Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to make my contribution to the debate on today's Closing the gap report. I pay my respects to the Ngunawal and Ngambri peoples, who are the traditional custodians of the Canberra area on which the parliament sits, and I pay my respects to elders past and present. I also want to comment on the speech before dinner by Senator Malarndirri McCarthy, who reminded us that Close the Gap has a face. I think it's easy in this place to forget that. They were very powerful words from Senator McCarthy, and I thank her from the bottom of my heart for the contribution she made in talking about her family and the families of many other first nations peoples in this country. So let us remember today that Close the Gap has a face. It is one of the few opportunities we have left in this parliament, sadly, where we come together as a parliament and make that contribution and make that commitment to close the gap.

Whilst today's report shows some improvement, it's not nearly good enough. First nations people still lag behind in so many key, fundamental areas in our country. They are the first nations people, and nothing we do or say or believe will ever change that, and we must do a lot better. The only way to do that is with a partnership with first nations people.

I was really honoured to be able to attend the release last week of the review on 10 years of Close the Gap, which was done by the Australian Human Rights Commission. We had amazing leaders such as Ms June Oscar, Mr Rod Little and Mr Tom Calma, who spoke to us about what needs to be done and how we need to do that. But, for me, I was incredibly impressed with the contribution of a young Yamatji-Badimia woman, Banok Rind, who told us about her life. She was told by teachers, 'You'll never make it; you'll never amount to anything,' and she's now studying registered nursing at the University of Melbourne. She reminded us not only that first nations people have the solutions but that they want to make the contribution. She had a message for the Prime Minister. Unfortunately, he'd left by the time Ms Rind got up to speak and, in my view, he missed one of the most powerful speeches, her speech. She said very simply, 'We want you to sit down and yarn with us.' Now, I don't think that is a big ask. It is way beyond time that we do sit down and listen and put first nations responses front and centre and at the heart of whatever we do to fix the gap, because we must fix the gap. If we are a fair country and a just country, we can no longer have such a glaring gap as we have today.

The wise words of June Oscar, Rod Little and Tom Calma resonate with me. They were incredibly powerful. June Oscar, in her polite but determined way, well and truly gave us all a message last week. To ignore that message—to listen to the fine words that we've had today and to fail to act yet again—would be to do a great disservice to those speakers who put their hearts and souls into the contributions that they made last week.

I am really proud to stand here today to revisit the sorts of commitments that Labor has made today. We will set up a compensation scheme for the stolen generations. My own granddaughter's family are stolen generations. They're Gija people, but they have lived their lives in Geraldton. They were taken from their homeland at Turkey Creek, first to Broome and then settled on the missions in Geraldton. Actually, in the museum there are photos of them as kids running around outside the tin shacks that the family lived in. Members of the family were taken to Moore River. Just in Charlie's family you see that dispossession, that loss and that continuing trauma being played out in her family—just a small family. And as we heard from Senator McCarthy today, when she talked about her family and many other families, that trauma lives on and on.

That's not to say that people don't achieve. They do, despite what gets done to them. But there is an ongoing trauma that needs to be acknowledged, and Labor will do that. We will look at the kind of healing that needs to be done. Within 100 days of winning government we will also hold a summit to look at and to put into place action to stop the horrifying taking of children out of homes and putting them into out-of-home care. In my own state of Western Australia the stats are really way too high. It is not an area we need to be leading on. I am really pleased the state government, through my good friend Minister Simone McGurk, has put $20 million to Aboriginal organisations to look at the solutions. Four Aboriginal organisations will do the lead work on this. Family Matters has been directly involved in having conversations with Premier McGowan about what needs to happen. But we will again fail if we have fine words that are not followed up with action.

We have a department in Western Australia that has a set of principles about how important it is for young first nations children to remain, if not with their immediate parents, at least with family members. Yet time and time again in Western Australia we see that those policy commitments are set aside and children are taken at birth and put with non-Indigenous parents and they miss out on the importance of culture and the importance of family. So, much more needs to be done. I would urge people to look at the report launched last week on how we need to move forward.

As I said earlier today in my contribution on the cashless debit card, that is absolutely not a solution. It flies in the face of the sorts of reports that we've seen today from Closing the Gap. The CDP has robbed so many communities of good projects in communities that were making a difference and has also provided people with just the most menial, dehumanising kinds of tasks. The sorts of tasks we saw people undertaking when we did the CDP inquiry were shocking. We saw men working in nothing more than old chook sheds that would have not have passed any comparable health and safety standard for a workplace, and using the pine packing crates to build stuff out of. Of course, they can't compete and learn real skills because that would put local businesses out of business. If anyone thinks that is meaningful work for people to be doing, they are kidding themselves. It was dehumanising and, quite frankly, I just felt so much for the participants.

The other thing that's happening is that people are getting breached. We heard lots of stories of people not being able to buy electricity because they missed a day of their 25-hours-a-week CDP requirement and therefore lost income. This is not how you create equality. This is not just. Those are whitefella solutions being imposed on our first nations people. Yet in this same community we saw the town council largely made up of first nations people—I think 100 per cent—who had really good, solid infrastructure projects that would have created employment, if only we were able to fund them. So let's take some of that CDP money and look at how, in consultation with traditional owners, with local people, we can create proper, meaningful employment. It is way beyond the time that we continue to ignore the voices of Aboriginal people—the voices of June Oscar, Rod Little and Tom Calma and the young voice of Banok Rind, who gave such a powerful speech last week. That is who we need to be listening to. As she said, and as I said earlier in this place, 'You tell me why two-year-olds in my community are walking around with hearing aids.' That's a shame; it's a shame on all of us, and there are very easy solutions to the question that Ms Rind posed to the group last week. I would urge the government to continue the bipartisanship spirit of Close the Gap, but let's get real; let's put our first nations people front and centre of the solutions. Let's get the Uluru statement back on track. Let's really close the gap. We are capable of this. It requires goodwill; the goodwill is certainly there from first nations people and it's there from the Labor Party. Let's get this done.