Kerrynne Liddle (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge, on International Women's Day, the contribution of all women and, in the context of this contribution, the enduring, valuable contribution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and my fellow Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander senators.

We of course all agree that it is right and just to focus on closing the gap in life expectancy. In our cities and in our regional and remote communities the statistics demonstrate the real divide and consequences of not being effective in closing the gap, but we know that the data is an issue, and so it is likely much worse. However, closing the gap must not be the work of a single entity or group. Closing the gap will only work when all of us are involved and understand how we benefit from that outcome. Non-Indigenous Australians must remain critical to be part of the solution. It is well and good to have a well-funded strategy, but if on the ground it is not happening, because the very people charged to help them fail to act, then the gap won't close; it won't matter what we do.

I speak again, and I feel like I'm going around and around in circles, about the family that I came across in Alice Springs about two weeks ago. It's a lived example where I heard of so many gestures of concern for those people living on the slab, and they've been there for two years. These 20 women, children, elderly and those with serious medical conditions remain on that slab today, with exposure to the elements and greater risk to their life experience and expectancy—not just from the last two years, but they remain on the slab today. Their life and life experience may have been diminished as a consequence of this but not their hope.

It is known that the social determinants of health are the non-medical factors that influence health outcomes. Without a roof and action, nothing will change for these people, and every day their life experience will remain on the wrong trajectory. These people haven't fallen through the crack; they have fallen through a cavern of apathy. People have driven past their plight. They have dropped off medical supplies, picked up people and dropped them back there, and nobody has seen it as their responsibility to take the greatest step of advocacy and get a roof over their heads so that they can control their own destiny and improve their own outcomes. These people have been invisible in plain sight. It's 40 degrees in summer and minus temperatures in winter. There is no shelter and no running water. There's an open fire to cook on. There's nothing to address their basic needs. It's unfathomable. Just imagine living like that for two years let alone overnight.

This is certainly not the way for any person in Australia to live, nor in the middle of a town whose economy, tragically and increasingly, is fast becoming more solely reliant on welfare. The economy in Alice Springs has been devastated by welfare. The tragedy and irony of this story is those service providers funded by the Northern Territory and Australian governments. They're engaging with this family. They know their circumstances. But they've failed to provide an integrated, effective response and a timely response to ameliorate this situation. It highlights the deficit in local service delivery, planning and coordination currently obvious among many funded agencies, and not just in Alice Springs or Central Australia; it's even in South Australia. If these issues and limitations are not addressed as a matter of urgency, then the potential to maximise effect from any financial investment or effort is significantly constrained.

Whatever the excuses or reasons, what resulted here was a family and their children enduring two years of the consequences of bad service provision, with the likely deteriorating health and wellbeing, and we know the link between environment and wellbeing. The Prime Minister, in reference to health, said he would leave no one behind, and I very much look forward to seeing that promise delivered by engaging with the Northern Territory government to get the right outcome for this family.

The lack of effort to ensure high-level accountability will continue to fail to deliver the right outcome and continue to leave families falling between the gaps in service coordination and far from the reach of anyone's ability to close the gap in life expectancy. Demanding good governance within these organisations is critical if you really want to close the gap. We saw the inability to get a faster response when the Stronger Futures legislation was— (Time expired)