Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was proud today to attend Closing the Gap events in our parliament, to see many Aboriginal leaders and all major Aboriginal organisations represented here today and to hear the PM and the Leader of the Opposition deliver their first reports as Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition on the Closing the Gap report. This demonstrates to all Australians that there is a bipartisan approach to closing the gap, not just here in the federal parliament but across major Aboriginal organisations. I sat in the House of Representatives as the PM and the Leader of the Opposition delivered bipartisan speeches around the release of this year's Closing the Gap report. It is a mixed report card. Unfortunately and sadly there has been little improvement in the literacy and numeracy rates of Aboriginal children. Efforts to halve the gap in child mortality and the target to improve year 12 attainment rates are on track.

It is important to remind ourselves just what the targets were that we signed up to in 2009. We want to halve the mortality gap within a decade. We want to provide access to early childhood education in remote communities in five years. We want to halve the gap in literacy and numeracy achievement within a decade. We want to halve the gap in the rates of year 12 attainment or equivalent attainment by 2020. We want to halve the gap in employment within a decade. We want to close the life expectancy gap within a generation. And the Prime Minister this morning added school attendance rates.

We need a much greater level of accountability of how states are meeting Closing the Gap targets. In my state of Western Australia we are failing Aboriginal people on every single level. In the area of public housing our record is shameful. Western Australia has a three-strikes policy in public housing, which means that if there are complaints about you or other members of your household, no matter who is staying there, you get just three warnings—three strikes: strike 1, strike 2, strike 3—and then you are evicted.

Of course nobody wants bad neighbours but WA's public housing policy impacts disproportionately on Aboriginal tenants, who make up just 30 per cent of all public housing tenants yet represent 60 per cent of all evictions. There is discretion with this policy but it is rarely, if ever, exercised. You get three strikes and then the bailiff, the police and housing department officials give you just five minutes to vacate your home. Andrew O'Connor, an ABC journalist, reported in late December the plight of three women who were evicted under WA's three-strikes rule. I want to share the story of one woman. Andrew O'Connor stated:

The 50-year-old Indigenous grandmother wasn't sure what would come first—the eviction from her public housing home in the Perth's northern suburbs or death from the cancer that was spreading through her frail and pain-wracked body.

This grandmother told the ABC that she had her left breast removed and when she went back for test results she was told the cancer had spread to her knee, her joints, her brain and her ribs. She was told it was spreading and there was nothing more that could be done. She thought the fact that she was dying would halt the housing department's proceedings, but it did not. She was given just five minutes to get out of her home once the bailiff, the police and the housing officials arrived.

The grandmother said that it was not her behaviour that neighbours complained about, but the behaviour of visitors who came. The grandmother said she was unable to stop them as she was left weakened by the heavy sedative medication she was on to stop the pain of the cancer. She was evicted nonetheless and died a few weeks later on the streets of Perth a homeless woman, riddled with cancer. Her funeral was just a few weeks ago, on 17 January.

According to estimates by Professor Mary McComish, a lecturer at Notre Dame University in Perth, the three-strikes policy has left around 2,000 Aboriginal children homeless. There are 2,000 children living on the streets, 2,000 children jammed in overcrowded accommodation with friends and relatives, 2,000 children who will not even make it to first base on achieving any of the Closing the Gap targets. The Abbott government must call states to account over policies which disproportionately impact on Aboriginal people and Aboriginal families.

This is not the only policy failure of the Western Australian government in relation to closing the gap. Despite the evidence, the WA government would rather invest in jails than justice reinvestment. Again this disproportionately impacts on Aboriginal people, Aboriginal children and Aboriginal young people. Our rates of juvenile detention in Western Australia have been consistently higher than the national average since the early 1990s. A November 2013 report from the WA Department of Corrective Services stated that almost 80 per cent of children and young people in detention in Western Australia were Aboriginal. Even if the WA government will not be motivated by the fact that juvenile justice works, the cost of incarceration should capture their attention. It costs $624 a day to detain a young person, compared with just $77 per day for programs which re-engage young people in programs that work.

One of these programs, run by Save the Children in Kununurra, was funded by the former Labor government and was cut just recently by the Abbott government . Despite their alleged bipartisan commitment to closing the gap , this demonstrates that bipartisanship is not just about words —the words we heard today from our Prime Minister—it is about words and action s . Save the Children were working with the Miriuwung Gajerrong preadolescents and teenagers . Save the Children was welcomed by the Kununurra community . The programs Save the Children had in place were working. Save the Children had successfully bid for National Crime Prevention funds to run the Kununurra program, but the coalition did not honour this commitment on taking government, and instead redirected all of that money, including the funds that were working in Kununurra, to a program that focused on CCTV cameras.

'So big deal,' you might say, but let me put on the record some of the appalling statistics for Kununurra. Kununurra is ranked 79 on the Indigenous relative socioeconomic outcomes index, which measures relative disadvantage across Indigenous areas. That ranking of No. 79 puts Kununurra in the lowest quartile not just in Western Australia but nationally. That means it is one of the poorest Aboriginal communities in the country, one of the most disadvantaged. The pooled Indigenous and non-Indigenous relative socioeconomic outcomes index, which measures inequality between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations within the same geographic area, indicates that Kununurra is the most unequal town in Australia, and yet we saw that funding program cut by the Abbott government. A suite of Indigenous outcomes indices demonstrate that Kununurra is the worst ranked remote town in terms of income and the wealth of its Aboriginal population. So by any measure, any measure at all, Kununurra is a town in crisis, it is a town that had working programs and it is a town where the Abbott government simply cruelly cut funding to programs that were working.

In terms of education, Aboriginal children in Kununurra were developmentally vulnerable on two or more domains, double the national average. Poor school attendance and children not reaching national minimum standards for reading and numeracy are rife in Kununurra. Save the Children had the only program in town, so the fact that it is going means nothing will be there. It had the only program in town to tackle these issues. It is currently running 13 programs in Kununurra. Those programs have engaged 90 per cent of Aboriginal children and adolescents in Kununurra and the surrounding areas; almost all of the Aboriginal children in the region have engaged with those programs.

The programs are innovative and culturally relevant. They work with the local Aboriginal organisations to make sure the programs are culturally relevant. They focus on prevention and early intervention support for the Miriuwung Gajerrong children, and they work with teenagers who are at risk of or already experience family violence, child abuse and neglect. These programs are at risk. The Abbott government, despite cutting those programs, needs to match actions against the words of the Prime Minister this morning. These programs in Kununurra must get immediate priority from Mr Abbott, who told us this morning in the House of Representatives that his views had changed. He told us he was committed to closing the gap. Mr Abbott, you cannot ignore the situation in Kununurra any longer, and the Abbott government must ensure the ongoing provision of youth programs in Kununurra.

Without funding, Save the Children believe that there will be increases in the presence of children on the streets, youth crime and substance abuse, that there will be lower rates of school attendance and that youth suicide will increase. Save the Children urgently need funding for their 'chilling space' program.

As Senator Peris said this morning at the Closing the Gap breakfast:

Health equality will never be achieved without education equality. Every Australian child must have equal access to a quality education.

Senator Peris went on to say:

My grandfather once told me, 'Don't just talk about it, be about it'—

and that she lives by those words each day. It is time that we saw the Abbott government not just talking about it—we heard those fine words in parliament this morning—but 'being about it', to actually make a difference to the Aboriginal children in Kununurra, to fund the Save the Children programs, to continue the funding of programs which, by any measure you would like to use, are working.

Senator Peris concluded her remarks by saying:

We must increase our efforts. We must sustain the course. We must never use Aboriginal peoples' disparity for political gain.

I urge the Abbott government to get on board with the Save the Children program in Kununurra and to put back the funding that they so cruelly ripped out of that town.