Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Greens opposes clauses 3 to 5 in the following terms:

(1)    Clauses 3 to 5, page 3 (line 7) to page 4 (line 24), TO BE OPPOSED.

The Greens oppose clauses 3 to 5. This covers one of the clauses that we just talked about, on the Racial Discrimination Act. I appreciate that we have already had that debate and dealt with those two amendments, so I will not go there again. It also covers the Crime Commission, which we have had some debate about, and the permit system. I appreciate we will have amendments that specifically relate to some of the other issues later. This contribution goes to the fact that the government is amending the permit system. Again, we do not believe that the government has demonstrated the positive benefit that this is going to have for the community in terms of dealing with child abuse and violence. We believe there is evidence to suggest that this will in fact negatively impact on the community’s ability to deal with these issues. I do appreciate—it is splitting hairs to a certain extent—that the government says that these permits are only going to apply to a small percentage of Aboriginal land and will remove the need for permits on roads and town leases. However, as came out in the committee report on a number of occasions and as has been put straight to me as well, the community are very worried about how they are going to police the permit system. Once people are allowed into a community—for example, tourists—how will they know to stay to the town boundary? Who is going to police it? It is going to be impossible to police people coming in to make sure they just stay in the designated areas that they do not need a permit to go into. Those are very significant issues.

The other point that has been made on a number of occasions and that also came up at the Senate inquiry into Indigenous visual arts is that the permit system is very important for stopping carpetbaggers coming into communities. It was put to us very strongly by Marion Scrymgour, the Northern Territory minister who is now responsible for child protection and also appeared at the Senate inquiry into Indigenous visual arts, who made a very strong case for why the permit system was important for protecting community art centres, artists and the art industry in the Northern Territory. So, again, we do not believe that this is a necessary measure, and it could have a negative impact. We do not support the removal of the permit system.

The government said that they received, I think, 100 submissions—it might have been over 100 submissions—when they had a consultation period on this issue late last year and this year. They said that they regarded those submissions as confidential and therefore would not release them to the committee so that we could see what community members actually said about the permit system. They maintained that there was support for removal of the permit system. Well, I can tell you that the emails that I have had certainly do not support the removal of the permit system. I have had people email me many examples of why they think retaining the permit system as is is important.

As has been put to me on a number of occasions, the permit system is not perfect and some people who should have been excluded through the permit system have come into towns—I know that. As I said, it has not been perfect. But just because it is not perfect does not mean that you should take it away. People break other laws and you do not take those laws away. You do not amend the laws because some people break those laws. Just because the permit system has not been perfect does not mean you should get rid of it. Communities have argued very strongly to me that they want the permit system to remain because it is important to them to be able to control who comes onto their land. It is important to them to be able to manage who comes onto their land and to keep out perpetrators, grog runners and people that may be bringing in illegal substances. They do not think that it is a good measure to amend the permit system. The Greens do not think it is a good idea to change the permit system, and that is why we are opposing this particular provision by the government.

We went through the issues around the Crime Commission in quite a lot of detail in the previous debate. The Greens maintain our opposition to the changes the government wants to make to the Australian Crime Commission. We believe, as we articulated in the debate just then and in a previous debate, that it is racially discriminatory. We believe that, if you are going to give the Australian Crime Commission these powers, they should apply to all violence and child abuse. We do not support those provisions that the government is trying to bring in either.

This bill also deals with the provision of infrastructure on Aboriginal land, and this amendment covers those provisions as well. We have some very strong concerns about these particular provisions and the rights that the provisions give the Commonwealth under these clauses. What I would like to ask the minister specifically on this one is: how does the government think the provisions of the permits, where they are only applying to certain areas, are going to be policed? I think they say that the permits still remain in 98 per cent of cases. How does the government see the permits being policed for people remaining in the areas they do not have to have a permit for? When I asked Aboriginal community members, they did not know how they would be able to police access to areas where you do need a permit system and they are extremely concerned about how they would keep people out of specific sacred sites and off specific areas. They felt that this system was taking away their ability to control access to those areas. I would like the government to explain how they envisage this system being implemented.