Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

Today the opposition asked the government a number of questions about its achievements, or lack of, in relation to Closing the Gap, given the significant statements made by the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, ministers and colleagues across the chamber today. Today's work reinforces this government's place as a government of broken promises. This government came to power in 2022 promising everything to Indigenous Australians and has come close to the end of the parliamentary term delivering almost nothing, with policy confusion, policy paralysis and a genuine concern amongst Indigenous Australians in relation to where this government wants to take them.

It's been interesting to hear, during the debate and particularly in question time, the calls across the chamber for bipartisanship. There have been a number of occasions on which the opposition has gone to the government seeking bipartisan support for elements of policy delivery in this area where it is quite clear things are going wrong. I don't know how many times I've heard the saying, 'If you continue to do exactly the same thing as you've done in the past, you're crazy if you expect a different result,' yet that's exactly what we've seen from the government. Early in the parliament, I myself went to the government when there were clearly things wrong in the way that a number of Indigenous organisations were operating. That was after the ORIC report provided to us had showed that 28 per cent of organisations hadn't lodged their required financial documents for two years. As an opposition, we went to the government seeking the opportunity to have a look at the way those organisations were operating, and we were effectively told to go away. Clearly, there's an issue there.

It's all very well for the government to seek bipartisanship when it's something they want, but bipartisanship, by its very nature, works both ways, and that's not what we've seen from the government in relation to this. We've seen the expiry of alcohol bans in the Northern Territory and then the scrambling to recover ground afterwards. We've seen the allocation of significant amounts of money and the government continuing to talk up how much money it's spending in this area. That's fine; the allocation of resources is important. But what is also important is how they're allocated, how they're delivered on the ground and how they deliver results. Tragically, in that space is where this government has failed.

It has failed philosophically also. The whole concept of Closing the Gap is about ensuring that Indigenous Australians raise their circumstances to those of all other Australians—that they shouldn't need to accept standards that are lower than those of all other Australians. Yet one of the first things that this government did in coming to power and passing its aged-care legislation was to remove the requirement for Indigenous aged-care delivery services to comply with the same governance standards as every other aged-care provider in the country. How do we ensure that Indigenous Australians are lifted to the same standard as everyone else if we don't require the same standard of them as part of what they need to do? This government has completely failed Indigenous Australians, from a number of different perspectives.