Did the Commonwealth agree to the recommendation of the Forgotten Australians report to establish and manage a national reparations fund for the survivors of institutional abuse and other care settings? No.

Time and again in its response to the unanimous recommendations of the Senate inquiry reports—note I said ‘unanimous’: all parties—the Commonwealth deferred to the states on constitutional grounds. There was no national leadership taken whatsoever. Not only were these reports about delivering some sense of justice and a fair go for the hundreds of thousands directly affected last century; they were also about the legions of children in need of child protection in the future. Now we finally do have the Commonwealth showing some leadership. I welcome it, but it is needed more than in the Northern Territory, and it is needed more than in Indigenous communities in the other states and territories. It is also needed in the non-Indigenous community.

The situation is not new. Many reports previous to the Little children are sacred report have made similar and shocking findings that are also about non-Aboriginal people and children. In his address to the Sydney Institute on 25 June, the Prime Minister stated in relation to the Northern Territory emergency response:

... the full power and resources of the Commonwealth will be directed to making lasting change, where we can, in the daily lives and future prospects of the most vulnerable fellow citizens in our nation.

That is a very admirable statement. But he does not mean that meaningful action will follow for all children of every colour at risk across Australia, because if he did mean that he would be doing something to show that he means that.

The Prime Minister is now on the record as stating that where there is an obvious gap in the delivery of services the Commonwealth should assume an ‘overwatch’ role and that, where the Commonwealth can make a difference, arguably it should. If the eyes are going to be picked out of federal-state relations then the weeping eye of child protection must be targeted by the Commonwealth.

The principles and strategies for effective action are known and the evidence for what will work is available. It is the absence of responsibility, of political will, of resources and of the commitment to long-term policies and budgets that impedes addressing child sexual assault and abuse effectively across all the states and territories of our nation. The grave issue of child sexual assault in all of Australia and its long-term consequences is a matter of national concern and deserves national leadership. The abused children who become adults who were abused need specific attention. Those who have been abused in the past need as much attention from this government as those it is trying to save from being abused in the future.

Lastly, I want to talk about alcohol. Here is another area where Commonwealth leadership is weak. Australians are alarmed at youth binge drinking, nightclub assaults, the fact they cannot walk the streets safely, domestic violence and mayhem on the roads. I know there is the National Alcohol Strategy, but it is weak. What is needed is to inquire, with particular regard to significantly reducing alcohol abuse in Australia, especially in geographic or demographic ‘hot spots’, into what the Commonwealth, states and territories should separately and jointly do with respect to the pricing of alcohol, including taxation; the marketing of alcohol; and regulating the distribution, availability and consumption of alcohol. The inquiry must take into account economic as well as social issues; alcohol rehabilitation and education; the need for a flexible, adaptable regulatory regime; and the need for a consistent, harmonised approach.

The coalition will not do it. Just today they voted against doing it. They think it is easier just to concentrate on the Northern Territory. That is not enough. I say to the coalition: it is to your shame that you will not do something positive about these matters.