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

It looks like the government does not want to make a comment. In summing up and addressing this I want to make a few comments. I am passionate about this because I have looked at the evidence. I have looked at the Northern Territory intervention and the final evaluation, and I urge anybody looking at this debate to read that report. It did not meet any of its projected outcomes. It failed.

I want to explore this issue of people 'feeling' that things do better, because that evaluation showed that people there felt that things were improving. But, when the evaluators compared the evidence of what was changing on the ground with another community outside of the NT, there was no difference. People felt it was better. In fact, it was not better. That is why I am so passionate about where the report says 'people felt this'. It is all very well to feel it. The psychology suggests that, because people saw money being spent and a trial being done, they thought things were better. But the evidence is not there. Senator Cameron said he will look very carefully at the second report—well, please look very carefully at the interim report. Please look very carefully at this, because I spent quite a lot of time going through this report and showing that the evidence is not there.

I want to make a comment to those who are worried about 'the cash that will go back into these communities if we go off this trial'. That comment horrifies me, because what you are saying is that we always knew that this trial was inevitable and it was going to be entrenched because putting cash back into the community was in fact going to have a devastating impact. I know there are problems in these communities, and I am desperate to solve them, but this is not the way to do it.

With that, I urge you to support this. In the future you will look back, like people have done with the NT, and say it does not work. Even though the government is continuing with the NT intervention, the evidence shows that it has not been working. Please disallow this, and let us look at what really works. I am as passionate as anybody else in this chamber about trying to find out what really works.