Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Ngunnawal people, and I pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. This year marks 16 years since Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered the Apology to the Stolen Generations. The apology was, of course, a profound gesture for what it said about the past conduct of Australian governments, but the Rudd government also seized that moment of national healing to look to the future and to set in place the mechanism for measuring our collective efforts and improving the lives of Indigenous Australians: the National Agreement on Closing the Gap. In so doing, it set in place a mechanism to hold itself and future governments accountable.

Now, 16 years on, we see that only 11 out of 19 socioeconomic outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples that are measured in the annual Closing the gap reportare improving. Just four are on track to meet their targets. The Productivity Commission has made it clear that the current approach is not working, and this is a point made by many others, including Tom Calma, who said:

Bureaucrats and governments can have the best intentions … but if their ideas have not been subject to the 'reality test' of the life experience of the local Indigenous peoples who are intended to benefit … then government efforts will fail.

This was the logic underpinning our government's effort to enshrine an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice in our nation's Constitution. Of course, we respect the result of last year's referendum and, as the Prime Minister has said, this government remains determined to move reconciliation forward while focusing on our immediate responsibilities: closing the gap, self-determination and tangible outcomes, particularly in jobs, housing, education, health and justice.

We must deliver real jobs with real skills which mean real opportunities for First Nations people. That is why we are moving on from the failed Community Development Program. It created no real opportunities. It built no futures. Two weeks ago, the Prime Minister and Minister Burney announced the creation of our Remote Jobs and Economic Development Program. The program will fund community organisations to create 3,000 real jobs with proper wages and decent conditions in remote areas, and these jobs will be developed in partnership with Indigenous communities that deliver services and infrastructure that communities want. This is an undeniably better approach.

On housing, the government has worked with the Northern Territory government to escalate construction of remote housing to address the worst overcrowding rates in the country. Together we have achieved a 200 per cent increase in the rate of delivery of Commonwealth funded housing, building 100 homes in 100 days in 2023.

In his speech in the House the Prime Minister outlined a number of areas of investment by the government—in health, education, training, housing, and vital services such as safe and reliable drinking water—which we believe will help close the gap. In addition, the government is establishing a National Commissioner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People. The commissioner will be dedicated to promoting and protecting the rights, interests and wellbeing of First Nations children and young people. The commissioner will also be tasked with drawing on and highlighting their strengths, their sense of hope and their ideas for change. We recognise that in order to drive generational change we need to improve the lives of young Indigenous people.

In pursuing this progress we are inspired by the determination of the late Dr Lowitja O'Donoghue, who we lost this month. Like those of so many Indigenous people of the world's oldest continuous culture, hers was a story of survival, of persistence and of remarkable grace. Throughout her life and career she carved, through painstaking efforts, sometimes heated negotiations and often the hard work of compromise, a path for generations of Indigenous leaders to follow. Upon her passing, the Minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, remarked that she and many other young Aboriginal women in the 1980s and 1990s looked at Lowitja and saw possibility. Her legacy is a reminder that progress is never easy. The path towards reconciliation has never been a straightforward one, but she showed us it is one of possibility. Reconciliation and justice happen only when people of goodwill and determination commit themselves to making the possibility of a better future a reality. On this 16th anniversary of a just apology for past wrongs, and in honour of Dr O'Donoghue, let us recommit ourselves to fulfilling the possibility of all Australians.