Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This report of the Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, the 2006 Social Justice Report, is a very interesting report. I congratulate the Social Justice Commissioner on producing the report, on the wide range of issues that he covers and the detail with which he covers them. He raises some very important points in this report relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander access to social justice in this country. I would like to point out some of the key points that he has made in this report. He talks about, for example, what makes good Indigenous policy. He says:

In the context of Indigenous affairs, the most senior officers of the APS—

the Australian Public Service—

have recognised their part in contributing to dysfunction and disadvantage in Indigenous communities as a result of the ‘failure of a generation of public policies to translate into the sustained economic betterment of indigenous Australians.’

He quotes Dr Shergold as saying:

I am aware that, for some 15 years as a public administrator, too much of what I have done on behalf of government for the very best of motives had the very worst of outcomes. I (and hundreds of my well-intentioned colleagues, both black and white) have contributed to the current unacceptable state of affairs, at first unwittingly and then, too often, silently and despairingly.

I think that is a very significant statement. The social justice commissioner then goes on in the report to look at a range of issues, and there is quite a lot of information and reflection on the current policy framework for Indigenous affairs. He says that there is an ‘implementation gap between the rhetoric of government and its actual activities’. He goes on to say that the new arrangements are:

... a top down imposition—with policy set centrally and unilaterally by government, confirmed in bilateral processes with state and territory governments (again without Indigenous input) and then applied to Indigenous peoples.

…            …            …

The lack of effective connections between the regional and national level was identified as the central problem with the operation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), and a key reason cited by the Government for its abolition.

He is saying that the same thing is being replicated with the new arrangement the government has put in place. He says:

... the lack of effective participation in the new arrangements is the fundamental flaw of the new arrangements.

He then talks about the lack of evidence base for the policy approaches that are being taken, and says that it occurs ‘without stakeholder engagement, is conducted outside of a learning framework and lacks transparency’. This is exactly the approach that is demonstrated in the latest government legislation, the Northern Territory intervention package. A number of us have spoken at length about the fact that there was no consultation on that package. In fact, the changes that were passed through this place this week suffered from that same approach of a lack of consultation. There is a very significant quote in the report where the social justice commissioner says:

The greatest irony of this is that it fosters a passive system of policy development and service delivery while at the same time criticising Indigenous peoples for being passive recipients of government services!

I think that is a very important and salient point. The first recommendation that the social justice commissioner makes in the report is:

That the Secretaries Group request the Australian Public Service Commissioner to conduct a confidential survey of staff in Indigenous Coordination Centres to identify current issues in the implementation of the new arrangements and the challenges being faced in achieving whole of government coordination. This survey should be conducted by the APSC.

I think that is a very, very important recommendation. I put a motion to this place this week to seek to put in place that very survey. Of course, it was unfortunately not supported by government. I would have thought that if the government were interested in getting policy delivery and service delivery to Aboriginal communities they would have supported that recommendation. Everybody in the field knows that ICCs are failing and are not working, so let’s find out why they are failing and why they are not working. Further in the same recommendation he says that there should be established a parliamentary committee of inquiry into the progress of the new arrangements in Indigenous affairs. (Time expired)

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

I would also like to speak to the report of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner. It is a very important and comprehensive report, and I urge people to look at it. The section I would like to focus on tonight is the one dealing with developments in recognising and protecting the rights of Indigenous peoples internationally. We had a debate at the start of the week in this chamber, on an urgency motion which the Democrats initiated, about the need for the Australian government to support the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. I think that is being voted on in the United Nations General Assembly today—perhaps even as we speak. It is a matter of great disappointment that the Australian government has indicated that it is not willing to support the adoption of this declaration. If people want to learn the facts about this declaration, what is involved in the substance of it and what is involved in the purpose and the meaning of it—as opposed to the disgraceful misinformation and spin that has come from the federal government to justify their appalling lack of support for this important step of adopting an international declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples—then I recommend that they read this report. The report sets it out in a very straightforward way, in unvarnished language, unemotionally and very factually.

One of the things I have found so frustrating, even with Australia’s own social justice commissioner clearly detailing the benefits to Indigenous peoples in Australia as well as internationally in going down this path and in setting in place some benchmarks and standards for us to seek to measure up to—non-binding and even ‘aspirational’, to use one of the federal government’s current buzzwords—is the misinformation. One of the key reasons the federal government has put out in the public arena, as well as in this chamber, as to why they will not support the UN declaration as it stands is that they are still worried about the meaning of some of the words. As this report details, the process of developing this declaration has taken literally decades, and the report outlines, on pages 230 and 231, both the key features of the declaration and the process of it being developed. The Australian government is, sadly, one of just a small number of governments around the world which are seeking to frustrate the adoption of this declaration. There is no other possible motivation that could be behind the federal government’s position. It cannot continue to say, ‘We are just trying to reach consensus’ when clearly the consequence is to just hold it up—and now, if it is going to be adopted anyway, to just not support it.

The federal government has expressed concern about the lack of certainty about what ‘right’ might mean, because the convention recognises the right of Indigenous peoples to self-determination, and has suggested that somehow that might mean an opportunity for separatism, a nation within a nation or Indigenous people having the right to break away from Australia. Firstly, that is clearly and deliberately a misrepresentation of what self-determination under international law is about; secondly, the draft convention that is being put forward for adoption specifically and explicitly rules out any such interpretation of the meaning of self-determination; thirdly, the right of all peoples to self-determination is already recognised under international law and Australia is a party to the relevant convention that recognises that right, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 1, part 1 states: ‘All peoples have the right of self-determination’—except, it appears, as far as the Howard government is concerned, Indigenous peoples; their only pathway to self-determination is to lose their identity and their culture and go through assimilation.

That goes to the second part of the total furphy the federal government is putting around about this UN declaration: that somehow or other it puts customary law above national law. It does no such thing. It is simply dishonest and divisive for the federal government to be putting out this sort of propaganda. It is old-style, ridiculous, hard-line, arch-conservative propaganda that does nothing other than play on people’s total misunderstanding of international law and total misunderstanding and ignorance of the nature of customary law in Australia. If we are genuinely wanting to see Indigenous people progress, as the Prime Minister and others in his government keep saying, then let’s stop the furphies, stop the misinformation and actually recognise and support some basic, fundamental rights for Indigenous peoples. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.