Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I reiterate the Greens’ opposition to these amendments. We have opposed all along the exemption from the Racial Discrimination Act. We continue to oppose that—in fact, I will very shortly be putting amendments to overturn the exemption from the RDA. I point out that the point about the government’s new approach on this one is that there is no exemption from the RDA and requiring consultation is consistent with the very first recommendation of the Little children are sacred report, which gets misquoted widely and used as justification for this discriminatory and racist approach that is taken through the NTER. The authors of the report disassociate themselves from that approach. The very first recommendation says:

It is critical that both governments commit to genuine consultation with Aboriginal people in designing initiatives for Aboriginal communities.

So, even though I do not agree with the government’s approach on a whole range of things on the intervention, I do agree with the government’s approach on this—that is, they are implementing that recommendation requiring consultation with Aboriginal communities before the decision is made by the minister over the R18+ exclusion. We definitely will not be supporting the opposition amendments.