Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Prime Minister, I table the annual report on Closing the Gap and accompanying ministerial statement. I seek leave to move a motion relating to the consideration of the document.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the speaking times related to a motion being moved to the document shall not be more than 10 minutes.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

The Closing the Gap report is both a lesson in how bad things have become and a vindication of how necessary the changes are that we are making for the future of each and every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and family. When we compile these reports year after year we are reminded of the systemic failure, as was stated in the national apology, of the laws and policies that inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders over generations. Although there have been some improvements in education and health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the report shows, frustratingly, that most of the targets are not on track to be met. Indigenous life expectancy and mortality rates have improved slightly, but we are still not on track to meet the 2031 target. Progress has slowed on the Indigenous child mortality target, but it is broadly on track to be met by 2018. We continue to roll out access to early childhood education in remote communities and all jurisdictions have committed to achieving 95 per cent enrolment this year. Whilst we are on track to halve the gap in year 12 attainment by 2020, no overall progress has been made on the target to halve the gap in reading, writing and numeracy achievements for Indigenous students by 2018. It is further proof that we must get children to go to school.

There has been no progress so far on the employment target and I worry that we may be going backwards. In 2008, both sides of parliament committed to redress the inequality and disadvantage in the daily life of many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and their communities. We are all committed to a future where we would harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap and a future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed. Despite the goodwill of all sides of politics, old approaches have failed. So, for the past year we have been living up to our commitment to continue our efforts to close the gap by putting in place something better.

To get greater traction on longstanding challenges in Indigenous affairs, investment needs to be focused on priority actions. It needs to be better targeted on doing things that have been proven and on measurable impacts on Indigenous outcomes. The Indigenous Advancement Strategy focused government investment on the priority areas of getting kids to school, getting adults into work and making communities safer. I have no doubt that getting traction in these areas will help deliver real, practical, demonstrable improvements in the lives of Aboriginal and Islander people, their families and their communities.

We have significantly changed the approach to the Indigenous affairs policy. The new Indigenous Advancement Strategy is designed to be nimble, taking away the silo effect and the ineffectiveness and confusion for users of 150 programs. More importantly, it is responsive to community needs and does not impose directives from this place. The whole structure of the bureaucracy is being overhauled, so the IAS is supported by a new network of regional offices and staff located in strategic locations across the country, and bureaucrats work with locals so that there are agreed rather than imposed outcomes. Results from the first Indigenous Advancement Strategy funding round will be made known in March this year. We are involving Indigenous people in the design and delivery of local solutions to local challenges. But some of these issues that affect communities across the country cannot be fixed in isolation or, in fact, single-handedly, thus requiring all of us to give a maximum effort, especially school, education and jobs.

Children must go to school. The school attendance statistics are variable, as you would expect them to be, but truancy is an issue right across Australia. Indigenous attendance rates at government schools are currently lower than for other students for years 1 to 10 in all states and territories. Non-attendance is more acute in remote and very remote locations. The Remote School Attendance Strategy has made an important start on this. More than 410 school attendance officers and more than 100 school attendance supervisors now operate in the 69 priority RSAS communities and 73 schools. I frequently walk out with the school attendance officers and see how it all works in a community. I did it with the Prime Minister when we were in Arnhem Land last September, and I have done it in several more remote schools in January.

The Remote School Attendance Strategy is continuing to show promising results in the Northern Territory and Queensland. In term 3 of 2014 there was a 13 per cent rise in the number of children attending school across 29 Northern Territory government RSAS schools and an eight per cent rise in the number of children attending the 11 Queensland government RSAS schools compared with term 3 of 2013. Good education is a stepping stone into a job. Whether you live in a city, a town, a regional area or a remote or very remote area, we acknowledge that we must help adults and young people move successfully from school into either higher education or training and into stable meaningful work.

The key aim is to provide real pathways to employment. This is particularly necessary in remote areas. Over half of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in remote areas are welfare reliant. Too many people simply do not have enough to do. It is worse in very remote areas, with nearly two-thirds of people reliant on welfare. To give these people a chance for something better, Work for the Dole will be introduced into remote communities from July 2015, with the majority of job seekers to undertake work-like activities five days a week.

Guaranteed employment and job-specific training is the aim of vocational training and employment centres—VTECs—which build on the GenerationOne model. There are 28 VTECs around Australia and another VTEC in the pipeline. VTECs end the training for training's sake cycle and will provide guaranteed jobs at the end of training for over 5,400 Indigenous people across Australia. Even since July, over 1,300 people have commenced with VTEC, with 921 Indigenous people now in jobs at the other end of the VTEC process. We are on track to more than 5,000 individuals trained into real jobs by the end of this year. VTECs are part of the government push to create jobs for Indigenous Australians, as is Work for the Dole.

Just as going to and talking with communities, in my view, is far more instructive than reading a report, stories about people are more poignant than any statistic. Last year I visited Real Futures, the provider of the Kempsey VTEC. Real Futures is an Indigenous business that is proving to be successful at getting people off welfare and into valuable, meaningful work. One of those people who is getting trained and is getting a job is Pam Matheson. Pam has partly completed her Certificate IV in Community Services. Now, while she does that, Pam is working to train and coordinate volunteers to yarn with isolated, disabled or lonely Aboriginal people, encouraging them to reconnect with their community. This is part of the TeleYARN program. Training and a job are the two things that have changed Pam's life. Those two things will also change the lives and the future for her three daughters, and because she is motivated to be the very best role model she can be these two things will also change a community.

Pam's story is one example of what we want for every Indigenous Australian who is out of work. We are working with providers, businesses and big corporates across Australia to increase the number of available positions for Indigenous people, and we are leading from the front. As the Prime Minister announced in that other place as part of the government's initial response to the recommendations of the Forrest review, we aim to increase Indigenous employment in the Commonwealth public sector. The government will also strengthen the Commonwealth's Indigenous procurement policy, using the Commonwealth's $39 billion procurement budget to encourage Indigenous businesses in employment. In two multimillion dollar contracts the Department of Defence has engaged Indigenous owned company Pacific Services Group Holdings to refurbish existing marine infrastructure and buildings at HMAS Waterhen in Sydney and as the managing contractor for stage 1 of the planning phase of the critical infrastructure recovery project at Garden Island. Such massive contracts and job opportunities are a sign of how serious we are about including Indigenous people and businesses in the economy.

As the apology said, it will take both mutual respect and mutual responsibility to close the gap. This last year has been about getting the foundations of mutual responsibility right and further developing the mutual respect. It is too soon to quantify the impact of the changes we are making. As I travel around the country and I talk to Aboriginal and Islander people I am reminded that they each deserve our respect and our attention. Whilst we may want speedy statistics, speedy statistics actually represent people—people who need a sustained change over time. For each of these people we must stay the course, get children to school, adults into work and make our communities safer so Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have the chance to build better lives for themselves and their families.