Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

We are all Australian, and the Prime Minister, in his speech and how he sought to engage post the referendum, emphasised the importance of coming together at this time, when obviously there were different views in our community. There is a lot of hurt in the Australian community and within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, and we need to be respectful about that. I think your question essentially goes to why there are Aboriginal-specific programs. When we're in government and when they're in government, we don't always agree with each other about how they are to be approached, and they are to reflect the commitment to closing the gap, which is based on factually based assessments of disadvantage.

One of the things, one of the stats, which always chills me every time it is raised or referenced is that you're almost twice as likely to die before you're one year old if you're born an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander child. No-one thinks that's acceptable, so we want programs and we want policies which change that. Everybody would want that. We all want the best for our children. Everyone would want that. In how we do that, there may be differences of views, and you've heard some today with Senator Liddle's question. What the Prime Minister has said is that we will listen to community, we will work with community and we will engage with community because we understand that, if we work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, the outcomes for those communities will be better than if we simply decide what we are doing to them. (Time expired)