Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

There was absolutely no alcohol on board, which was very pleasing. I think these powers really negate any argument at all that the permit system needs to stay to give police extra powers to protect people within the community.

There is another issue that I am still a bit miffed about. Before the intervention and the Little children are sacred report and all of the other reports about the circumstances in the communities, what was absolutely self-evident to the people who visited the communities was that the communities were under the permit system. The permit system existed, yet it did not provide any level of protection. We had unbelievable circumstances prior to the intervention, and the permit system did not protect any of those people. People said that with the permit system there was this notion that someone with villainous and evil intent could say, ‘I know: I would like to smuggle some drugs into the community,’ or, I’d like to go to that Aboriginal community to go and do things; I’d better go and get a permit.’ That would be important on the list of a villain. He would go to the Central Land Council and submit an application for a permit. The police themselves have said that the permit system does not actually stop any of the substance abuse and other criminal behaviours of people visiting the communities. In fact, I think it is widely accepted that most of the apprehensions—in the high 90s in percentage terms—are in fact people who live in those communities. The others are unknown but, principally, that is the case.

I am not really sure what else you need to discuss in terms of the permit system. I do know, as does Senator Crossin—she talked about this in her speech on the second reading—that there was a terrible lot of resistance in the communities. People have come to me in this place and said: ‘I think it is an outrage, Nigel, that you are supporting legislation that lets people come in and walk all over our sacred sites, lets them come into our house,’—imagine that—‘lets them watch the television, lets them walk around the place and lets them do what they like, with whoever, all over my country with no permission at all. I think that is an outrage.’ So do I, I have to say. But that is not what the cessation of the permit system was really all about. It was about one specific road, a gazetted road into a community—not the myriad roads that go in but one specific road. It was generally the communal area or a part of the township. Generally speaking, it gave access to facilities like the medical facility, the post office and, potentially, the barge landing or the airport. That is what it really did.

I am not surprised that people were absolutely outraged by this legislation in the consultation on it, because they completely had the wrong end of the stick. I do not know how they got that idea. I am told that people came to the community and told them that that was the way. I would really love to know who those people were, because that would be about the most evil thing you could perpetrate on a community—to tell a community that naive that this was what was going to happen and to frighten people, saying, ‘We are going to do nasty things to your sacred sites and come into your house.’ I think that is nothing short of evil.

We do not seem to have a motive to now say we really need the permit system. In this legislation it is suggested that we give the minister the power to provide permits. I will not verbal the government, but I understood they were saying, ‘We’re going to be providing access to journalists.’ That is a great thing, except that, in the legislation, the fine print talks about defined areas and community areas. Well, first of all, the notion that journalists are somehow exempt from this system is not the same as going to a minister and the minister saying, ‘Here is specifically where you can go.’ That is not what I understood. I understood that the proposal from Labor was that journalists would be exempt from the permit system, that they would not need a permit. No doubt the minister or government advisers will be able to show me that aspect of the legislation that says journalists are exempt and how they will exempt them, but I certainly cannot see it. As I see it, journalists are still going to require permits. That is an interesting process, and I thought they might be able to explain it. Of course I and the opposition support it, but we think it should go much further than that.

These are closed communities and they continue to be closed. There are all sorts of closed communities, and I have been thinking about what it is like to live in a closed community. If you speak to people in prison, they will tell you what it is like to be in a closed community. There are no journalists. There is no reporting. You are shut off from the outside world. Yes, you get visitors and those sorts of things, but fundamentally that is how it is. Not surprisingly, the sorts of violence and the sort of abuse that we find in prisons, which is largely unreported because people always feel intimidated, is not completely different from the issues that we find in some of these prescribed communities.

I think we need to move to the single most important reason why we should be able to open these communities up by having a single gazetted road and access to aspects of the communal area. The reason is that the intervention has a number of phases. There are ones that are perhaps unpopular, where it is hard to see how they are going to really help these children and how they are going to make intergenerational change. But the roads are the arteries to opportunities that other people around Australia take for granted. Every other community on the east coast of the same size as these Indigenous communities enjoys access to the economy. People drive in, they put fuel in their car, they have a hamburger, they stay in the hotel, they go and look at the magnificent products and they do all sorts of other things.

Within the Northern Territory we have the single best, most magnificent tourist products on offer. People come to Australia looking for two things: a biodiversity experience and an Indigenous experience. Only six per cent on exit from Australia say they had the Indigenous experience that they wanted. I have a vision that, if we open these communities up, people will be able to go there and experience Indigenous Australia, and the Indigenous Australians will benefit in so many ways, not only because other people will understand their culture but also because they will be exposed to economic opportunities.

So many people who live in Indigenous communities that I know and visit have had training. They know all about interpretive work, but there is nobody there to take out. There are very few opportunities to actually use the skills that they have beyond their natural skills and their wonderful knowledge of country. I remember going to many places during the election where people from the Labor Party had quite reasonably said, ‘If we are elected, we’ll keep the permit system.’ Because of what the people in the communities thought the permit system actually was, they gave some pretty overwhelming support to the Labor Party, and I am not surprised about that.

If we allow the permit system as it stands today to remain unchanged, these communities will remain unchanged and there will not be the opportunities that my sons and daughters take for granted. I think that everybody in this place should think very carefully, because this is the most fundamental reversal of the intervention. It was clearly the intent that we would have an emergency intervention for the sake of normalisation and stabilisation, because these places should be like everywhere else. Making sure that the permit system provides all of the things I have been talking about is fundamental to the future of intervention.

We will not be supporting schedule 3, items 1 to 9 of the bill, and the reason for that is very clear, as I have indicated. There is really no motive any more to say we need a permit system. We are talking about public roads, not private land. If you go anywhere off those roads you are on private land. It is a bit like driving down the highway—there is a fence on the side of the highway and you might see a sheep on the other side of it, but you do not go over the fence because that would be trespassing. You will still require a permit to go and do things like that, so there is no motive any more to keep the permit system.

The ministerial power to somehow allow journalists to go into these communities of course is a good thing, but obviously it does not go anywhere near far enough. They will remain closed communities. If you compare the communities in some of the prescribed areas that are closed with communities on the east coast that are similar in terms of size, demographics and opportunities, the fundamental difference is the latter are doing fantastically and the former have absolutely no bloody opportunities at all. The single reason for that is that they do not have access to economic opportunities and they are closed communities. They will continue to be closed communities, and that is why we will not be supporting these parts of the legislation.