Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (NT, Country Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Hansard source

I concur with the comments made by Senator McGrath. It was an absolute insult. It is an insult to me, as an Indigenous parliamentarian and senator, and to my colleague Senator Liddle, in our attempts to get any answers during Senate additional estimates, given the fact that answers from previous estimates were provided at the eleventh hour. It's also insulting, given that this government's plan for Indigenous Australians was basically to outsource policy to the very expensive concept of a voice to parliament, even when we have very capable members of our parliament—of course, in the coalition there's Senator Liddle and me, and there's various other members of this parliament—who are Indigenous. But this government clearly doesn't trust what we have to offer this chamber or the lower house. This task basically demonstrated that this government had no plan for the voice's failure.

It's not a surprise, really, considering that they like to hide from scrutiny. We've seen that over and over again. Despite this behaviour, the Albanese government cannot hide from the growing case that we require an audit. The ANAO investigations found accounting deficiencies and irregularities with all of the land councils in the Northern Territory. Anindilyakwa Land Council is currently being investigated over the Winchelsea mine. We have just had the recent standing down of the now former CEO of the Northern Land Council Joe Martin-Jard over scandals that were uncovered during the last estimates. We have the situation where Voyages has been listed in the MYEFO as a quantifiable contingent liability. We've seen that NAAJA is failing in the Northern Territory, with only one full-time lawyer out of 17 in Alice Springs and no new clients since November. Seventy-five Indigenous Australians had to represent themselves, and 21 have been remanded. May I remind this chamber that these aren't people whose first language is English, and they have to represent themselves in the justice system.

Now there's a new housing agreement with the Territory government, despite the Territory government being $500 million behind in its existing agreement. There's $250 million that has supposedly been invested into Alice Springs to restore law and order. Well, that's a damn joke. Actually, it's not a joke. It's quite a sad and horrific situation because an 18-year-old died just the other week in a stolen vehicle that was occupied by eight youths. We've seen footage today of young girls driving a stolen vehicle in the Northern Territory and crashing it. So what's happened with that $250 million? We won't know. We don't get answers during Senate estimates, and we continue to be told by this government that, despite their lack of transparency and accountability, we don't require an audit.

Instead they like to lead with this romanticism of Aboriginal culture. We get up here and we make our acknowledgements every day like throwaway lines that don't really matter, because nothing's changing on the ground. I don't know why we bother, to be quite honest. Infantilised traditional owners—quite often they're disregarded unless they want to carry on the agenda of this government or others on the crossbench. I certainly know that traditional owners feel like they've been failed by many, particularly in calling for this audit, including by Senator David Pocock himself. Traditional owners have told me that they've attempted to approach him on many occasions, but he's just not interested. The racism of separatism and the tyranny of low expectations trap our youths and deprive them of choice and ensure that traditional owners will be land rich but dirt poor. It's the only way forward that we see this government continue to try to proffer.

We, the coalition, note our concerns about the 259 questions that were put on notice to the cross-portfolio on Indigenous matters prior to 9 November as part of the 2023-24 supplementary budget estimates. Only 96 were answered by January even though the deadline for answering was December. Indeed, the cross-portfolio on Indigenous matters only answered 115 of the 259 questions. Is it really a priority of this government to support our most marginalised Indigenous Australians when they don't want to take any advice from their Indigenous parliamentarians, who are close to the action? It's an absolute disgrace. They'd rather avoid scrutiny through the estimates process—through every process.

As I keep saying, it is an absolute insult to be provided those 142 remaining answers to questions on notice the night before or, for those of us who were about to go into estimates, nine minutes before we entered. Then, of course, we have to ask questions relating to matters that are provided in those answers, which we cannot be across because it's provided to us nine minutes before we go in. This behaviour is absolutely unacceptable, particularly when our most marginalised Australians—who, let me remind this chamber, are Australian citizens—are treated in this way through the structures that are supposed to be there to improve their lives.

For some of you, they might just be another group of Australian citizens. For some of us, they are our family members who are dying—literally dying. They are children whose lives are lost, gone, children who are either fast tracked to incarceration, who've experienced the highest rates of sexual abuse in this country. Yet, again, it's another reminder of how this government continues to fail Indigenous children is that they don't want a royal commission into the sexual abuse of Indigenous children in remote communities. It's okay for institutional sexual abuse victims, but not if you're Indigenous in this country and it's occurring within your community. 'You're not as important,' is what this government tells those victims. Those victims, who come to me on a regular basis, crying out for support from those who have been elected to provide that support.

The absurdity continues through the processes that are supposed to provide support and help. But you know what it's doing? We see those organisations get out there with their buses shipping Aboriginal people from town camps to voting booths during elections—election in, election out—with their 'how to vote for Labor cards'. We all know it, don't we Senator Liddle? We've seen it. Those organisations are well funded. There's no transparency, no scrutiny and no accountability. This government doesn't want an audit because we'd uncover who's actually ensuring the gap continues to exist, who are the most powerful in this country and yet those who want to maintain the status quo for the benefit of ensuring a Labor government is returned to power either federally or in the Territory.

That's what's going on and that's what this government doesn't want the Australian people to understand or to be uncovered through a process. We just want to see our most marginalised, those that we love, we want to stop burying them, we want to see their lives being improved. It's our job to do that. Every single one of us in this chamber has that responsibility through the processes that we have and the power that the Australian people have invested in us.