Patrick Dodson (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Reconciliation) Share this | Hansard source

Here we are again, in another new parliamentary year, with another recital of policy failure, another appeal to cop it sweet and be patient. For more than a decade now, there has been this 'Groundhog Day' ritual whereby members from this chamber troop over to the other place, there to be told that most of the targets for closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples continue to be beyond our reach. No-one is ever held accountable for this. First Nations peoples are expected to be impressed that parliament is talking about them and taking the time to do so.

Today we learnt that only two of the seven Closing the Gap targets are on track: early childhood education and year 12 attainment. Let me remind you of the five targets that are not on track. Tragically, the target to halve the mortality rates of First Nations children is not on track. Just as tragically, the target to close the gap in life expectancy by 2031 is not on track. The target to close the gap in school attendance by 2018 is not on track. The target to halve the gap in reading and numeracy by 2018 is not on track. The target to halve the gap in employment by 2018 is also not on track.

As grim as the picture is, it fails to reveal the whole sorry story of inequality, focused as the targets have been on health, education and employment. The targets tell us nothing about the over-representation of First Nations men, women and young people in the crowded prisons across this land. They tell us nothing about the exploitation of others who work for the dole under the perversely titled Community Development Program or those whose income is not theirs to manage, under the rules of the cashless debit card. And they tell us nothing about the abject circumstances which beset those thousands and thousands of First Nations people who live in remote communities where access to basic services is a constant struggle.

It's worth remembering today that the Closing the Gap regime grew out of the work of the Australian Human Rights Commission, and in particular the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. The inquiry was established by the Keating government back in 1995. The Bringing them home report, primarily the work of the late Sir Ronald Wilson and my brother, Mick Dodson, the social justice commissioner, was tabled in parliament in May 1997. Their report identified gross violations of Aboriginal people's human rights and spoke about the removal of children as genocide—as genocide!—and aimed at wiping out Indigenous families, communities and cultures.

Prime Minister Howard was much discomfited by the report and could not bring himself to accept the recommendation that this parliament of Australia apologise for those dreadful points of history. Underlying that stubbornness and intransigence was an ill-founded fear that the Crown's liability was going to be an astronomical compensation claim. And so an apology remained a moot point for more than a decade, until a new Prime Minister, Labor's Kevin Rudd, formally apologised to the stolen generations. On that momentous day, 13 February 2008, whilst he did not offer compensation, he went further than an apology; he laid out a framework of a 10-year program to close the gap. 'Our challenge for the future is to embrace a new partnership between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians,' Prime Minister Rudd told the parliament 12 years ago. 'The core of this partnership for the future,' he said, 'is the closing of the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians on life expectancy, educational achievement and employment opportunities.'

It was a well-intentioned agenda of practical reconciliation, but the outcomes have been so dismal. What an indictment, what a blight on this nation: 12 years with so little to show for it. No wonder that those First Nations peoples who gathered at Uluru in May 2017 lamented and proclaimed the torment of our powerlessness. Now we have the torment of this government's sluggishness as it crawls to develop a new 10-year framework for closing the gap. The process is called the Closing the Gap Refresh. It began in the federal bureaucracy two years ago, and there's no outcome yet. Much money has been spent on travel and talkfests, expensive consultants have come and gone, and still we have no new framework.

The Prime Minister tells us in the foreword of this year's Closing the gap report that this is not a process we should rush. Well, I say that's not good enough. The Commonwealth's administration of Indigenous affairs after the disastrous machinery of government changes by the Abbott government in 2013 falls under the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, so the buck stops with the Prime Minister. And all the Prime Minister can say to justify this protracted process of drawing up a new framework is that getting it right is worth the time it takes. I'm not fussed about getting it right; what worries me is the lack of urgency.

At least the government has belatedly engaged First Nations peak organisations in the process to develop a new national agreement on closing the gap. A new agreement is to be underpinned by four principles: developing formal partnerships between governments and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, giving Aboriginal community controlled services greater roles, improving mainstream service delivery, and the development of local data processes to enable people to make better decisions. Those are all worthy principles but, as we know, no new program will succeed. It will fail unless it has adequate resources, and unless bureaucracies earnestly embrace those principles—and if it has the First Nations wholehearted participation. And in the end, any new agenda will amount only to practical reconciliation.

My commitment has always been to real reconciliation. My leader, Anthony Albanese, in the other place this morning showed his commitment when he said that this country is not reconciled and that a country that is not reconciled is not really whole. 'Until we are whole, our true potential as a nation will continue to elude us,' he said. When they met at Uluru nearly three years ago now, First Nations peoples laid out a clearly preferred pathway to reconciliation and wholeness. Labor supports in full the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The first call in that statement was for a voice to the parliament to be enshrined in the Constitution. The opposition leader this morning described this as a 'great and unifying mission'. But this government does not have the will to embrace that, because hardheads and the hard Right don't have the heart for true reconciliation.

Rather, this government wants a voice to the government—a voice that is not protected by being enshrined in the Constitution. The Prime Minister said this morning that his government supports recommendations about truth-telling in the 2018 report of the Joint Select Committee into Constitutional Recognition. And that's a good thing. But he could not bring himself to mention the Yolngu word 'Makarrata', which the Uluru Statement from the Heart called for. Makarrata: as the opposition leader said this morning, 'Let everyone feel those four syllables.' It's conflict resolution—and doesn't this nation need conflict resolution with its first peoples? It's making peace after a dispute—and hasn't this dispute gone on for far too long? And it's justice, so that we can all be liberated and become better people. This could be achieved through a pathway to a national treaty. There was certainly no mention of national treaty by the Prime Minister this morning. We are left to surmise only that Makarrata and treaty are steps too far for this government. What does that say about the leadership?

We as a nation are capable of great achievements, especially at times of crisis—like the drought, like the fires, the floods and the coronavirus. We are very capable of responding to great things, and it's time we responded to the First Nations requirements. It befuddles me—why this intransigence to something that is blatantly clear, is simple and is not asking for much? It's constantly eluding us.

Finally, today let me acknowledge and pay tribute to those who show untiring leadership on the front lines, where the gaps are widening and are stark; those who bear a heavy burden and toil day and night to care for children at risk and to worry for their loved ones. They are those unsung heroes who soldier on, sometimes at great personal risk, and they're unsupported because of the lack of adequate resources. There goes real leadership, and I salute them all.