Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, would like to contribute to the address-in-reply to the Governor-General’s policy speech. Today there is a great deal of interest in matters to do with Indigenous affairs, especially since the apology to our Indigenous people was made by this parliament last month. As I said in my speech to the Senate on the apology, it is a disgrace that in modern Australia there is a segment of our population whose living standards and circumstances are below what we would regard as acceptable for Australians at large. As I also said at the time, I believe we in the federal parliament should pledge ourselves to overcoming those pockets of Indigenous disadvantage and poverty which exist in our society and to ensuring that our Indigenous citizens are able to enjoy the benefits which living in modern Australia should bring them.

While the apology was an important symbolic gesture, I am concerned that the impression has been created to some degree that the previous government, under the coalition, was less concerned than it might have been about dealing with Aboriginal disadvantage and responding to the needs of our Indigenous people. The facts of the matter show how wrong such an impression is. Today I would like to remind the Senate of some of the important and very practical measures which were provided for the benefit of our Indigenous citizens in the last budget of the Howard government, for 2007-08. It is quite apparent that, far from being indifferent to the needs of our Indigenous people, the Howard government showed a great deal of concern about the general conditions of Indigenous people and a strong commitment to overcoming inequity and ensuring social justice for the Aboriginal people of Australia, who represent about 2.4 per cent of our population.

It is important to understand, in considering issues to do with Indigenous people, that around 70 per cent of our Indigenous people are urbanised and live in large cities such as Perth, Sydney and Brisbane and in the country towns and regional centres of our states. In most cases they are living as ordinary families in the community, doing the things that ordinary families do and accessing the services provided to all members of our society, including health, education, housing and social security. Less than 30 per cent of Indigenous Australians live in the so-called outback—in the Northern Territory, the Central and Western deserts of the Northern Territory and Western Australia, the Kimberley or the north-west of Queensland. That is quite a small percentage of the total Aboriginal population. But while that percentage is small, the problems that Aborigines living in remote areas face are, I do accept, generally more serious. That is why the Howard government initiated the Northern Territory intervention—to deal with some of the more urgent problems which were found to exist in the Northern Territory, as documented in the Little children are sacred report.

Today I would like to remind the Senate of some of the more practical measures the Howard government included in its last budget to improve conditions for Indigenous people in areas of social justice, education, health, housing, economic independence and culture. Firstly, I would like to deal with social justice, which is really an umbrella concept because social justice is about making sure that every Australian—Indigenous and non-Indigenous—has choices about how they live and that they have the means to make those choices in their lives. Social justice covers many areas, such as education, health and housing, and it is the wish of any government that all of its people should have access to these things. The Howard government was in fact very aware of the disadvantage faced by Indigenous Australians and was working very hard towards the general goals, as outlined above, of social justice for Indigenous people. During the term of the Howard government, real spending on Indigenous specific programs increased by 42 per cent and reached a record of $3.5 billion in the last financial year of that government, which of course runs into this year. Total expenditure in last year’s budget for A Better Future for Indigenous Australians—a program of great importance—was $1,349.5 million and covered some 42 individual programs. This included $187.3 million spent on education, $135.4 million spent on health, $293.6 million spent on housing, $234.2 million spent on economic independence and $104.8 million spent on cultural programs.

As I said, the most looked at of the government actions to assist Indigenous Australians in the previous year was probably the Northern Territory intervention. Contrary to claims that it was rushed through parliament without much scrutiny, the bill for the Northern Territory intervention was one of the longest-debated bills in Senate history, with over 27 hours of time devoted in the Senate to considering this particular piece of legislation. Everyone regards it as pivotal in having defined the federal government’s interest in addressing some of the very real problems which existed in the Northern Territory, and which it seems exist also in other parts of the north of Australia, such as the north of Western Australia in Halls Creek, Fitzroy Crossing and Kununurra. Now the government of Western Australia, together with those of other jurisdictions such as Queensland, are seeking to address similar problems.

I will turn to some of the specific headings, such as education. Education is very important to Indigenous people because it is the key to the door of the world for them. Very important is not just education in terms of reading and writing but job skill education. Today, Indigenous students represent about 3.5 per cent of the overall student population of Australia. Something like 3.5 per cent of the Aboriginal population are attending university or other tertiary education compared to about 6.3 per cent of non-Indigenous Australians, so there is certainly a deficit there. But in the last budget the Howard government had programs totalling $187.3 million devoted specifically to assisting Indigenous people in facilitating their education.

The first program was a funding boost which saw an allocation of some $218 million to provide young Indigenous people from remote communities with a new start in life by assisting them with boarding school places and scholarships. These funds were aimed at Indigenous education and training mobility programs, such as the Indigenous Youth Mobility Program, which assisted young people to access quality training in major centres. It was designed to increase the number of places available by 860 to a total of 1,500. Places in the Indigenous Youth Leadership Program were increased to 750. Indigenous Access Scholarships, which assist Indigenous students enrolled in undergraduate courses at university level to meet the costs associated with relocating from remote and rural areas, saw funding increases for an additional 100 scholarships provided to Indigenous students from remote areas to attend tertiary education institutions.

Boarding hostel subsidies were provided to the extent of $43 million to help establish boarding hostels in regional towns that have quality secondary schools. For example, the construction of a new boarding hostel at Kununurra is expected to be completed around the middle of this year. There was $65 million injected into upgrading facilities to provide additional places in a number of existing boarding schools with strong track records of providing secondary school education for young Indigenous people. These were very practical measures to ensure that more Indigenous people participated in the education services provided to Australians in general.

Health is a very important area, of course, in terms of social justice for Indigenous people because generally they have a much poorer health record, with high incidence of kidney disease and diabetes and a lower life expectancy. In the last budget, again in a very practical way, the Howard government allocated $134.5 million to several programs, including the establishment of quality health standards. This saw $36.9 million invested into Indigenous health services for upgrading buildings and clinics, patient information and management systems, staff training and management to enable them to meet Australian healthcare standards.

The Indigenous Community Initiative of the National Illicit Drug Strategy was provided with $14.6 million to fund a variety of programs to provide evidence based Indigenous specific treatment guidelines, together with alcohol awareness products and other resources to enable Indigenous communities to address the misuse of alcohol and drugs. There was a family centred primary healthcare program with $38.2 million provided to existing Aboriginal medical services and primary healthcare service delivery centres. This funded up to 45 additional professionals providing primary health care.

Most importantly perhaps was an enhancement of Telehealth in Western Australia, with $3.1 million of funding coming into a project to enable improved health service delivery for up to 454,000 residents in regional, rural and remote communities across the state of Western Australia. This includes more than 44,900 Indigenous Western Australians. That is very important because it provides the latest technology as a means of delivering health services.

It is interesting to look at a summary of what the Howard government achieved in terms of Indigenous health programs since it came into office in 1996. Under the 10 years of the Howard government, spending on Indigenous health programs increased by a factor of 3.5. So, in other words, 3½ times as much money was spent on Indigenous health programs at the end of the Howard government’s 10-year period in office than was spent at the beginning. Indigenous utilisation of Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme increased by 80 per cent, and there were 50 per cent more Indigenous doctors and 30 per cent more Indigenous nurses in practice at the end of the Howard government’s period of office than at the beginning.

Debate interrupted.