Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I want to respond briefly to Senator Scullion’s opposition to our amendments. All I can say is that I appreciate that he is very tired, but I found the response a little rambling. As I am very tired as well, it may be that I was not hearing well. But, quite frankly, claims that ending the permit system will create employment, end the drugs, remove the climate of fear and bring about world peace seem to me to be claims a little beyond what is rational or defensible. If Senator Scullion thinks that, I will take him around a few of the Western Australian communities, where there is no pass system, and I will show him the drugs, the unemployment, the hopelessness, the poverty and the abuse. Then we could both agree that the pass system has not protected people from that, but nor has the nonexistence of a pass system provided the sorts of protections that opening up is allegedly going to provide.

Quite frankly, I also do not share Senator Crossin’s optimism about non-northern Australians visiting the north, visiting Aboriginal communities, seeing the shocking state of those communities and somehow coming back and doing something about it. Hundreds and thousands of Australians who have been through those communities settle back into their peaceful existence and pretend it is not happening. In fact, successive ministers have done it. I remember in this government all those ministers who went for photo opportunities at Wadeye—successive FaCS ministers. I think the Prime Minister went there. They all have the photo opportunities. Then when the report comes out and we assess what has happened there it is a complete disaster—failure to follow through on promises, failure of big government to deliver to those people. But what we are now to understand is that the government are saying: ‘We got the previous one wrong, and the one before that wrong, but we’ve got the answer this time. We’re going to give ourselves more power to control their lives and we’re going to really fix it this time.’

Maybe I am getting old and cynical, but I actually think we have to get some empowerment of Indigenous people, some ownership of solutions. We cannot change social norms. We can provide support but we are not going to change the social norms that apply in Indigenous communities. That is only going to happen if you empower the local Indigenous people. Part of that is protecting them from fear, giving them the rule of law and providing them with services—services that this government and its predecessors have not delivered them. You can go on about police. I cannot see us maintaining a police station ongoing in all these communities for the next 50 years. It will not happen. We all know it will not happen. You have already blown your funding from what was supposed to be tens of millions to $500 million and rising. When it goes off the political radar, as it has every other time, some of the commitment will wane and some of the funding will wane. While there is that enthusiasm, while there is that focus, we must build the Indigenous communities’ capacity to develop social norms, develop economies and develop a sense of ownership of a future that has hope. That is much easier said than done. These measures are about putting in place some of the building blocks for that. That is why Labor is supporting them. But I am not sure enough thought has been given to the next step. And the failure to consult with Indigenous people, the failure to give them a sense of ownership of this, is a fatal flaw at the moment. Unless the government actually listens and thinks about that, we will fail in this endeavour.

Quite frankly, I worry about this sort of big government response where people think that they are going to run Indigenous lives and that somehow we are going to fix all of this. We can provide the building blocks but, in the end, we have to provide the capacity for Indigenous people to do it. The pass system is not the problem. What it does is recognise that Aboriginal people have property rights—this is their land. As well as being a system, it is a symbol of their control over their land. This is about empowering them. They decide who comes there—’and the terms on which they come’. This is about them having some say. Fundamentally, this government cannot cope with that. It cannot cope with the idea that Aboriginal people have control over their land.

The Country Liberal Party in the Northern Territory have not always been great fans of the land rights act. The current government have not been fans of the land rights act. A number of these measures seem to be more about that ideological obsession about challenging Aboriginal control over their land and about making them more like us with 99-year leases so they can have a private home et cetera. Economic opportunity is a key part of the solution. This is more about the government’s inability to cope with Indigenous control and ownership of land, and that reinforces the concerns of communities that other measures in this package, which are well motivated, are somehow to be held up to suspicion. In a number of areas, like the Racial Discrimination Act and this area, you undermine the package. You go too far. You go in a way that adds to cynicism and suspicion and which will ultimately help undermine the success of the program. You do not need to make these changes to the pass system to make these things work. It is a bonus for you, because these are things you want to do anyway. You will actually undermine your capacity.

Labor’s alternative ensures that all those people who should be able to get there can get there. It provides a system by which people can apply to go on to the land. If somebody wants to go in and open a hairdresser’s shop on the corner and wants to get a permit then I am sure they will get a permit. I can take you to a lot of communities in Western Australia, Queensland and New South Wales et cetera where they do not have permit systems but they cannot get anyone to open a hairdresser’s shop on the corner either. It is not the permit system that is stopping that. We would be much better off in passing this set of laws, which so fundamentally take away from Indigenous people a whole range of current rights over land, to provide some recognition that we respect their relationship with the land and their property rights and we do not take away some of those rights just because we can.