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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This report is the Auditor-General’s Performance audit: whole of government Indigenous service delivery arrangements, which was handed over to the parliament in mid-October last year, just before the election. It is an important and thorough document and I will not have time to go through the full details here.

Given the debate last year and some of the debate that has occurred this year regarding the situation faced by many Indigenous Australians, particularly in more remote areas and communities, it is important to look at the adequacy of government service delivery arrangements to Indigenous Australians and to those communities. One of the pluses of the approach by the former Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Mr Brough, in regard to Indigenous affairs was that he did communicate a sense of urgency and enhanced focus on problems faced by many Indigenous communities and people. Having called for a greater priority to be given to Indigenous issues I welcomed that focus even though I did not always agree with the particular approaches he gave. That has meant an ongoing focus and a heightened degree of political debate around issues affecting Indigenous Australians, particularly those in remote communities and in the Northern Territory.

One of the less positive aspects in the approach that the former minister, Mr Brough, the former government and the former Prime Minister took, along with increasing the urgency, was politicising the debate in a much more ideologically divisive way than had occurred before and I think that is unfortunate. We are still seeing the legacy of that at the moment. That is not to say that people cannot have different views or different policy positions. I think it is important to have that contest of ideas. The real problem that we saw and continue to see to some extent was that anybody who had a different view about the approach being proposed in regard to the Northern Territory was accused of not caring about children or of being willing to support or enable the continuation of exploitation of children by paedophiles. That accusation then eliminated the prospect of having rational political and public debate. Either you were forced to agree with what had been put forward or, if you disagreed, you were immediately told you were supporting paedophiles or you did not care, or other ideological point-scoring opportunities emerged that we saw far too much of last year and we are still seeing to some extent.

Particularly important in those debates is to try to move away from an antagonistic and divisive approach, and that is advice for all of us from all perspectives. I am not seeking to solely blame only the previous government or minister for taking that approach. I think all sides could try to pull it back down to an evidence base. We also have to look at what works on the ground. One thing that is particularly galling is when there is a lot of chest puffing, lecturing and criticism from the government level about other people’s failures, or failures in Indigenous communities or attacking various individuals or particular organisations.

We see it in examples like this audit report. As with all audit reports they are about as non-ideological as you could get and identify that we are failing on the basics of service delivery. That is where we need to keep reminding ourselves that whatever approach people are putting forward in regard to providing assistance to Indigenous Australians—who have as much right as every other Australian to get services to meet their needs—if we cannot even work and perform adequately on delivering those services then we frankly have not got much right to go around lecturing other people on their failings.

If there is one job of government that people can expect it is that, whatever services they decide to deliver and whatever service it is that taxpayers are funding, those services are delivered adequately, competently and effectively. I appreciate that is not always easy in remote areas let alone in remote Indigenous communities. But as this audit report shows we are still falling far short of what is adequate in regard to Indigenous service delivery arrangements and the so-called whole-of-government arrangements that were in place previously.

My plea is for all of us not to forget our own responsibilities and as part of the system of government overall for us to keep an eye on the adequacy of service delivery on the ground. We can have our philosophical debates and our different views about what services should be delivered and the legal framework around that, but let us not take our eye off the less exciting issues that are not likely to get on the front pages or where there are not so many political points to be scored. In some ways they are the far more important issues of how adequately those services are being delivered.

This report indicates failures to date and identifies areas for improvement such as the implementation overall of the Indigenous affairs arrangements and the role of the lead agencies including improvement in the whole-of-government governance and accountability arrangements; improvement in collaborative efforts to support effective service delivery including the development of joint funding arrangements; and improvement in ensuring programs respond flexibly to Indigenous need. We hear a lot of lecturing and a lot of pontificating in this place and in the media about inadequate governance and accountability arrangements amongst Indigenous organisations. I am not disputing there are grounds for criticism there. But it makes it a lot harder for any of us to credibly call for improvements in governance arrangements with Indigenous organisations and communities when we are still falling short of the mark ourselves in regard to governance and accountability arrangements according to the Auditor-General.

I also particularly want to emphasise the point the Auditor-General highlights about the need for improvement in the way programs respond flexibly to Indigenous need. This is a crucial area not specifically in the Northern Territory or in these whole-of-government arrangements but anywhere where we are working with Indigenous Australians and providing government services to them to ensure that there is sufficient flexibility to respond to the different needs in different areas.

As all of us here who have had any experience in Indigenous communities know—particularly, to use the example again of the Territory or, in my own state of Queensland, communities on Cape York as well as elsewhere in Queensland—there is incredible diversity in those communities. Even on the cape in Queensland between the west coast, the east coast, the top end and the southern end each community is different. The broad brush of their needs may be the same but the nature of them—the focal points within those needs—can be quite different. The capacity within different communities to work with service delivery agencies is often quite different and can fluctuate over time. Unless we have enough flexibility within the programs that governments are funding and delivering, we are going to continue to fall short. We need to have enough self-awareness to recognise our own failings or the failings of government agencies and to keep the blowtorch on those a lot more than we do.

I think it is all too easy to blame the obvious problems that exist in many Indigenous communities solely on dysfunction within the communities themselves and not look at the dysfunction that exists within some government departments or on the lack of cooperation between different government departments. This Audit Office report clearly shows that we are falling well short of what is adequate.

Indigenous Australians deserve competent, efficient and adequate services that are the same as for everybody else, particularly at a time when they are being used as a political football by all sides of politics. To some extent I think they have even more reason to expect that the least we can do is to ensure that our own house is in order. This report clearly shows that we have got some way to go.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Audit report No. 10 2007-08: Performance audit: whole of government Indigenous service delivery arrangements is timely in view of what is happening in many of the Indigenous communities in my state of Queensland, where the state government simply seems uninterested in and incapable of assisting the people in those communities. It highlights again that the Commonwealth has a responsibility and has discharged that responsibility in the only area that it has constitutional power to do so—that is, the Northern Territory—but has been simply kept out of helping in Queensland by the state Labor government for what were fairly crass political reasons. I hope, for Indigenous people’s sake, that the Labor Party, now having achieved power federally, is able to impose on the administration of Indigenous communities in Queensland as it did in the Northern Territory, although I fear that the actions of the Rudd government in winding back the intervention in the Northern Territory are not a good precursor to positive action in my state of Queensland.

I want to highlight the difficulties in one Indigenous community in Queensland, that of Aurukun. It was reported yesterday in the Cairns Post by a reporter, Margo Zlotkowski, that the Aurukun community has spent an unbudgeted $65,000 per month since December on nine security guards who are providing round-the-clock patrols in that community. As the CEO of that community said, ‘We’re going to end up being bankrupt in a year if we keep paying that.’ The CEO went on to say that one of his employees gave notice to leave because she was so terrified after having had rocks thrown on her roof and regular threats made against her that she would cry uncontrollably at night when any trouble flared. He said, ‘One night she fainted. It was just terrible.’

In Australia you have a situation where employees who go to these communities to help are absolutely terrified for their future. There is the recent case on an island in the Torres Strait where a nurse was raped by 10 men and when she called upon the Queensland health department for assistance they said, ‘Oh well, if you can get yourself down to Thursday Island we’ll have a look at the problem.’ The approach of Queensland Health in that particular instance alone is just incredible in a country like Australia.

There are endemic problems in these communities, which the Howard government recognised in the Northern Territory and started to do something about. Not everyone agreed, but it was the first time ever that I can recall—certainly in my time in the parliament—that a government has really taken action instead of talking about it. But within 100 days of the change of government we seem to be going back to a situation where we will talk about it again, we will have lots of reports, we will have lots of hand wringing and we will have lots of high-profile media issues like saying sorry and delivering apologies. It makes great media, but what does it do for those on the ground? This Auditor-General’s report shows that we have to do much better in the delivery of services. As I said in my speech on the apology, all the apologies in the world given in this lovely building in this lovely city will not make one iota of difference to the Indigenous people who are living in Third World situations in the north of Australia. I am just so distressed at the fact that Mr Rudd is already winding that back.

We will go back, as I say, to talking about it. We will have lots of little meetings with the intelligentsia—people in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra will wring their hands and work out strategies—but the Indigenous people will go on suffering because the government seems to be unprepared to continue the firm and real action that was taken by the previous government. I can only hope that in the next three years this government does see some sense in trying to improve the lot of Indigenous people.

You do not improve the lot of Indigenous people by saying: ‘We all accept that pornography is bad. We all accept that it has an influence on child sexual abuse, but rather than cutting it off as the previous government did, we are now going to let the community decide whether they should have it.’ Yes, sure the kids and the women will have a lot of say in that. But that seems to be the proposal from the Labor government. It is legislation that is not yet before this chamber, as I understand. It is yet to come. Perhaps I will have to look at it a bit more closely, but it seems from newspaper reports on that legislation that we are simply turning the clock back to the stages where governments do absolutely nothing.

As with the case in Aurukun, there does need to be firm action taken. Will the Queensland government take it? I cannot imagine they would. Governments of both persuasions have done nothing for the last 20 years—principally Labor, I might say. I think our side did try to do something about it, but not in the same vein as Mr Brough did. Certainly, in the last decade that Labor have been in power in Queensland they have done absolutely nothing. They talk a lot and get their photos taken a lot, but the problems go on.

This situation in Aurukun really does need to be addressed. According to the Cairns Post report, the community is looking at the installation of security cameras so that they will not have to employ a security guard for $65,000 per month. They are looking at installing 14 cameras in key areas such as the council chambers, the store, the tavern, the works depot, the airport and the health clinic and that would cost about $350,000. Seriously, if the Queensland government will not provide that money, I would urge the federal government to see whether there is some way that they can assist with it. Because if you keep spending $65,000 a month just on a security guard, you are going to go broke and the services that these community councils do provide will simply no longer be there because they will not have the money to pay for them.

It is the sort of issue that a government which is serious could actually do something about in a practical way. Do not get up and talk about it, do not wring hands, do not get photos taken, but put some money into it and address the root cause of the problem. One would hope that you would not need security cameras or security guards if the real, underlying problems were attacked, but in its first 100 days this new government has not shown any inclination to get involved in the job that has to be done.

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will pick up on what Senator Macdonald was saying, although he was speaking mainly about Aurukun and I want to speak about Mabuiag Island. What happened last week was unbelievably shocking and the insensitivity of the Queensland health department knows no bounds. One really has to query how a nurse could have been treated in such a shocking way when she phoned the health department on Thursday Island and was told—I think the words reported were—‘It’s an unfortunate incident, you being raped, but get over it and catch the next plane to Thursday Island.’ She was not able to do that because the police were coming over by boat and in the long term her fiance had to hire a helicopter to get her out and take her over to Badu Island.

This was reported by Mr Tony Koch, a very reliable and knowledgeable reporter, particularly on Indigenous affairs. I think Australia owes Tony Koch a lot because he has exposed what has been happening, sometimes very sympathetically towards the Indigenous people. He has opened the debate on what has been going on in some of these Indigenous communities. Only a month or two ago he raised the issue of a 10-year-old girl being raped and the perpetrators of the crime being given a warning. His exposure of what happened on Mabuiag Island in the Torres Strait last week really put a chill down everyone’s spine. A nurse was sent to an island—I suppose the island would have 100 people living on it. Her quarters had no locks, no airconditioning and no blinds and she was left there exposed to what eventually happened.

I raise this issue because I have read that the federal government will appoint a commissioner to take some interest in Queensland Health. If this is the case then I think one of the first priorities for the federal government should be to investigate people who are put in these positions on islands or in communities and have no security, whether they be policemen, nurses or doctors.

Unfortunately, I have not been to the Torres Strait for a number of years, but I used to go there fairly frequently, and I could never believe that this sort of behaviour would take place. It certainly would not have taken place 10 or 15 years ago. But I think, as Senator Macdonald has said, that with the porn, the booze and the drugs that have gone in there the whole ethics of the islands have changed. This would never have happened 10 or 15 years ago, and I cannot believe that it has happened now—but it has. A woman, a nurse, was left alone to look after the community, to serve the community. It is a great hardship to be treated like that.

We can pour scorn on the health department—and they deserve every bit of scorn that could be poured on them—but where I am coming from is looking at a more positive aspect of this. If the federal government is appointing a federal health commissioner to liaise with the health department in Queensland, then surely this has got to be a priority of this government to take some action on.

We are also seeing the unwinding of the intervention. People in the communities will be asked whether they want pornographic literature and pornographic movies to be allowed in. If you allow that sort of stuff in, you are going to suffer the consequences. The consequences happened at Mabuiag Island last week. For everyone’s sake, no-one wants to override Indigenous people, but we cannot just allow this to continue. All Australian people want the Indigenous communities to succeed, but everyone realises the talkfests are over. They have been going on for 20 or 30 years and it is time to finish them. The Howard government realised that and took action. Yes, it was unpleasant for some people, but overall it did have overwhelming support. I am appealing for none of that to be watered down. It is necessary. It is absolutely necessary when you go into these Aboriginal and Islander communities.

So I say to the people on the opposite side who have some influence with the federal government: if a federal health commissioner is appointed to liaise with the Queensland health department, for goodness sake make it the commissioner’s first priority to see that the people in these remote communities do have some security and somewhere that they do not have to lock themselves in, if they have locks on the door. Give them some sort of peace at night, which they do not have. I take this opportunity to make those few remarks.

Question agreed to.