Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Chair of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, Senator Barnett, I present additional information received by the committee in its inquiries into the provisions of the Migration Amendment (Sponsorship Obligations) Bill 2007 and Indigenous stolen wages.

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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the documents.

Although I spoke on this issue only yesterday, I want to take every opportunity to repeat the key points I made then. Fresh information has been tabled. I do not have that information before me, but I understand that it is correspondence relating to one of the recommendations in the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee report. I want to keep emphasising the issue of stolen wages at every opportunity in this chamber because of its significance and urgency.

The Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee tabled its report into Indigenous stolen wages in December last year. It was a unanimous report and contained just six recommendations. It was backed by Democrats, Greens, Liberal and Labor senators. I want to repeat the fact that the federal government has yet to respond to those recommendations, despite their being very small in number and very simple to implement. Even if the government does not want to implement the recommendations, it would be very simple for it to come to a decision on how it felt about them.

I want to express my gratitude for the comments made by Senator Brandis yesterday, as the duty minister in the chamber at the time. As a former member of the committee who was a member when the inquiry into stolen wages was undertaken, he said that he would personally follow up on a response from the government and get it provided as soon as possible. I acknowledge that and thank him for that undertaking, which he was not required to do by any means. It is because of his participation in this inquiry and his shared concern about the gross injustice that was revealed through it that he undertook to follow up, as a matter of urgency, where the federal government’s response was. So I welcome that.

I am using the opportunity of presentation of further information—which is, in effect, a response of sorts from a ministerial council—to repeat and reinforce this request: where is the federal government’s response? It is nine months since the report. It is not good enough that a response has not appeared yet. The correspondence that the committee received from the ministerial council is in response to one of the committee’s recommendations, that that ministerial council take an overview role on the progress of various state governments in examining their potential exposure to, or involvement in, Indigenous stolen wages. Frankly, it was a pretty poor response.

However, I am pleased that they considered the committee’s recommendation—that is good to see—and that they saw fit to respond to the committee about it. That is welcome and I acknowledge that. They have basically decided that it is a matter for individual governments, not for the ministerial council. That is unfortunate because I think there is an opportunity here for members of the ministerial council to keep each other honest, to monitor progress in each area and to take some overarching leadership on an issue that should be of concern at a national level. Be that as it may, it has not happened. At least it has meant that, via the ministerial council, all governments have been made more aware of the issue and have been given some extra incentive as individual governments to look at the issues raised by the Senate committee report and its recommendations.

I believe that, wherever the opportunity arises, it does need to be repeated that the issue of stolen wages is a grievous injustice. The Senate committee report into Indigenous stolen wages has detailed this injustice. It was an injustice perpetrated over many decades. Its consequences are still being felt today. If you work for a lifetime or even for a decade and are not given access to some or significant components or all of the wages you were entitled to, not surprisingly, you are a lot less well off than you would otherwise have been. Impoverishment is something that is passed on. The disadvantage that flows from it is passed on to your descendents as well. Lost life opportunities, intergenerational transfer of disadvantage and impoverishment occur. So the consequences are still being felt today, and the knowledge of the injustice is certainly still being felt today.

I think it is particularly apt that as a Queensland senator I take the opportunity to comment on this today, when we are seeing the next step being taken in the formal transfer of responsibility from the outgoing Queensland premier, Mr Beattie, who I wish well in his retirement, to the new Premier, Ms Anna Bligh, who I wish well in her new responsibility. This is an opportunity for a new administration, a new broom, to fix up some of the areas where the previous Premier fell short of the mark. Indigenous stolen wages is definitely one area where the Queensland government fell very, very far short of the mark—possibly not as far short of the mark as some other state governments, who have barely moved on the issue at all, but still far short of what any credible assessment would show as a just and fair response to what the state government has acknowledged was a grotesque and outrageous injustice in the misappropriation of vast amounts of the wages and entitlements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Queenslanders. I urge Ms Bligh to show that there is a new broom and a willingness to fix up past mistakes and address unfinished business. Acting on this issue would be a very significant way of demonstrating that—and I would also suggest it would be a politically easier one. The injustice is absolutely clear-cut. The extent of it, whilst unable to be demonstrated down to the last dollar and cent, is certainly very, very large. The mechanisms for making restitution are available. It can be done and it should be done. I urge her to take the opportunity to do that.

I also remind the Senate that the federal government have a role here, not least in having the simple courtesy to  respond to the Senate committee’s recommendations which, nine months down the track, they have yet to do. I think it bears repeating every single time when it is appropriate that it is actually a requirement under standing orders for governments to respond to Senate committee reports within three months—not nine months—and particularly when the recommendations in reports are small in number and very simple. It is not good enough whenever the government falls short; it is certainly not good enough on this issue where the response is simple and the injustice is major and urgent. So I repeat my plea to the federal government and the minister to respond as quickly as possible. To re-emphasise that point, I also remind the Senate that it unanimously passed a motion that I put forward back in June—on the 21st, from memory; so we are now nearly three months on, even from that point—that requested the federal government to respond to the committee’s recommendations by the first sitting week in August. The government have not only not done that, and are now a month overdue from that extra deadline; they have not even bothered, as far as I am aware, to inform the Senate why not.

I think that displays the depth of the federal government’s contempt for the Senate. Even though they control it, they show no respect for it. Their own senators supported that motion that requested the federal minister to respond to the Senate committee report by the first sitting week in August. It is not particularly common—in fact, it is quite uncommon in my experience over the last 10 years in this chamber—for the Senate to pass a specific motion formally requesting a response to recommendations by a specific date. Yet, as I said, that is what the Senate unanimously did. Not only did the minister not respond, but he did not even see fit to bother explaining to the Senate why he had not or to give an indication of when the response might appear. That is simply unsatisfactory. The lack of courtesy to the Senate I can live with—I am getting very used to it after the last couple of years. But I am not prepared to accept the lack of courtesy and respect shown to the Indigenous Australians whose life experiences are detailed in this report and who have been the victims of such gross injustice, also detailed in the report. The minister must respond. And I repeat my request, indeed the Senate’s request, that he do so as a matter of urgency.

Question agreed to.