Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to raise some points in relation to an answer given by Senator Evans in his capacity as Minister representing the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs—specifically about the rollback of the permit system in Indigenous communities, which the Labor Party has already announced as policy. This is a very important day for Indigenous Australians. The debate and the discussion that have taken place and the motions that were presented to this chamber and to the other place have demonstrated that. The attendance of hundreds if not thousands of people outside and in Parliament House relayed the significance of this day for many Indigenous Australians. Yet Senator Evans has suggested that the rollback of the permit system will somehow preserve and protect Indigenous Australians from those that seek to prey upon their vulnerabilities. I take issue with this because it is simply absurd logic. To suggest that the instigation of a permit system will prevent from entering people—who are already prepared to break the law in so many other ways is just absurd. These people are paedophiles; these people are sly groggers; they are porn peddlers; they are the undesirable filth of Australian communities. They do not care two hoots for the law. They will go in there and they will pursue their nefarious aims irrespective of whether a permit system is in place. This is a very serious issue.

What we do not need in this country is a return to a separation, where one part of our land is only for Indigenous people and lawbreakers and the rest of Australia is prevented from being there. What we need is an open system, where people within these communities can be held to account, where the people that seek to prey on their vulnerabilities will be held to account. We need a system where police can go in and where health workers can go in and check on the welfare of people. We need a system where journalists can go in and continue to hold those within these communities to account. The importance of this is not simply in my mind. This is shared, as Senator Scullion pointed out, by the first Indigenous president of the Australian Labor Party. Whilst I normally do not quote Labor organisational figures, I think that Mr Warren Mundine, a former national president, sums it up pretty well. He told the Weekend Australian that the move to reinstate the permit system could ‘kill any chance the communities had of economic development’. He said it could kill any chance that Aboriginal communities had of economic development. He went on:

The permit system didn’t stop crime. In fact ... crime has flourished under the permit system so it’s a fallacy to say that it helps law-and-order problems.

I will acknowledge that Senator Evans has a deep and meaningful interest in the plight of Indigenous people in this country, but who is better qualified to talk about it and to make an objective assessment of it? Is it an Indigenous leader who led Senator Evans’s party or Senator Evans himself? I would suggest it is the former. This is a very serious issue because the very future of Indigenous people in our country is at stake.

Minister Macklin has simply decided to roll back the clock on Indigenous affairs, pursuing some determination that has existed within the Labor Party for the last 20 years and not acknowledging for a moment that we need a new approach. Today is a very symbolic day. It is a day about moving on. It is a day about moving forward. It is not a day on which we should be forced to talk about rolling back a system that is starting to provide meaningful benefits for Indigenous people in this country. It is appalling that on such a day Minister Evans, representing Minister Macklin, is prepared to undo a lot of the symbolic gestures that have gone forward. I would encourage the Labor Party to revisit this policy because it is an appalling one that is playing politics with people’s lives. It is simply an ideological quest being pursued by the Labor Party.