Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] I begin by acknowledging that we meet on the land of Ngunawal and Ngambri people, the traditional owners of the lands which parliament meets on today. I'm also calling in from Cairns, the land of the Gimuy Walubara Yidinj people in Far North Queensland. I pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. I also pay my respects to the elders past, present and emerging of the lands of Cape York, Mornington Island and the Torres Strait islands. I am so lucky to live in this region and to learn from their stories and their spirit.

For eight long years this government has kicked the can down the road on responsibility for and progress on closing the gap. It has been more than two years since this government said it would change its approach to closing the gap. I fear that this change is in approach only. It isn't a change to make change; it's a change for change's sake, to shift responsibility and accountability so that this government can say that it has done something, when nothing has been achieved.

There has been no measurable progress on the bar this government has set itself on the priority reforms of shared decision-making, building the community controlled sector, transforming government organisations and shared access to regional data. These are meant to be the backbone of working with First Nations organisations and underpin the path to self-determination, but this hasn't moved beyond rhetoric.

The new targets in Closing the Gap include the social and cultural factors that determine overall health, and this is important: things like housing, access to services, child protection, family violence, culture and language, and land and water rights. As Anthony Albanese said in his speech in the other place earlier this week:

There is no pathway to ensuring First Nations Australians live as long and as healthy lives as non-Indigenous Australians without steadily addressing each of these interconnected targets.

More than half a year after the new Closing the Gap agreement was signed, First Nations people are still far more likely to be jailed, die by suicide and have their children removed than non-Indigenous Australians. Only three of the 17 targets that have been set are on track.

Today I'd like to focus on one of those targets—housing. Target 9 of the Closing the Gap agreement is:

By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in appropriately sized (not overcrowded) housing to 88 per cent.

Indigenous Australians make up three per cent of the Australian population but accounted for 20 per cent of all persons who were homeless during the last census. Labor has consistently called on the Morrison government to outline a plan to address the severe overcrowding in First Nations communities across Australia. Nationally, in 2016, 78.9 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were living in inappropriately sized housing. This is just what we know through census data, but you don't need data to tell you that this is an important issue. You can see it with your own eyes. The shocking thing is that we know that many ministers of this government and many MPs and senators who are members of this government have visited remote and regional communities and have seen overcrowding firsthand. The Morrison government knows how important this is, yet the Prime Minister takes no responsibility for this target.

I was disappointed but not surprised to discover last week, after the Closing the Gap speech was delivered, that there is not a single cent of new funding for housing in remote Indigenous communities in this country. There is no new funding for the Northern Territory, Western Australia or Far North Queensland—the cape and the Torres Strait. There are no details about how this Morrison government will achieve this target. The COVID pandemic has shown us that housing is crucial to health and wellbeing. You can't isolate from the coronavirus if you don't have adequate housing and you cannot live a healthy and meaningful life unless you have the housing you need. It is a crucial first step to supporting the health and economic outcomes of First Nations communities. What good are this government's empty promises for a better future for First Nations people when there literally aren't enough houses to go around?

In 2018 the coalition government walked away from the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing. This was a 10-year agreement that saw the Commonwealth government, under Prime Minister Rudd, commit $5.5 billion over 10 years to address the shocking levels of overcrowding and poor housing conditions in remote communities. Prime Minister Turnbull and then Treasurer Scott Morrison walked away from this agreement. Mr Morrison refused to recommit to the partnership when he became Prime Minister.

Instead, in the lead-up to the last election the Morrison government did what they have always done—made an announcement. They announced a one-off payment of $105 million—such a drop in the ocean compared to the 10-year funding agreement. This funding is for communities in Cape York and the Torres Strait, but when you break it down it equates to only four or five houses for each community. This announcement was made by Warren Entsch and Nigel Scullion, the former Indigenous affairs minister. It led to a lot of people believing that this was a short-term solution and there would be an announcement from this government in future budgets. Well, there hasn't been a further announcement. There is no funding, and the $105 million? Not a single house has been built with that funding.

We know that overcrowding is getting worse while this government sits on its hands, but, instead of doing anything about this, the local member for Leichhardt, Warren Entsch, told the ABC that he doesn't hold a building licence. That was his excuse for not getting these houses built or delivering any future funding for this basic right of our Indigenous communities. The government should be investing in social housing and in Indigenous housing. It would be a win-win for our country and for the health and wellbeing of Indigenous Australians, and it would also create jobs to make sure that we've got training and apprenticeship opportunities for young people in communities. That's exactly what a Labor government will do, if elected. Anthony Albanese has already announced a $10 billion social housing fund to build 30,000 affordable houses, and $200 million of that fund will go to repair and maintain housing in remote Indigenous communities. I was so proud when that announcement was made. Yet, during the Prime Minister's Closing the Gap speech last week and at his press conference, where he appeared to shout and rant at journalists about this process, we heard nothing about remote and Indigenous housing.

We know that there is a need to deliver the Uluru statement, and it comes back to truth-telling and treaty-making. But we need to tell the truth about what's happening right now. In communities in regional and remote Queensland, we have babies living in houses with 20 other people. There cannot be a situation where Australians think it is acceptable for a minister in this government to visit a community like that and leave not wanting to fix it. We do need to fix this. We need to fix it straightaway. It is not something that can wait for an election announcement or for the Prime Minister to need something to announce to help himself in the polls. This is something that should be done because it's the right thing to do. It's the right thing to do to fix overcrowding in our communities. It is a target in Closing the Gap, but there's no funding from this government.

Every time the government get up in this chamber and they speak about closing the gap and all of the things that they are doing and the way that they're working with First Nations communities, I can't help but think that none of these achievements will actually have any impact unless we fix housing first. Housing is a basic human right, and our First Nations communities deserve the dignity of a good home, a house to live in, somewhere to raise their family, a place to come back to at the end of the day. They deserve to have these homes on their country where their cultural ancestors started their lives and where their lives will end one day.