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

Yes, with your office. My office has been in contact with your office on several occasions over the last couple of days about the answer to this question because we are very keen to get a copy of this report. The reason I am asking now, I should say up-front, is that this pertains very clearly to the effectiveness of remote communities. Of course, that is on everyone's minds at the moment with the consideration of the government in Western Australia of closing up to 150 communities. This pertains to a program that, from what I understand, has had some important impacts and also looks at how we could support remote communities better.

This example relates to the East Kimberley, as I said, but it is particularly pertinent to the remote community of Ringer Soak. Ringer Soak is located in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. It is approximately 100 kilometres from the Northern Territory border. It consists of about 100 people. There are about six members of the community who are non-Aboriginal, so it is an Aboriginal community. It is about three hours drive from Halls Creek, which is the next largest population centre.

In 2010 the federal Attorney-General, in collaboration with the then FaHCSIA department, commenced the Indigenous Justice Program in this Aboriginal community and also in 15 other communities within the Kimberley region. I have been contacted by people who worked on the program and worked in the community at the time who have particularly community development skills and mental health expertise. They describe the federal Indigenous Justice Program as being tasked to primarily focus on young Indigenous men and having five clear goals: less trouble with the police; less time before the courts; less incarceration; less trouble with alcohol and drugs; and less incidence of youth suicide. In other words, it is focused on the key areas when you are talking about some of the issues that cause disadvantage in Aboriginal communities.

One of the workers describes being in Halls Creek in February 2010 along with the Indigenous Justice Program workers from the neighbouring communities. Those workers were provided a summary of the project by the Western Australian Attorney-General's delegate. They said they identified those five goals because, 'They cost us a fortune to address, they are interrelated and they can cause enormous suffering to individuals, their families and wider communities.' They said, 'If we had some guaranteed methods for achieving the five goals of this program, we would be training you as to how to foster these. But, as you know, the rate of incarceration and youth suicide in this demographic, already the highest in the country, is increasing and we have no pat solutions to teach. That is why we are investing in this program. For this reason, you are being asked to live and work in these communities for three years and to address our quarterly reporting procedures.' They were asked to explain the five goals to their respective community councils, sit with the old people and discuss the goals and build a rapport with the young people and then be directed by the community councils in these centres as to what they would do and how to achieve these five goals. The workers said: 'The quarterly reporting was designed to capture information relating to these five goals and allow for analysis and comparison between the six communities of the project and look then at the conclusions. Whatever successes stand out from this analysis, we hope to be able to copy and reuse elsewhere.' Again, you can see why it is really important for us to have the review of the program, to see what actually does work. The program, which commenced in late 2009 and early 2010, was a bit delayed, but it was carried out and the review was done in 2012 by Allen Consulting Group, who we know have carried out these sorts of analyses in the past.

We believe it is really important that this report be made available, and that is why I have had people contacting me to ask for this review to be made available. I am renewing this call for it to be made available because of the current debate that is going on. These continue to be five burning issues for the families living in these communities and for other communities. To date, this report has not been released to the public, and people are asking for it to be released so that we can learn what happened in this particular project. You will understand from the goals and the way I have just described it that it is a rather unique project that I hope has a lot of learnings for the community. That is why I asked the minister for an explanation, and I would like to move that that report be made available publicly by the end of March.