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

I thank Senator Scullion for his question. In doing so, I apologise for not recognising his election to the position of Leader of the Nationals in the Senate when we dealt with such matters. I congratulate him on his appointment. I never quite understand how one can be a leader of a party one does not belong to, but there you go. It might say something about the rest of the party, but I will not go there.

When the former government introduced its legislation on the intervention in the Northern Territory, the former government received the support of the Labor Party. We gave bipartisan support to the emergency intervention in the Northern Territory because we accepted that there was a crisis and that there was widespread child abuse and that those issues needed to be tackled. But, during the debate on the bills, the Labor Party raised a number of issues on which we diverged from the government and on which we urged the then government to take a different stance. One of those issues was the question of the permits. Senator Scullion will recall that he and I were involved in that debate. The Labor Party has taken the view that the permit system is an important part of protecting those communities from exploitation by outside forces. At the time, there was support from a very senior Northern Territory police spokesman for this. They wanted to be able to control who went into those very vulnerable communities.

The Rudd Labor government has accepted the argument that the permits play a useful part of an overall protection system and ensure greater law and order for, stability in and protection of those communities. I know that there is a divergence across the chamber about that. We have had that debate a number of times. The Labor Party and the Labor government are committed to reinstituting a permit system which has the capacity to allow those communities to have some say over who comes into those communities. As Senator Scullion would be well aware, there have been a large number of instances over the years where people of disrepute have sought to access and exploit those communities and take advantage of the people in them.