Kerrynne Liddle (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Child Protection and the Prevention of Family Violence) Share this | Hansard source

Of course I agree with Senator McGrath and Senator Nampijinpa Price, and the reason is—well, it's easy—the lack of accountability and transparency in following the money trail of Commonwealth taxpayer money which is being handed out in the billions. Yet all the while the Albanese government and its agencies continue to provide exorbitant cover. You could really argue they are rewarding a failure to provide good governance.

Nine minutes before Senate estimates. It's outrageous. When you don't want to ask questions about organisations that receive taxpayer money and when you don't want to provide the answers, you are supporting double standards, different standards. It's not good enough and, in fact, it's discriminatory. You could certainly argue that without good governance you can't deliver to maximum effect.

Let's look at what I'm talking about. The Registrar of Aboriginal Torres and Strait Islander Corporations oversees the CATSI Act. It's their job to make sure that these organisations meet all their legislative obligations. Under this government, they're quite happy to hand out money to organisations that don't meet even the basic obligations of good governance. If you get taxpayer money, you'd hope that there's some confidence that it's being spent to maximum effect, because it's there to help the most vulnerable people. Yet in March last year the registrar announced that 324 corporations had been deregistered. There have been a handful deregistered since. Today my office called ORIC to check on some of this terrible, terrible progress. The phone call began with a recording: 'Corporation reports are now overdue.' They are due each December.

I checked on Tangentyere Council Aboriginal Corporation in Alice Springs, an organisation that's a huge beneficiary of a lot of the money that went in after the removal of those alcohol restrictions without a proper transition plan, and now this government talks about making progress on fixing a position—a terrible position—that sent that Central Australian community into absolute turmoil. The numbers aren't better than they were before those alcohol restrictions were lifted. Tangentyere delivers programs and services to people in town camps. These are historical Aboriginal suburbs. Here's some truth-telling: not everyone lives in a town camp; a few thousand people do. It's ridiculous to put all the money into a few key organisations—and, worse, to put it into organisations that don't even comply with basic reporting requirements. Tangentyere received additional funding announced by Minister Burney in the past 12 months of $2.5 million for access to education and $3 million for core funding. We spent some time trying to discover if they had met their governance responsibilities, as I mentioned earlier. The best we could find was a financial report from 2021. So much for transparency! So much for accountability!

There is a victim when these services aren't delivered to the highest possible delivery, and they are the most vulnerable. They are the people that don't complain. I've been watching for years. I don't live in inner-city Sydney. I was born and raised in Alice Springs. I've spent time out bush, not just flying in and flying out, driving in and driving out. I can tell you that, with this money that you're giving to the land councils, they are creating a drive-in drive-out industry of their own. The money that you're pouring in in a big headline that is going to the land councils is going to programs where they deliver services into communities, and that's where the investment should be. You can't be leaders in a remote community when the very tools that allow you to have the artefacts for showing that leadership and for supporting the leadership in those communities exist in Alice Springs, exist in Darwin and exist a long way from where you actually live and from where the actual leadership should be.

When I looked for those financial year reports from Tangentyere, I couldn't find them. Tangentyere's own website only shows its latest annual report as being 2017-18. How is that possible? And how is it possible you continue to pour money in? This is one organisation. There are many good Aboriginal organisations delivering services. There are also many organisations who are not Aboriginal organisations delivering good services. I know you would have us believe that Aboriginal community controlled organisations are the only way to deliver to Aboriginal people, but that is not the case. They deserve the best service delivery. Those organisations doing the right thing, those organisations delivering to the people, those organisations that don't invest in the assets such as big Toyotas, big hotels and big conference stays—they're the ones who have nothing to fear, and they exist. An audit would identify those ones that need to do things differently. You don't need any more proof than the Closing the Gap results.

So here we are, asking for an audit into those organisations that receive funding to support the most vulnerable. As I said, those organisations that do the right thing have absolutely nothing to fear. Come forward! Tell us about the great work you're doing but also tell us about and expose those ones that aren't doing great work.

NAAJA was mentioned by my fellow senator before. Can you imagine being an Aboriginal person in the Northern Territory—where English might be your third language, where you haven't had a great education and where you are vulnerable because of poverty and because of access—going into the legal system and trying to represent yourself? How long would it take you to work out that that was a human rights abuse? You knew really early on. Your minister had to have known because it was all over the newspapers that there were problems at that organisation.

Since I came into this place nearly two years ago, I've seen report after report into organisations that deliver to the most vulnerable: in South Australia, Aboriginal people in aged care; in the Northern Territory, Aboriginal people who receive legal services. Then I watched in horror a couple of weeks ago when, through Empowered Communities, all of this money went into Ceduna and the surrounding area, post removal of the cashless debit card. Yet, with all the public servants flying in and with all of those program providers in that little town, nobody thought to respond appropriately to a heap of videos circulating of girls bashing the hell out of each other in very public areas.

You know what your solution is? The Albanese government's solution is: 'Let's just put more money in. Let's not put accountability on those organisations to do their jobs, to prevent the need for more money to go into those communities.' You can talk about that same model in Western Australia. You can talk about that same model in Queensland, in the Northern Territory and in South Australia. You have to get more accountability to stop the money flowing in that delivers almost nothing. People depend on that. Children depend on it. Old people depend on it.

It's discriminatory to treat people differently based on their race. It's not okay to think it's okay for millions of taxpayer dollars to go into these organisations and for there not to be any accountability. It's on public show. There are no annual reports. You can't put in your glossy photos that say, 'Hey, look; we're all here and we're all doing the right thing', when you don't provide the basic information that proves that you are.