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

I also rise to speak to the Disallowance of the Social Security (Administration) (Declared income management Areas) Determination 2012 and the four other associated disallowance motions.

I have just listened very carefully to Senator Siewert who is a very credible individual who speaks with great passion about Indigenous communities, but the Greens are a political party that have a longstanding policy of opposing policies whose genesis was part of the Northern Territory emergency response. I am very pleased to see that Senator Crossin, the other senator for the Northern Territory, is also in the chamber and I hope she makes a contribution to the debate today. It is one of those rare moments where we will agree pretty much on everything, I hope, which is probably once a decade. Both parties have spoken along the same lines and pretty much because we can speak with some confidence.

When the Northern Territory emergency response legislation was first considered—obviously, very controversial legislation—in the last year of the Howard government, I can recall assisting its passage. I think it was the second longest debate in Federation. I was minister at the time and I took it through this place. I understood it was very controversial. There were lots and lots of question about what if and what would happen. I can understand people's concerns about whether it had a net positive impact some time ago.

It is useful to look at its genesis. This was a response not because we decided we would just like people in the Northern Territory to have some assistance in managing their income; it came from what was quite clearly a shocking report. Evidence was given in over 73 communities, evidence was given freely and expertly in a particular way. I think that it should be the benchmark for taking evidence in many of these communities from witnesses, women, victims. The report, amongst other things, reported the systematic sexual abuse of children. Whilst that was the headline out of it, it made some very important links between chronic alcoholism and the dysfunctionality that followed: the breakdown of law and order—and I am talking about customary and mainstream law—and the breakdown of what any human being would consider to be social norms.

Some of the evidence was quite clear: why were communities so dysfunctional? How come we had this level of breakdown of social norms and lack of responsibility from parents—did they know where their kids were; just the whole horror story. And wherever we talked there was alcohol. It was variously described by people from both sides of this place as 'the rivers of grog'.

Clearly, that had to stop and, again, there was quite a clear, causal link between the availability of cash as a payment, invariably from Newstart or some welfare payment in the community. Sadly, there are far too many people in the communities who are poor. That is the circumstance: they are just simply poor. Far too many of them are reliant on a welfare payment. Of course, I think that the link has been clearly made between that and access to alcohol and other substances of abuse.

Therefore, the cash payments had to be quarantined, or, 50 per cent of them had to be set aside. That ensured a 50 per cent reduction in the funds available to buy alcohol. It is very simple. A lot of people try to confuse it, but that was in effect what happened. Fifty per cent of the funds in the community, whether they were in your bank or were taken out were simply not available to buy alcohol. It was not available to buy cigarettes, it was not available to buy pornography and a whole range of annoying things like that—not cigarettes so much, but I think that people were pretty embarrassed about the pornography thing, and rightly so. But clearly, the main motivation was to stop the alcohol.

Anecdotally, and from my observations, it was quite startling. I saw changes which were stark in the communities that I had been travelling around many of for a decade or so, particularly in the northern Northern Territory.

Perhaps the Greens would argue that there were a number of things that may have caused that and that it was not only the income quarantining—perhaps it was the provision of the extra 63 police officers, the Substance Abuse Intelligence Desk or the very intelligent application of law enforcement and compliance to ensure that alcohol did not get out of the community. Sure; that was all part of the Northern Territory Emergency Response legislation. But most importantly, the income quarantining led to a 50 per cent reduction on the funds that could possibly be used to purchase grog, ganja and other substances of abuse.

I think that when looking at this disallowance motion the real question is whether it is more important to look at and listen carefully—which it always is—to the Greens' position or to listen to what is overwhelmingly the position of the communities, particularly the women in those communities, who have been quite vocal and who have made their position on this very, very clear.

I acknowledge to Senator Siewert that at the time, who would have known? As the parliament we often think, 'This will be the solution,' and in five years' time we think, 'Oh, we probably could have tweaked that,'; with the benefit of hindsight, perhaps that would have been the case. But I am not so sure with this particular piece of legislation. I think that we got it pretty much right—and I know that there have been pockets of resistance, as I would call them. I think there is some pretty good evidence that counters that resistance.

I think that the first one was a joint study conducted by FaHCSIA and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. They looked at the—