Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Prime Minister for Social Inclusion) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Ms Macklin, I table a ministerial statement on the first anniversary of the Northern Territory intervention.

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

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Bartlett, before you speak, I draw your attention to the Senate red today. The order is that we return to government business not later than 3.45 pm.

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

I will try and keep it quick to allow some time for other senators. On that, I note that the Northern Territory intervention was obviously one that caused a lot of attention, a lot of engagement, a lot of controversy and a lot of strong comments from a lot of people about the issue. I think in some ways it is quite unfortunate that, one year on, the Senate just gets a statement tabled and we have 10 minutes to talk about it. Whilst there is more to the intervention than being able to talk about it in this chamber, I think it is an important part of displaying ongoing engagement, commitment and recognition of the importance of the issue that we have mechanisms to assess these sorts of benchmarks. I do welcome the fact that a statement is made. In the five minutes that I will take, it is not possible to really properly address it. It does outline that there is some progress being made. It does outline an extra initiative and an extra offer to the Northern Land Council regarding an education fund, which appears, from what is in the statement, to be quite welcome.

I also particularly welcome in the statement the government’s intention to stringently examine the facts and to make policy decisions based on evidence, anchored in what works. We have not always seen that in relation to this issue. I have repeatedly made the point in this place that you would be hard-pressed to find someone who did not support the goal of improving child welfare and reducing child abuse, including child sexual assault, in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory or anywhere else. There is screaming universal agreement about the goals of the intervention, but there is not agreement about the methods used for the intervention.

I will always credit former minister Mr Brough for giving this issue such great priority and putting it front and centre on the political agenda. But I will remain critical of him for the way in which he went about it and for the unnecessarily divisive and inflammatory way in which the debate was conducted. Also, some of the mechanisms put in place to implement the intervention did not maximise the chance to anchor it in what works, and some of the decisions that were made were not based on evidence. The minister himself has admitted that the whole intervention was put together extremely quickly. The Senate was then forced to push through this very complex and enormously wide-ranging legislation in the space of a week, with very little consultation with the people directly affected or with people who had been working in this area for years and calling out for the sorts of extra resources and support that was potentially being made available.

I remind the Senate of the time the intervention was first announced and the days immediately after it when the Prime Minister was asked about its cost. He said that it would probably cost some tens of millions of dollars; it would not be huge, but there could be some costs in relation to the extra police. If one takes that statement at face value, it suggests that the Prime Minister had not really thought about what the government were doing and what was actually involved if they were genuine in their commitment. We have seen hundreds of millions of dollars spent on this intervention, which is necessary to achieve what has been proposed. The extra commitments detailed in the statement in relation to housing are very welcome. The extra resources going to police are also very welcome. But a lot of other resources have been spent because the intervention has been done in such a rushed and aggressive way.

The former government almost refused to listen to any alternative views. In some cases, sadly, it pretty much slandered anybody as not caring about the children if they put forward an alternative view. I appreciate the fact that the new minister has taken a different approach and is just quietly and methodically looking at what will work on the basis of evidence. A review has now been initiated after a year of intervention. We have had some people suggest that even a review is some sort of risk to the whole intervention—as though trying to look at how it is working and making sure that it works better is some terrible act of treason to the original goals of the intervention. One criticism I have of this statement is that it still maintains what is, frankly, a fiction: that the intervention is based on the Little children are sacred report. That was perhaps its catalyst. It was the excuse, but it was certainly not based on it. I would remind the Senate that the authors of that report were not even given the opportunity to provide evidence to the Senate committee on implementing the legislation.

The statement repeats the claim about child sexual abuse occurring in all 45 communities that were visited by the authors of that report. I do not dispute that there are significant levels of child sexual abuse but I do note that most of the statement does not go to the issue of child sexual abuse and how to address it, although there is a bit that concerns child protection workers. I am not saying the intervention should do that. But let us make this debate more honest. It is not about child sexual abuse predominantly. The exaggerated claims of paedophile rings were wrong. While we should not in any way seek to whitewash the existence of some very serious child sexual abuse cases, I do not think it has been in any way verified that it is of the levels that were sometimes asserted. The very fact that so few people in the year since the intervention started have been arrested or removed from communities because of allegations of child sexual abuse—no charges have been laid—I think suggests that, while there is definitely a problem there, we need to keep things reality based and not just make statements and decisions based on headlines and sudden waves of concern.

So I welcome the statement. A Senate committee will have ongoing engagement with these issues, and I am sure it will do its job well. I certainly lend my continuing support for the goals of the intervention whilst retaining the right to continue to criticise some aspects of how it is done, including what I think have been unnecessary legal changes in areas that were not related to child protection, such as the permit system and issues to do with the Racial Discrimination Act.

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

by leave—I would also like to speak to the motion to take note of the ministerial statement on the Northern Territory intervention. However, this is a very serious issue, and I am disappointed that only a short amount of time has been made available to debate it.

Further to Senator Bartlett’s comments on this matter, I note that the intervention was put in place in a way that was completely contrary to what the research and evidence show us. The approach that should be taken to address serious issues of disadvantage in a community is one that looks at an overall framework and engages with the community on how best to solve these issues. This is what the NT intervention should have been about instead of using issues of child abuse, which I agree are very serious. All the thinking and evidence show us that by engaging a community in addressing areas of disadvantage we actually empower them in the decision-making process. The approach that was taken in the NT intervention was disempowering. Taking away a community’s ability to make decisions is the quickest way to disempower people. This gives them no say over their future. This is what income quarantining has done. This is what taking people’s land has done. This is what is done when you do not go into communities to discuss people’s problems. And this is what supporting some projects and not others has done.

I welcome the review. I was disappointed to see in estimates that the government at that stage was not able to tell us about the framework that will be used for evaluation. I sincerely hope that that framework has been put in place. A panel has been appointed, but it can only do its job with good terms of reference and a good evaluation framework so that we can get proper data and evidence to base future directions.

One of the key things the minister did not address in this statement is the exclusion on the exemption of the Racial Discrimination Act on the NT intervention. I beg the government to address this issue as a matter of urgency. We do not need the review outcomes to deal with that. This law is racist until it complies with the RDA. The government needs to take that on now. As I said: do not wait for the review, please. Take it on board and fix it. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.