Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens won't be supporting this motion about practical solutions today. In fact, it reads exactly like the coalition's election platform. There are three points that I want to make with the limited time that I have here today. One of those is very, very clear: you can't police your way out of the situation that's happening in Central Australia. This is hundreds of years of trauma based on colonisation, displacement, the eradication of culture and the segregation of people. It's also known as the White Australia policy, and God forbid that we are going back to that time. Some people in this country actually believe that this happened a really, really long time ago. When I speak to people that's what they say. But next week is actually the anniversary of the national apology to stolen generations people. Every year there is a breakfast here in this place. It is no surprise to hear, because I've spoken about it many times in this chamber, that I am from the following generation of children. My mother was in a mission, taken from her family. This happened to many mobs across our country. This is the cycle of dysfunction that was created for us.

The second is that the rates of family and domestic violence throughout the Northern Territory are unacceptable. They are absolutely unacceptable. That's what Senator Shoebridge and I heard when we were on the missing and murdered First Nations women and children inquiry. There needs to be significant investment but in crime prevention and early intervention, not punitive approaches that criminalise people and continue to paint black people in this country as people who are simply absolutely inadequate or cannot do for themselves. There is a mountain of evidence about the systems failure, that we do not provide the basic human needs—food, water, shelter and safety—in our communities. These need to be approached by every level of government to make sure that we are actually coming together and finding common ground to fix that instead of these inflammatory comments about what's happening in our community. (Time expired)