Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy President, I acknowledge that this is the first occasion on which you have given me the call. I look forward to your success in your role. Today we have heard a very weak defence from those opposite. We have here a minister who wants the job, who wants the title, but who does not want to take the responsibility. He does not have the skills to take on the job, and that was made very clear in the question that was put forward today citing the remarks of Tom Calma. If you ever need to see an example of the coalition government's dysfunction, division and disarray, you need look no further than its handling of the abuse and the detention of Indigenous juveniles at the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in the Northern Territory. The images distributed after the Four Corners investigation, of a hooded youth restrained in his chair, of a young man being rounded up by burly staff who then removed his clothing and of the gassing of inmates, were shocking. They were dangerous incidents. Children were placed in solitary confinement for up to 17 hours. The world looked on in incredulous disbelief that this could happen in Australia in 2016. But what was the Minister for Indigenous Affairs for Australia doing at the time while the rest of the country was looking on? He received a phone call, around 1 pm on the day that the program was to be broadcast, from Ms Meldrum-Hanna. She has tweeted:

I spoke to Scullion's office yesterday lunchtime. They knew about the story & STILL didn't watch. What's going on?

That is a very good question. What is going on is a minister who is not fit for the job; a minister who does not have the skills or the disposition or the capacity to do what needs to be done. Senator Scullion's reaction at the time was at once ignorant and arrogant. What sort of minister responsible for Indigenous affairs could possibly say that he did not have his interest piqued by reports of abuse? There were reports out from 2015 that he had access to. All I heard today was a man standing up and saying, 'Oh, gee, the pictures were terrible.' What do they have to do for this minister? Put pictures in the reports so that he can see what is going on in the area that he has responsibility for? Is it only the pictures that are going to move him to act?

Is it only pictures that he can actually understand?

It is the responsibility of a minister to have the capacity to read carefully what is in those documents and to respond in the appropriate way at the appropriate time. This is, absolutely, not evident in what we have seen from this minister in his management of his portfolio. What we saw today was a man who disrespected the questions. He should have known about and been prepared for those questions today. When Senator Wong asked him when he knew, did we hear a date? Did he offer a time line? Did he give any decent defence for the ignorant way in which he answered his question? No, he did not.

He is not fit to continue in this portfolio. This is a new government; they had an opportunity to put somebody decent in to do the job. He is the only senator representing the Northern Territory on that side of the parliament in this chamber. He has a dual responsibility as a Northern Territorian and as the first minister of this country for the first peoples—for the Indigenous peoples of this country. And he was not able to read briefings—to take briefings and to understand the content of vital reports that came to public notice as early as 2015.

He has hundreds of staff in the department to support his understanding of his portfolio, yet he was incapable of doing that. His arrogance knows no bounds. He was told by Ms Meldrum-Hanna that the program was going to come on that evening, and yet he went ahead with the business of his ordinary day without looking at it. And then he says to the Prime Minister: 'Oh, look mate'—he says 'mate' to the Prime Minister—'I didn't know it was going on. No, I didn't know, mate. I'll have a look and I'll call you back.' It is not good enough.

It is not good enough for the senator for the Northern Territory. It is not good enough for the man who is supposed to be standing up for the Indigenous people in this country, and they know he is not up to the job. Professor Calma said:

Any minister who is not willing to engage with the community they represent and want to listen to them and work cooperatively with them, shouldn't be a minister.

Tom Calma knows and the whole Indigenous community knows. These guys cannot defend him because they know he is not up to the job and he has done the wrong thing. When that came out on the ABC, any minister worth his salt—