Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

It is important to note at the outset that throughout all of this debate, and indeed debate in the other place, there has been no Aboriginal voice present to be able to contribute. That remains a core problem for our parliament. Obviously none of us here can do anything about that at the moment. We need Indigenous voices present and playing a fundamental and key role in the debates that we have in this place when we are all talking about what needs to be done for them. Their not being able to have their voice present in this debate is a serious problem and something we still need to do a lot more about to tackle.

That makes it doubly disappointing that the one process that would have provided a genuine opportunity for the input of Indigenous voices—the Senate committee process—ended up being such a farcical and truncated process. We obviously did hear from a few Aboriginal representatives—nowhere near enough and for nowhere near long enough. Nonetheless, the Senate has at least through its debate here this week played a useful role in exploring some of the many, many issues—some of them quite complex—that are contained within this legislation.

There are five bills before us. I would indicate that the Democrats will support the two appropriation bills and I would ask that they be put separately when the final vote is taken. We do need more resources, of course. I am not convinced that all of the resources in those appropriation bills will be wisely spent, but certainly we are not going to in any way be standing in the way of those resources going into those communities. Of course, it must be emphasised that many things are happening, and many more things need to happen completely outside the specifics of the details of the other legislation we are dealing with here today and through this week.

However, the Democrats cannot support the other three pieces of legislation. We have tried to improve them throughout the week and make them workable, but we have not been successful. We did support them at the second reading stage because we wanted to genuinely engage with the process and see if we could make them workable, but we have not succeeded in that. I am not surprised we have not succeeded, but I think it was important to make the effort. Consequently, we cannot support them at this final stage. They each contain some measures that are completely unacceptable to the Democrats. The key reason why they are unacceptable is that we do not believe that they will work and I certainly have serious concerns, at least about some of them, that they could well cause further harm.

I am certainly happy to give plaudits when they are due to a politician from any party. I think my record shows that. I am quite prepared to acknowledge the priority and focus which the current minister for Indigenous affairs has given the area. I have for a long time called for all of us to give greater priority to the issues affecting Indigenous Australians. I would hope that this debate is not the start and finish of that—that we do maintain that priority for Indigenous peoples across Australia and on all of the issues of concern to them.

As one of a small number of senators—another is my Democrat colleague Senator Andrew Murray—I have called repeatedly in the Senate for much greater priority to be given to the protection of children. I also welcome the fact that the Indigenous affairs minister is seeking to do that. But, whilst it is important to welcome and acknowledge a determination to act, one cannot be expected to give plaudits to actions that I do not believe will work. Good intentions are not good enough. Ideological frolics or narrowly focused obsessions are no substitute for practical results and evidence based measures. Frankly, we still have not seen a lot of that. We have seen a lot of assertions but not a lot of evidence to demonstrate that these things will work. There is a lot of evidence around to detail why many of these things will not work, because a lot of these things are not new and have been tried before. Certainly we know the enormous damage that has been done in years gone by when governments have basically taken total control over the lives of Indigenous people, often with the best of intentions. I have great fear that the same will happen again.

Also disappointing is the attitude that is prevalent with Minister Brough in particular of that total certainty that he is 100 per cent right about everything and his complete inability, it appears, to listen to or even acknowledge other views. I certainly do not suggest that I or the Democrats have it all right; that is why it is all the more important that you seek to work together. Last night I mentioned the positive results that have been achieved by people working together on the issue of petrol sniffing, for example. We have not seen that here.

Again I draw the Senate’s attention to the very clear cut and quite specific comments made by people like Noel Pearson who are seen as being strong supporters of the government’s actions. He has said that this legislation ‘needs to be decisively improved in some crucial respects’, and that has not happened. He has said that it would be a ‘grave mistake’ for the federal government to be intransigent to amendments to this legislation—well, they have been. They have made a grave mistake and, unfortunately, the consequences of that grave mistake could mean quite a lot more significant harm to Indigenous Australians. I hope that does not happen. I hope that very quickly there will be recognition of the serious flaws here and that amendments will be made. I have no doubt that we will be back amending some of this legislation, possibly quite soon. I certainly hope amendments do come through to improve it, because that desperately needs to happen. But it has not happened here.

One thing I think Mr Brough was right in saying at the Press Club the other day was that if you actually do not think this will work then you should not support it. I understand why the Labor Party are taking the position they are taking, but I think it is a serious problem. There is no doubt that many in the Labor Party have serious concerns about the workability of this package, and so they should. At the end of the day you have to take a stand on what you think is right and whether the legislation will work or not. I do not think this will work. I think it is dangerous and damaging, and for those reasons I cannot support it. But I and the Democrats will continue to give priority to Indigenous issues, to follow through on what is happening here, to try and provide an avenue for voices to be heard and to encourage the government to listen.

I must mention the example of Minister Brough in the Press Club the other day, where he made comments when talking about the Little children are sacred report that I just find horrendously insulting. There was this continual suggestion that nobody else has done anything and that nobody else cares but him. He asked whether, come the Monday morning after the report was released and the parliament sat, he had heard any questions on this issue asked by the Democrats, the Greens or the opposition. ‘No,’ he said. I know he is in the House of Representatives and we are in the Senate—I think he has probably figured that out—but, as the minister here, Minister Scullion, would know, we quite specifically asked him a direct question. I made a very long late night adjournment speech on the issue and raised it in another speech. My colleagues also put out statements about it and any number of Indigenous and other groups around the country put out statements. I cannot speak for the other parties on that.

When you are getting that sort of slur in front of the entire press gallery at a Press Club function, saying that none of us even raised a peep when we were here directly asking the government ‘what are you going to do about it’ in parliament, apart from it really getting up my nose, understandably—that is neither here nor there; you get used to that stuff in this place—it is a suggestion that no-one is even hearing a word of. There is no recognition that anyone is even saying anything, even when you are asking questions directly in the parliament. To me that is an indication of just how incapable the minister is—certainly that minister; I am not reflecting on the minister in the chamber at the moment—of even knowing what other people are saying. That is the frustration. I said this in my opening comments. This is an issue where there is actually so much common ground. There is so much agreement about the need to do so much more and there is so much potential for people to work together. For the government to take an approach where they actually shun that and put big bazookas right in the middle of the common ground until they can blow it all away and people are stuck on either side of a great canyon is just such a tragedy and almost guarantees it will be a missed opportunity.

It makes it quite hard to sit in the middle ground when you have people firing bazookas from either side of the canyon, because you tend to cop them from everywhere, but I see that as a key part of our role—to continue to rebuild the common ground that is there and that desire that is there amongst Indigenous people. They are the ones who have been calling out for so long for strong action, priority, extra resources and support. The moment that you respond to their calls is not the moment when you should stop listening to them. Simply too much of that has happened. I see it as of key importance from here on in to make sure that that stops happening.

It is also a very unfortunate indication that there is a lot of politics being played here. Again I am talking about Minister Brough’s approach. In passing, I would note that Minister Scullion’s approach throughout this debate has actually been quite a positive one, I think, given the constraints within which we are all having to operate; I am not passing these comments at him. But it just shows how much politics is being played when—again looking at the minister’s Press Club address this week—so much of it is about attacking everybody else; attacking all the other political parties; attacking all of civil society. Everybody else has failed and he is the saviour. As I said at the start, I welcome the fact that he is giving priority to this, and I think there is still potential to do a lot of good for that reason. You can have all the best policies in the world, but if you are not actually giving it priority nothing will work. You will be distracted, and you have to follow through on something like this because it is an issue where the hard yards are part of what is necessary.

It is an issue in which the inevitable consequence of playing politics is that everybody else ends up having to do the same thing, because it is the only way to engage if that is the way the debate is run. Particularly when we are talking about Indigenous issues and particularly when we are talking about children, it is too important for that. I certainly urge Minister Brough and those within the government who have some influence on these things to seek to change the approach. It is not just about the black letter of what is in the laws that we are about to pass; it is the approach that is taken that is pivotal.

If there is not that respect, that cooperation, then your chances of success are minimised. For example, in September last year the Senate passed a motion unanimously expressing support for child protection to be made a national priority. When I initially put that motion forward, it was voted against by coalition senators because that was what they were told to do by the minister. The minister wanted me to amend the motion to make it beat up on the states more. I was not going to do that, because the motion was about all of us acknowledging that we all need to give it priority.

To their credit, once coalition senators realised what they were voting against, they got on the phone and asked: ‘What the hell are you doing? Why are we voting against this?’ People got in touch and asked: ‘Can we redo that and amend the motion a little bit?’ I could have just said no, jumped up and down and said, ‘All of the coalition senators have just voted against giving priority to child protection.’ It would have made a good press release, frankly, and it would have been something I could have used repeatedly to beat them over the head with. But I did not do that, because my aim is to try and get shared commitment to giving priority to it.

So I recommitted the motion with a few very minor amendments to help people save face, and that is what is on the record. I think it is much better that that is on the record, because I can continually point to the fact that the Senate unanimously expressed support for child protection to be made a national priority. And, frankly, we still have not done enough to enact that across the board. That, to me, is what needs to happen in the approach that is taken, and there simply has not been much of that in the way this whole legislative process has occurred.

I remind the Senate that the call was made by the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the Northern Territory for this legislation to be deferred just to the next sitting week in September—only for a month. That would have enabled senators and the Senate committee to get out to the Territory, to hear from people directly and to not just have to rely on second-hand anecdotes or five minutes of questioning before a committee hearing here in Canberra. Frankly, I think it is a real insult to the people of the Territory as a whole, as well as to Indigenous people, that the Senate did not provide them with that respect. This legislation will have enormous impacts on everybody in the Territory, and it does go beyond the Territory as well, of course, in some respects.

To deliberately shun the opportunity of hearing from people in the Territory and of going there is totally unacceptable. At no stage has anything been pointed to in this legislation that means that, by passing it tomorrow, a child would be saved the next day. They are important measures, and we are certainly not wanting to hold them up. Neither were the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the Northern Territory. That is why they suggested September, and that is why the Democrats did not support the second reading amendment of the Greens that sought to put it off to October and rerun the whole second reading debate.

It is important to get on with it. I do not want to be falsely accused of deliberately trying to hold this up, because we are not. But we want to do it properly, and we should do it in consultation. It is particularly bizarre—and I know that people have made this point, but it does need to be reinforced—that we have had the Prime Minister making huge amounts of play, quite rightly, on the failure of the Queensland government to engage in any consultation with Queenslanders about what is happening with their local councils. We have had the Prime Minister saying things like, ‘It is a total travesty of democracy to refuse to consult people about what you are going to do that is going to affect them.’

Whatever people might think about what is happening with local councils in Queensland, it is nothing compared to what is going to be done to Aboriginal communities, whole towns, throughout the Northern Territory. It is going to affect them in an enormous way. I hope that effect is positive. I am sure it will be a mixture. There will be some things done that will be positive and there will be some that I am very concerned will be negative. But you cannot have that double standard of saying that it is absolutely crucial that people be consulted about what you are going to do that is going to affect them about amalgamating local councils, with all due respect to them, and then have government moving in and taking over virtually every aspect of people’s lives in entire townships and saying, ‘There is no time to consult.’

As was pointed out in the debate yesterday by Senator Siewert, when emergency intervention relief teams go into places in an international setting, one of the first things that they do is consult with people about how to go about things and when to put the first bricks in place. That has not been done and you cannot just say, ‘We cannot do it because it is an emergency.’ If you genuinely believe that you cannot do it because it is an emergency then you do not know what you are doing, frankly.

The other point that has to be made is that this debate has categorically demonstrated that the government have dismissed the Little children are sacred report. They used the failure of the Northern Territory government to respond to it as their justification for intervention—and I am certainly not defending the Northern Territory government, let me tell you that. One of the most consistent messages I heard from people, whether they were for or against what the federal government was doing, was that none of them had a kind word for the Northern Territory government’s actions to date. I am not precious about state rights at all; I am precious about getting results.

Overriding the Northern Territory government does not bother me if it is going to be for good, but the federal government used the fact that the Northern Territory government had not responded to the Little children are sacred report as their justification for all of this. Now the federal government have not responded; they have dismissed the whole thing. But they continue to hide behind it as a justification. Minister Brough did it again at the Press Club, referring to it a number of times. He again referred to the first recommendation, saying, ‘This is why we had to do this: the first recommendation said it was a national emergency.’ He again ignored the second sentence of the first recommendation, which talked about doing it in consultation and partnership, and the government have basically dismissed all of the others.

We had the travesty of the Senate committee charged with an extremely brief inquiry into this legislation not even being able to hear from the authors of the report. It is not that the report is perfect but, if nothing else, those people have spent the last year talking to Aboriginal people all around the Territory about precisely this issue of child protection, and to think that they had nothing worthwhile to say to us about this is ludicrous.

In summary, there are measures in the bills that the Democrats do support—measures to do with alcohol, pornography, policing measures, community stores and some aspects to do with governance—but there are fatal flaws within each of them. For that reason, we cannot support them. We are very concerned that they will not work and will do more harm, but we will keep working with the issue and we will seek to try to continue to work together with people wherever possible, because all of us still need to continue to give this priority. We all need to follow through on all of the words that we have been saying this week, and that particularly includes that this has to be an issue for the long haul.