Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Chair of the Community Affairs References Committee, Senator Moore, I present additional information received by the committee on its inquiry into petrol sniffing in Aboriginal communities and seek leave to move a motion in relation to that document.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I stand here this afternoon to provide some comments about a letter that has been received by the Community Affairs References Committee in relation to its inquiry into petrol sniffing in Aboriginal communities. The letter was to the committee by Mr Gregory Andrews, the now Assistant Secretary of the Communities Engagement Branch of the Office of Indigenous Policy Coordination. It corrects the record on two matters that were mentioned in evidence during the Senate’s inquiry into petrol sniffing and on evidence that he gave on 27 April this year.

The comments I want to go to refer to the way in which this whole sad and sorry saga has been dealt with since that day. I will begin by saying that it became evident to me in the last two months that the Senate had been misled by Mr Andrews. In fact, on 18 July I put out a press release calling on him to correct the record. I understand and accept that he did and I want to thank him publicly for doing that. In this job I find that public servants who choose to mislead the Senate are not helpful, nor do they do their minister or their government any service by being dishonest in their evidence. But I do believe there is one section of his evidence that to this day has not been corrected, and we have not had any evidence to lead us to believe that the statement he made was in any way correct. I also note that he gave that statement on the ABC’s Lateline program—and I will get to the matters of that television show and the reporter, Mr Tony Jones, in a moment.

On 27 April Mr Andrews suggested that people were being raped and bashed and were killing other people and themselves. He went on to say that young people were hanging themselves off the church steeple on Sundays and that their mothers were having to cut them down. Since 27 April, I have travelled to Mutitjulu and have had a meeting with at least 30 members of that community. They are distressed, dismayed and horrified at the comments that have been made about their community. They have not had a chance to reply to these allegations and, at this stage, those allegations are completely unsubstantiated. There is no evidence at all that people have hung themselves off the church steeple. There may well be evidence that kids in that community have tried to commit suicide. Community members are certainly shocked and dismayed and they were extremely upset when they told me that no mothers had had to cut their children down off the church steeple. So why do we have public servants making these sorts of accusations?

I think we really need to take note here, with this letter that has emanated out of a whole flurry of activity at the ABC, of the role of the media in this sad and sorry saga. We now know that Mr Andrews was interviewed on Lateline as a former youth worker. In a letter posted today on the Crikey website, I notice that Tony Jones himself has written to clear himself of accusations against Lateline, which he says amount to a conspiracy theory.

But let us just put the question of a conspiracy theory to one side. Tony Jones admits in his letter that Mr Andrews being described as a former youth worker was in fact an unfortunate misjudgement, although a minor one. I notice, though, that Lateline was still happy enough to interview a whole swag of people in relation to petrol sniffing in that community and that only one of those people—that is, against a whole swag of people who had been associated with but were not involved with, did not live with and were not other Indigenous people in that community—was a senior traditional owner from that community. That is pretty one-sided reporting, I would say. I myself was a bit shocked and horrified when I saw the string of accusations being made on the Lateline show. I understand ‘a story is a story’ for some reporters, but I have to say that in my estimation the creditability and the high professionalism enjoyed in this country by Lateline have been severely diminished.

We now know that two weeks ago—a couple of months after these allegations had been made—the Northern Territory Police department issued a statement to say that 200 to 300 people had been interviewed in relation to the allegations at Mutitjulu and that they had not found enough evidence to charge anybody with any crime. I notice, Tony Jones, that you did not actually repeat that or seek to qualify the unsubstantiated accusations on your show. The Northern Territory Police’s press release suggested that they had viewed hundreds of people and had not yet come up with any evidence. Where is the balance in the reporting here? Where is the attempt to get out to the community and to provide another side to the story?

I think poor Greg Andrews is the messenger who has been shot here. It is unfortunate that this whole saga—as well as his misrepresentation of the activities of his department during Senate estimates—has come to light through his interview on Lateline. Why hasn’t Lateline reported the lack of spending on and commitment to petrol sniffing by the federal government? Why didn’t Lateline then seek to do a story on the outcome of the petrol sniffing inquiry? Why has it not revealed to the rest of this country that only three communities are involved in the 10-point plan—Docker River, Imampa and Mutitjulu—compared with the many other communities in the Northern Territory that want some action taken in relation to petrol sniffing? Why has it not revealed that any money this government has spent out there has been from the Aboriginals Benefit Account—that is, from Indigenous people’s own money derived from the royalties of mining? Not one new cent of the federal government’s money has been spent at Mutitjulu.

Why hasn’t Lateline revealed to the rest of this country that any programs funded at Mutitjulu operate on a six-month or one-year funding basis and not on a three-, four- or five-year funding basis, which would enable some consistency and some quality outcomes rather than poor people struggling to deal with these problems and having to stop every four or five months to rewrite grant submissions? Why hasn’t Lateline revealed that these are short-term funded programs, that there is a serious lack of youth workers and youth programs in this community and that there are community people out there who want action taken? Unsubstantiated accusations either by public servants or through shows such as Lateline do nothing to assist or arrest the strife and the dysfunctionality in these communities. Why won’t Lateline take its cameras out and give us a half-hour show on the success of the Mount Theo program or the Papunya program, given that there are no kids sniffing in those communities now? That has happened not thanks to the actions of this federal government but thanks to the actions of Indigenous people. In my mind, the ABC, courtesy of Lateline and Mr Tony Jones, has seriously eroded the creditability of Indigenous people.

I do not step aside from the fact that, if there are people out there doing as Tony Jones, Lateline and Mr Andrews suggest, they should be charged, locked up, sent to think about their actions and punished for their actions. We know that the paedophile they are talking about no longer lives in that region and has gone back to South Australia, but we and the police do not have any other evidence on which to base an arrest, a questioning, a holding or a charge. What are we doing to support the police in their actions to try to get to the bottom of this? What we tend to do is see on national television wild accusations which are unsubstantiated but then not qualified by the ABC. I seriously think that the reporting behaviour of this show needs investigating. I am grossly disappointed by the lack of impartiality of the ABC in relation to this, and I do not believe that their behaviour in the last two months has done anything to try and arrest the gross dysfunctionality in some of these communities or the lack of attention to petrol sniffing in this country.

Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was also a member of the committee conducting the inquiry that this information relates to. I should also say that I am chair of a separate committee, the Senate environment committee, which happened to be at Uluru Katajuta National Park on the night of one of the Lateline reports into this issue—a report which included allegations or comments regarding the actions or apparent inactions of Parks Australia with regard to some allegations. I also want to speak on the issue whilst it is before the Senate. I think it is an impossibly difficult issue to deal with, frankly. There are aspects of the way this story was handled by Lateline that I think are less than ideal. You can get into allegation and counterallegation, point to different aspects of transcripts and end up going down a range of different rabbit burrows and it will not really prove anything. I think we all need to remember when we are debating these sorts of issues that the key thing we need to keep our eye on is what is best for Indigenous Australians.

Clearly, the suggestions that were made that there was a paedophile ring have been demonstrated to be grossly overstated if not completely incorrect. Certainly there was the strong inference in the reporting that the alleged paedophile was still in the community at the time the reports were made, when in fact he was no longer in the community and, from all the evidence I have seen, was pressured or chased out of that community some time earlier. That still raises the questions of why is it up to a community and, to some extent, organisations like Parks Australia to use various forms of pressure et cetera with regard to somebody who had very serious allegations made about them.

The statement released by the head of Parks Australia, Mr Cochrane, around the time of the Lateline stories shows quite clearly that Parks Australia reported the allegations to the police. That was the appropriate thing to do, of course. Given the very crucial and very basic fundamental aspect of justice that somebody is innocent until proven guilty, obviously the person in that circumstance could not just be summarily dismissed from their job until the allegation had been investigated. However, in the meantime significant changes were made to restrict the activities of that person to try to ensure there was a reduced prospect of any untoward actions. The Territory police, having investigated the allegations, did not find any grounds for charging anybody. We can all see how that would put an organisation or an employer in a difficult position. Serious allegations are referred to police, the police investigate them and no action is taken. What do you do? That is always a difficult scenario. I do not think any of us can just get up and pronounce with certitude and high and mighty judgement how to deal with those situations. You have to deal with them on a case-by-case basis at the community level. I think that is basically what the community did.

Frankly, I think the mainstream media, including the ABC, and mainstream politics, including us, simply do not operate in such a way as to deal effectively with some of the very serious challenges that Indigenous communities have to face. I think our records show that we have not exactly covered ourselves in glory in trying to deal with these issues. But I would also emphasise that we have to guard against double standards and against each of us, from our different perspectives, using scenarios that arise purely to advance our own political, ideological or philosophical barrow of the day. It is very easy to do that—in fact, sometimes it is quite hard not to do it. But I think we need to try to step back and look at the bigger picture—the long-term picture—and recognise the wider damage that can be done by just running away from an issue without looking at the broader consequences.

Let us not also forget, of course, that many people, and particularly women in Indigenous communities, are crying out for more support and more help in dealing with violence and abuse towards adults and children in their communities. It is an incredibly difficult issue, and it is one that we have to try to deal with a bit more sensitively. That is why running off with wild allegations and using them to follow up with very public and very punitive actions is not normally a terribly constructive way to go.

I also note the contrast between this and the way we tend to act with regard to allegations of child abuse, including child sexual assault, in the broader community. There was a report on the front page of my hometown newspaper, the Courier-Mail, a week or so ago about many thousands of child abuse and neglect allegations that had not been followed up by the state Labor government. In saying that, I know there are some reasons for that situation. But the fact is that, even if many allegations of child abuse had not been properly investigated because of resource constraints, the Queensland government did not have the federal government coming in and cutting off their funding and sending in an administrator, like happened in Mutitjulu. We have not had any widespread allegations that Queenslanders, as a society, are not able to function and cannot look after themselves or that we need to mainstream and deal with Queensland from Canberra. We have not had widespread smearing of the entire Queensland community such that the whole society is dysfunctional because of the quite widespread amount of child abuse, neglect and assault that occurs.

We know that it is a difficult issue, and we know it is an issue that occurs throughout the entire Australian community. Whilst there is evidence that it is more widespread in some—and I emphasise ‘some’—Indigenous communities, the fact is that child abuse and child sexual assault are quite widespread across our community. It is a very difficult issue to deal with. From my background as a social worker and from knowing people who have worked in child protection, you are in an impossible position. If you go in and remove a child, you are accused of taking children away from their families, traumatising them and ripping them away from their support networks. If you leave them alone and more abuse happens, you are accused of leaving them to suffer lifelong damage. It is an impossible choice, and that is when you are operating outside the glare of the public spotlight, the media spotlight and the political spotlight. In the spotlight it becomes 50 times more difficult.

In saying all that, I am not being helpful in providing an answer because I am not sure that you can provide an easy answer. Every situation has to be dealt with on its merits, but we need to recognise the need for sensitivity in these issues across the board and the need, as much as possible, to deal with these sorts of issues outside the glare of the public spotlight. We need to do that without using it as an excuse to sweep the issues under the carpet. We cannot resolve difficult and major issues at the community level whilst there is a whopping great spotlight on them and everybody is trying to look at every single situation to see how it fits the political battles of the moment. We have to try to find a way to move outside of that. I do not think there is any doubt that that is the way the story on Mutitjulu ended up. It galloped along and ended up overblowing the situation. There is no doubt that there are serious difficulties in that community—the community itself acknowledges that. It wants support in working through them.

At the end of the day, you can have many politicians—all of us—making all our pronouncements, statements of outrage and big headlines in the newspapers, but that will all die down and the people at the community level will still have to deal with the situation. They want long-term support in dealing with that and enabling them to deal with that. We might go in there genuinely to try to help, but sometime or other we will be leaving and they will still be there. They are the ones who need the support. In this circumstance, the community have clearly been left in a situation where they feel like they have been punished many times over and perhaps exaggerated perceptions have been created about that situation. There is a wide range of circumstances and a wide range of reasons as to why things are as they are in that community, and that is a subject for another day. Certainly this whole episode is a reminder of how easy it is to let one small thing blow up out of proportion and cause more harm than good. It is a reminder of how we need to be careful in dealing with these issues. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.