Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to incorporate a speech in the second reading stage of this debate.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

NT EMERGENCY RESPONSE LEGISLATION SPEECH

I want to contribute to this debate as chair of the Senate’s standing committee with responsibility for indigenous affairs. Although the Community Affairs Committee did not conduct the inquiry held into this package of bills it did manage to travel to the NT during July—as part of another inquiry—to make contact briefly with some of the people involved with and affected by these momentous changes.

As such I wish to indicate my support for this landmark legislation, though in doing so I acknowledge that no-one involved in this issue would pretend that these bills embody the complete or final answer to the endemic and tragic problems facing vulnerable communities in the NT. Rather, it is fair to see the legislation as a beachhead in a new and better-resourced attack on the appalling conditions facing many indigenous Australians. In particular it seeks to place a cordon of protection around a class of indigenous children who have hitherto been essentially without protection against the most horrific forms of physical, social and sexual abuse.

That is the context in which the legislation, and the truncated process in the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee used to examine it, should be considered. That process has not been as comprehensive and thorough as the Senate would view as customary; but the extent of the emergency this legislation responds to does not permit any more comprehensive or thorough approach.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child contains, in my view, a number of obligations which it is the Australian community’s duty to uphold. That convention imposes the obligation to protect children against abuse and exploitation and to ensure their survival and security. In many ways—generally more by omission than by commission—we Australians have failed to honour that obligation in the case of indigenous communities in remote parts of this nation. This package is an attempt to reverse that failing, however imperfect or incomplete that attempt may at this time be.

The package pushes aside or suspends some conventions with respect to the conduct of indigenous policy in this country. I regret that, but I do not apologise for it. It is a necessary and measured response to a real emergency.

I note the recommendations the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee makes in respect of this package. I regard these recommendations as sensible and supportable, and they go some way to ensuring that the detailed consideration of the long term impacts of these changes which some in this debate have called for actually occurs. What is clear to me, however, is that this consideration should not be a pretext for delayed action on these issues. Such delay, when so much compelling evidence of a failure of policy has been presented, would be a breach of our duty to a group of extremely vulnerable Australians.