Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In rising to make my contribution to this debate I would like to preface my comments by acknowledging that all people in this chamber want to see a meaningful difference in the lives of Indigenous people, particularly with regard to some of the conditions that young people and children find themselves confronted with. We are all working towards that aim. The coalition obviously initiated the emergency response last year in the Northern Territory and this was supported by the Labor Party—albeit there are some differences between us. However, I am concerned that the government is now intent on watering down the intervention, which I believe will have an adverse impact on the intervention’s effectiveness. Many parts of this bill seek to do exactly that.

When the Little children are sacred report was released it highlighted to all of us in a stark manner the extensive and tragic incidence of abuse and neglect, especially of Aboriginal children in many Indigenous communities. When confronted with this horrific reality, what did the coalition government do? Well, it did not set up myriad reviews and inquiries. It did not um and ah, and sweep this under the carpet, so to speak. It did not shy away from making very bold and decisive decisions—decisions that had to be made. They were tough decisions but we took immediate action to redress what was, and what continues to be, an emergency situation. Anything less would have failed the Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory, particularly those who have suffered horrific abuse.

The coalition stepped in, and I am very pleased to say that we did it because we wanted to ensure that the victims or potential victims could be saved from a life of abuse and degradation. Due to the extensive, widespread nature of the abuse and some of the conditions facing some of these individuals and communities in the Northern Territory, there was a need for immediate protection of children. I do not shy away from the fact that there was a requirement for very tough and very strict action. So everything the coalition government put in place through the intervention was to break the cycle of poverty and abuse that has been a part of everyday life for far too many Indigenous people.

This change can only be achieved through tough measures like blanket bans on pornography, by reopening or providing access to parts of communities through a partial rollback of the permit system. I do not believe that this legislation that has been put forward by the now government will be effective in managing the ongoing problems that we have in some Indigenous communities.

While some positives have come out of the intervention so far, I believe and the coalition believes that we should still regard the conditions that are facing too many children as a national emergency. Whilst it has been just over a year since the intervention started, I do not want us to lose sight, and the coalition does not want us to lose sight, of the fact that the urgency of the situation was reflected in the initial measures. As time goes on, it may become easier to become a bit more complacent about the tragedies and the initial shock that we all faced when confronted with the Little children are sacred report that prompted these emergency measures to be put in place. I am concerned that this bill is an example of the government losing sight of the urgency that confronted us and the continuing urgency that is there to save so many children. As Mr Morrison said in the other place:

We have a retreat and a revision from the government, rather than the resolve that is needed to follow through.

I would like to address some of the coalition concerns in regard to the schedules of this bill. Schedule 1 relates to pay TV. It deals with the regulation of pay TV services in regard to pornography. Essentially, this part of the bill allows pay TV porn to continue in these communities. The Little children are sacred report made it clear that exposure to pornography helped to create the environment of sexual abuse of children. This was reflected at a luncheon that I went to recently conducted by an organisation that was dedicated to protecting children from all sorts of abuse. It was sponsored by Minister Macklin—coincidentally the minister responsible for this bill. The title of the lunch and the marketing campaign to protect children was ‘Children See. Children Do.’ We support that. We know that children mimic what they see. If they see an abusive parent, alcohol abuse or regular degradation of people through pornography and sexual violence, they sometimes become subject to it themselves but they also copy. How on the one hand we can advocate the campaign ‘Children See. Children Do.’ and then on the other hand say that it is okay to stream pornography into communities where there is horrific child sexual abuse is beyond me. The Little children are sacred report noted on page 65:

... children in Aboriginal communities are widely exposed to inappropriate sexual activity such as pornography, adult films and adults having sex within the child’s view. This exposure can produce a number of effects, particularly resulting in the ‘sexualisation’ of childhood and the creation of normalcy around sexual activity that may be used to engage children in sexual activity. It may also result in sexual acting out and actual offending by children and young people against others.

According to the report, pornography was one of the main factors that led inexorably to family and other violence and then onto sexual abuse of men and women and finally of children. The schedule in this bill also requires that a community must request to have the service restricted. But many victims of abuse are simply not empowered. They feel powerless and often not in a position to stand up and speak out against their abusers and those who use pornography as a means for ultimately evil ends. It is ridiculous to say that we will only ban pay TV porn if the community actually asks for it. Under this bill they have to go to the minister and ask for a restriction. The minister then has to conduct an inquiry, which is consistent with what the Rudd Labor government does with everything. But who is going to come forward and request this? The person who has been horrifically abused in a culture of cover-up and deceit? Such a person would probably not feel they could go to anyone and ask for these sorts of restrictions.

If a victim of sexual abuse cannot often bring themselves to tell their family or their local police about the abuse they are subject to, how on earth will they be able to tell a federal minister or stand up in front of a community consultation, especially if their abuser is most likely in the crowd? It may be that in some communities one of the figureheads of the community is the perpetrator of the abuse. This is not unknown. In fact it can also be a family figurehead rather than a community figurehead. How could women and children speak out against a leading figure in the community? It does not make a lot of sense. The coalition supports a blanket ban on pay TV pornography in these communities. It is a tough but very necessary measure that aims to break the hold that pornography has in some Indigenous communities. Victims of abuse, such as women and children, should not have to run the risk of further abuse to make their opposition to pornography known.

I believe that this government is a slave to the political correctness that has caused so many problems for Indigenous communities. This government prefers to bow down to this political correctness rather than protect the women and children who have the most to lose from the changes to the emergency response. A complete ban is the best way to ensure that all possible is done to stop exposure of children to pornography. By even allowing a little bit of porn in, we are putting adult lusts ahead of the long-term wellbeing of children and their protection. The coalition will not support this schedule and, accordingly, I foreshadow that we will be moving some amendments to reflect the coalition’s aim of having a blanket ban on pornography that prohibits all R18+ television in the prescribed areas.

Schedule 2 of this bill deals with the transportation of pornography. Similar arguments can be used for schedule 2, which seeks to allow the transportation of pornography through prescribed areas to somewhere outside of the prescribed area. Of course, the devil is always in the detail, because under this bill the transportation of pornography into a prescribed area or community could actually fuel an excuse to avoid arrest in that someone can say: ‘No. I am heading somewhere else with this pornography and I wasn’t intending to distribute it here.’ It gives a very clear out to those who peddle this pornography in these communities, who make a living out of it and who profit from porn.

So the question is: how will this matter be policed? If a person with a large amount of pornography in the boot of their car says that they are headed to Alice Springs, who is going to make sure that they do not distribute the pornography along the way? Are the police going to follow them and escort them to Alice Springs to make sure that the pornography arrives at the stated destination? We do not support this schedule. Once again, it waters down the emergency response. I believe it opens the door to further potential abuse and will only fuel the continued cycle of desensitising children and fuelling sexual activity against children. We will be seeking an amendment to this government’s bill that allows the transportation of pornography through prescribed areas. Our amendment today will seek to continue the blanket ban on the transportation of pornography in these areas.

Schedule 3 of this bill deals with the permit system. It attempts to repeal the permit system amendments put in place by the coalition government last year. There are many arguments that will be espoused over the course of the second reading debate, and I am sure in the committee stage, about the relevance of the permit system. People will argue that the permit system protects communities from predators, from alcohol abuse and from people who would seek to potentially exploit some of the members of the communities. This is what I believe the government will argue, and they will do it in an eloquent manner, but it will miss the point. If the permit system had actually worked and protected the Northern Territory communities from predators, we would not have needed the emergency response, which was supported by the Labor Party last year. The intervention simply would not have been necessary. If the permit system was so fantastic, if it truly served the interests of policing and the conduct of people within those communities, how come these communities experience such horrific levels of abuse?

When the Little children are sacred report was released, the shock and surprise felt among the public and most members of this parliament was extraordinary. How could this happen? That was the question that was confronting all of us. How could we allow this to happen in this country? How could these conditions—child sexual abuse, physical violence, emotional abuse and poverty—exist on this scale in modern-day Australia? Importantly, why didn’t we know about it? And, if we knew about it, why didn’t we do anything about it? I have to say that I believe we did not know about how horrific this was in the main because the permit system had kept this tragedy hidden. The permit system had closed up communities and that literally fostered decades of abuse and poverty. It was a self-perpetuating cycle.

So the coalition government decided to lift this shroud of secrecy by repealing the permit system to 0.2 per cent of Aboriginal land. We repealed it in the larger public townships, in the connecting road corridors and in the common land that was within community land. It is very hard to argue why this is not the right thing to do, because the same access exists on public lands throughout the country. As Dr Stone stated in the other place:

One of the first emergency responses of the John Howard government was to normalise access to the Northern Territory prescribed communities. We did not say, ‘It’s open slather now.’ We normalised the situation by saying, ‘What is acceptable and commonplace in the rest of Australia should apply here.’

The aim of removing a small part of the permit system was to remove the climate of fear and intimidation, to help promote economic activity, to start lifting these communities out of the depths of poverty. One way to help alleviate the poverty is to encourage the growth of and to help build economies in these communities. This cannot be done successfully if the communities remain effectively a closed shop.

Supporters of the permit system will also claim that it stops grog runners from wreaking havoc. Only yesterday it was reported in the Australian that the majority of people arrested for bringing alcohol into prescribed communities were Aboriginals who did not actually need a permit. Ninety-eight Indigenous people have been summonsed, according to the Australian, since July 2007 for bringing alcohol into prescribed areas compared with just five non-Indigenous people, and 41 Indigenous people were arrested for consuming alcohol in a prescribed area compared with one non-Indigenous person. The permit system does not stop grog runners and those who consume alcohol illegally in these communities but it keeps these problems hidden. As I have said before, criminals will flout the law, but a modest removal of the permit system means that the right people can get access to ensure that these communities become safer places for people to live.

Schedule 3 of the bill states that ministerial discretion will be used to allow or not to allow journalists to enter Aboriginal lands. I do not believe it is right that the media should be banned from large parts of Australia except on the issue of a ministerial permit. The Little children are sacred report, which I keep coming back to, was so shocking because no-one had any idea that such abuse was happening. The media can actually help us with this. If you are aware of something, you have a better chance of dealing with the situation. Otherwise, it is the old saying: out of sight, out of mind. A reinstatement of the permit system would just lead to further sexual and physical abuse. This is not just the coalition’s position. Warren Mundine, the former ALP president has stated:

The permit system didn’t stop crime. In fact, if you look at all the reports that have come out in the last few years, crime has flourished under the permit system, so it’s a fallacy to say that it helps law-and-order problems.

Alison Anderson stated:

I think it—

the permit system—

has been used as a tool by some people in communities to reject certain people they disagree with or don’t want out there.

She also said:

My people need real protection, not motherhood statements from urbanised saviours … My people need the help and want the help from this intervention.

An anonymous ALP MP made an interesting comment about the permit system. The MP said:

We don’t want to get into a debate about this before the election but we’ll have a relook at it now.

Why didn’t they want to debate this? Because I think it is out of touch with mainstream Australia. We will be moving some amendments in regard to schedule 3 because we want to continue the repeal of the permit system put in place by the coalition government.

Schedule 4 deals with roadhouses and allows for a roadhouse to be licensed as a community store if the community is substantially dependent on the roadhouse for the provision of groceries and drinks. This part of the bill mirrors the bill introduced by the coalition government in late 2007. The coalition will be supporting this schedule.

I understand this is a very sensitive issue and many people feel very passionately about it. I truly believe that every member of this parliament wants to see a massive change to the cycle of abuse and poverty that takes place in many communities, but most starkly in some Indigenous communities where it appears to be quite widely prevalent. In the course of this debate we are going to have a lot of different opinions. The coalition remain committed to the tough measures that we think are having a great deal of success, and we believe that any watering down of the legislation that was enacted last year with the support of this chamber is a process that effectively sweeps under the rug the vile nature of some of the transgressions against children and adults in these communities. I do not want to see that happen. We will argue our case and I hope that the government ultimately will see wisdom and will support our amendments accordingly.

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

The Greens, as I think this place would be fully aware, did not support the nature of the intervention that the previous government put in place just over a year ago. We absolutely agreed that there needed to be a vast improvement in the amount of resources that were spent and the way things were done in the Northern Territory, but for the coalition to put the argument that everyone was shocked when the Little children are sacred report came out means they were not paying attention. There is a pile of documents this high that, over the last 20 years, have tried to point out the issues that were at stake here, the level of abuse that was going on in Aboriginal communities, the disadvantage of Aboriginal communities, the lack of access to proper education, the lack of access to adequate health resources. Where have they have been? Where were they for those two decades? Where were they for the 11 years they were in government? At one minute to midnight, just before an election, they suddenly discovered that there was a problem, that there was a 17-year gap in the life expectancy of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. I have been shocked for 20 years; they were shocked in June 2007. What a lot of nonsense! To use that as justification for taking people’s land away, for taking people’s rights away, for undermining and exempting what they were doing from the Racial Discrimination Act is absolutely disingenuous—I must point out that is one of my favourite words at the moment.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Bernardi interjecting—

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

Ask me how to spell it later. The Australian Greens are therefore disappointed that this bill represents only a number of minor legislative amendments instead of a clear overhaul of the intervention legislation that we believe is warranted. We are also disappointed that the government has failed to make any effort to ensure that the implementation of emergency measures in NT Aboriginal communities is consistent with its oft-stated commitments—that is, evidence based policy and the principle of social inclusion. The Greens are particularly disappointed that, now the ALP are in government, they have failed to address the issues which they clearly articulated in opposition during the debate on these series of bills, the issues around the Racial Discrimination Act and the fact that the whole of these provisions are exempt. I will note that, quite clearly, they recognise these issues because the issues around the R-rated material are in fact not being exempted from the RDA. So while they acknowledge that problem, and I will give them credit for that, they do not then seek to deal with the bigger issue around the whole of the legislation, and I will deal with that a bit later. I have circulated amendments on the issues around the RDA.

In the course of the Senate inquiry into this bill a large number of witnesses and submissions presented evidence that went beyond the immediate provisions of this bill. They raised a lot of concerns about the on-ground impacts of the intervention. This evidence reflects a high level of community concern with the on-the-ground impacts of the intervention. Some of the concerns raised were the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act; the practical problems with implementing the income-quarantining regime; the large amount of money being spent on measures which do not address the underlying causes of Indigenous disadvantage, child abuse and neglect; the wastage of money on income quarantining and administration; the failure to implement any of the recommendations of the Little children are sacred reportand I note that Rex Wilde spoke last week about his concern that the intervention is not addressing the recommendations of his report. People also raised concerns about the increasing levels of urban drift from remote communities into population centres and the establishment of new camps around Alice Springs, for example; the corresponding increase in demand for emergency response support from charitable organisations—some reported an increase of 300 per cent; the lack of community consultation and rights of appeal; the failure to build new houses or schools or to employ more teachers, health workers and child protection workers; and so on. As I said, there was a long list of concerns. I know that they are being considered in the government’s 12-month review. I am looking forward to seeing that report on 30 September.

On the issue of the suspension of the RDA—and, by the way, the Northern Territory Anti-Discrimination Act and the Northern Territory (Self Government) Act—the relevant policy question is whether the measures are right from a human rights perspective. The Greens do not believe the RDA issue needs to wait until the 12-month review has been undertaken because the fact is it needs to be taken from a human rights perspective. We believe it is inappropriate for the government to exempt these measures. There is no justification to exempt these measures from the RDA, so it is a fallacious argument for the government to say, ‘We’ll wait and see until the 12-month review has been carried out.’ It is not an issue that needs to be dealt with through that review. From a human rights perspective, the government needs to be moving to fix that.

We believe that the actions taken under the emergency response need to have the intention of benefiting Indigenous communities. They should be able to stand or fall, therefore, on their own merits. They should be able to fit the definition of special measures under the RDA and not need to be exempt from the RDA. We believe that that is pretty simple and that the government should move immediately to reinstate the application of the RDA to the emergency response legislation and to require that actions taken as part of the NT intervention are for the benefit of Aboriginal people and therefore compliant with the RDA.

I think it is fair to warn the government that in repeating ‘wait for the 12-month review’ there has been a significant build-up of expectations. The government keeps saying, ‘Wait for the review,’ but now there is a significant build-up in the community of the expectation that the review will actually deliver. We have some concerns around the review: the majority of the submissions being kept secret, the task force being handpicked by the minister and the lack of public forums and discussions. The government may have a job on its hands managing the community expectations if the review fails to deliver.

I find it strange that the government has produced a nice booklet. I would be interested to know how much it cost—they can take that on notice. They will be asked at estimates about the cost of this booklet, which is more like a propaganda exercise about the NT response. It is strange that it has been produced before the review has been carried out. Telling us how wonderful the NT intervention is before the review has been carried out seems to me—call me cynical—to pre-empt the outcomes of the review. By the way, I think the money should have been spent delivering real outcomes for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory rather than producing glossy documents like this.

At the same time as we have the review being carried out, this legislation is before the Senate. I put on the record that we support the reinstating of the permit system. It was our position all along that the legislation should not have sought to take away the permit system. There was no evidence presented by the government at the time that taking away the permit system would address child abuse. It was plain to everybody that the previous government wanted to get rid of the permit system, and this was just a handy vehicle to do so. There was never any evidence that linked the permit system to child abuse, and there was no evidence presented to the committee inquiry that the level of child abuse has gone down as a result of taking away the permit system.

There was also evidence presented to the committee about statements the previous minister had made in relation to the permit system. People will recall that, before the permit system was changed under the NT response legislation, the government was in a consultation period. The minister at the time said that that consultation process supported taking away the permit system. The majority of submissions presented to the committee in fact did not support the taking away of the permit system. A justification was given that taking away the permit system would be supported by the community, but we do not believe that statement was justified. It was not true—the majority of the submissions did not support taking away the permit system.

The committee heard evidence from the NT police that they found the permit system useful. There was very strong evidence given to the committee about how the Aboriginal communities regard the permit system as important because it relates particularly to their being able to protect property rights and make decisions about who is on their land and who is not. Evidence was also given about the ability to protect visitors in remote locations. If they know that people are in remote locations on Aboriginal land, they can help with their safety.

As I said, we support the restoration of the permit system. We also acknowledge that the government took on board recommendations that were made during the committee inquiry process about the need to address amendments around the issues of sacred sites. We acknowledge that the government is amending the legislation to deal with that. However, we have strong reservations—and we expressed them in the minority committee report on this legislation—about the provisions empowering the minister for Indigenous affairs to unilaterally declare a person or a class of persons exempt from the need to obtain a permit under section 70(2BB) or to delegate this power to an officer of FaHCSIA.

The Australian Greens do not believe that it is either necessary or desirable for the minister or the delegate to issue permits without consultation with the traditional owners. The Australian Greens note the concern expressed by the NT government that these provisions potentially open a back door by which a future minister could seek to remove the permit system, in effect, through a series of administrative decisions. I would also like to let the government know, so that it is on record, that I will be seeking assurances from the government during the committee stage of this debate—or the minister may want to address this in his comments in closing the second reading debate on this bill—that such a move would be against the intention of this legislation.

I also note concerns given in evidence by the Central Lands Council that this provision has the potential to create a parallel permit system which bypasses community consultation and encourages applicants to shop around. This has the potential to create confusion and undermine the effectiveness of the on-the-ground implementation of the permit system. If communities are not being consulted and are not informed when the minister issues permits, there will be no way of knowing who should or should not be within their area and no way of knowing who is there. So we have some concerns about that discretion and I will seek clarification from the minister about the extent to which that discretion will be applied and a commitment that consultation will be carried out with the traditional owners of the land.

The next part of this bill that the Australian Greens have some concerns and reservations about is the likely impact and cost-effectiveness of the proposed amendments regulating pay TV narrowcasts of R18 materials. Having said that, the Australian Greens are deeply concerned about access to these sorts of materials, but we are not necessarily convinced that this is going to be effective in controlling access to some of this material. Quite frankly, the Australian Greens think it is a good idea to limit the exposure of all Australian children to this type of material. It is not just damaging to Aboriginal children. I also must point out that it is not just Aboriginal children who are being abused in this country. Again, we need to be looking at how we implement some of these measures in the broader community to see how we can restrict access or educate all children on the impact of this sort of material.

We are concerned that by focusing just on this sort of narrowcast concept we are actually using resources that could be better applied to dealing with these issues in a more effective way in communities. These resources could be spent in more effective ways addressing this issue in communities. I am inclined to think that this is almost an issue of being seen to be doing the right thing because it is an obvious issue rather than looking at what is the best way to spend our resources. Banning R18+ programming narrowcast into prescribed areas is quite technically difficult and expensive—and, from evidence given to the committee, it looks like we are talking about between 50 and 70 households. In all of these communities we are talking about 50 to 70 households. We are going to a lot of trouble to restrict access to this material for 50 to 70 households—we do not know who those households are, from what I understand—when there is a fairly effective prevention mechanism already in place.

We are not saying that this material is acceptable. I do not want one person to run away thinking that the Greens think that this is acceptable material. We are saying that we think that resources could be spent in achieving better outcomes in communities. The Little children are sacred report noted that it was unlikely that access to violent and sexually explicit material could be prevented. Recommendation 67 notes that intentionally exposing children to indecent material is a criminal offence with a penalty of up to 10 years imprisonment and suggests a concerted effort to increase community awareness about that. Implementing an education campaign to inform community members of the harm done to children by viewing sexually explicit material needs to be strongly considered, and the illegality of intentionally exposing them to indecent material is more likely to be effective in protecting children. Such an education campaign could also address the harm caused by exposing young children to violent programs as well as to sexually explicit ones. This, we believe, should also be supported by culturally appropriate education programs for children that tackle personal safety issues and clearly define what is inappropriate sexual behaviour and how best to respond to threatening situations—talking to our children and getting them to understand how to tackle these issues. As Olga Havnen noted in evidence to the committee:

It has been extremely distressing to note that, given the great haste and the great focus that was originally placed on this thing around child protection and the need to tackle child sexual abuse, so little appears to have been achieved to date by way of the employment and engagement of child protection workers.

Very few new workers have actually been put on the ground in response to the intervention. We believe that that needs to be urgently addressed. So, while the Australian Greens will be supporting this particular measure, we strongly urge the government to move to implement some more effective child protection strategies like the community education and training measures I have just mentioned and actually putting more child protection workers on the ground.

This bill also seeks to allow roadhouses upon which prescribed communities are substantially dependent to be licensed as ‘community stores’ and hence able to receive quarantined moneys. The Australian Greens are concerned that there is not a clear definition of what counts as ‘substantial dependence’ and that the accreditation system fails to tackle the larger issues of the cost and nutritious value of the food provided. We will be seeking to clarify what ‘substantial dependence’ means. We think there needs to be a more rigorous accreditation scheme applied to these stores in a manner that encourages them to lift the quality of food. We support the suggestion put forward by the Central Land Council in evidence to the inquiry that stores should be encouraged and required to train and employ local community members. We do not in principle object to local roadhouses being licensed as community stores where there is a substantial dependence on these stores in the absence of a viable alternative, but we believe that the first priority should be to build community capacity and enterprise by establishing or supporting community stores where there are sufficient economies of scale to make them viable. So we will be supporting this particular measure. As I said, the Greens will be introducing amendments around the exemption of all of the NT response to the RDA.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The bill before us, the Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Emergency Response Consolidation) Bill 2008, is actually what is stated in the title, which is sometimes unusual in this place. It is a consolidation bill which looks at a number of specific issues which have been outlined by some of the previous speakers. It is not a response to the overall NT intervention. It is not a statement about how appalled we feel about the horrors of child abuse—and I hope the debate will not degenerate into some kind of contest about who cares more about child abuse in the Northern Territory and who is tougher and stronger and therefore needs more personal commendation.

The bill itself looks at specific issues, none of which are a surprise. The issues that are in this bill were clearly debated and discussed by this government when the whole process of the Northern Territory intervention was being discussed earlier. When the quite sensitive and, as we know, truncated debate around the whole issue of the Northern Territory intervention happened in this place, a number of issues were raised in the process. I have to underline it again and again, because I have heard so much discussion and I have read the speeches that have occurred in the other chamber. Somehow it all gets down to whether we care effectively about child abuse and what we have to do. The term I think I object to most in the debate around this bill is the term ‘watering down’, as though there is any attempt by this government to water down any process that would be of benefit to families and children anywhere who would be suffering under the evils of child abuse. That needs to be completely negated and not really be part of the overall discussion.

The four core elements of this bill relate to permits, access to pay TV that may contain elements of pornography, provisions for taking pornography across designated areas and also the licensing of roadhouses as community stores. They are the elements as set out.

I do want to concentrate on the issue of permits because as you know, Madam Acting Deputy President Crossin, through our Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs hearings that caused the greatest discussion. I think one of the things that continues to impress me is how willingly and openly people come and talk with Senate committees about the things about which they feel strongly. Through the preparation of this committee report we found people who wanted to talk about all the issues around the NT response. They wanted to talk about their experiences, their concerns and their fears for the future but, most particularly, they wanted to talk about the wellbeing of their communities and the protection of their kids. That came forward clearly. I really hope people take the opportunity to look at some of the Hansard evidence and also at some of the detailed submissions that people gave to us with generosity and openness.

The issue of the permits dominated most of the submissions and the evidence that we got, with the possible exception of that from Austar, but I will get to that later. There is a long history around the issue of permits in the Northern Territory. An ongoing matter of concern for me was the fact that there is so much ignorance and lack of real understanding about how they work. We tend to throw terms around with great ease and people in the committee hearings spoke about their knowledge—or, indeed, lack of knowledge—of exactly how the permit system operated.

It was very worthwhile to receive evidence from Professor Altman, who put the whole issue of permits into the context of the history of legislation in the Northern Territory. He talked about the different reviews—of which there have been many—how permits operate and also some of the philosophical differences. It came down to a clear difference that was expressed by the people who lived in, worked in and supported communities in the Northern Territory and by other people. There was a clear difference about what constituted openness and what constituted an effective interrelationship between communities and people who were not resident or working in those communities. The permit system was held dear by many of the communities and the community organisations that came to our committee. A number of submitters talked to us about this, but I will quote from one because I think it is important to quote from the evidence that we were given. The Central Land Council addressed the positives of the permit system stating:

... our overall view is that the permit system is an effective and appropriate tool under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Cth) (Land Rights Act) for negotiating third party access to Aboriginal land for miners, pastoralists, developers and visitors.

The CLC added:

... the permit system has not impeded the provision of services.

And:

... is an important policing tool in remote communities.

Senator Bernardi said that there would be people who would speak eloquently about the importance and the process of the permit system. I do not claim to be able to speak eloquently on this topic. What I do claim is that I listened to the people who came to the community affairs committee hearings. Also, having read the evidence of a series of committees over the years about how the permit system operates, it seems to me that it is a protocol. It is in place within the Northern Territory to require people who wish to visit a community’s land to ask permission to do so. There are people who apparently find this to be an unbearable imposition. What we need to work out is how clearly and how easily it works.

At the committee hearings the National Land Council stated that 32,010 permits were granted by land councils and the Northern Territory government during 2005 and 2006. It is a simple process which visitors to the Northern Territory can obtain information about by asking a question: what is the protocol for actually going to Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory? What are the processes that you have to follow? It is quite simple. With respect to the protection element, we will hear—the term is probably ‘eloquent arguments’—about why this is too difficult, but the process operates in a straightforward way.

A whole series of provisions have been made by the Northern Territory government whereby people who work in these areas are able to visit without restriction. What we have is an ongoing system which respects the dignity of the people who live there and actually allows people knowledge of the land they are visiting. I know that Senator Siewert has spoken about the way that this works. An interesting argument that I had not heard before I was part of this committee was around the issue of safety. The permit system actually operates to ensure the safety of people travelling through the vast areas of Northern Territory, allowing them to know exactly where they are.

The opposition has had a deeply held view that the permit system is actually the root of all evil in terms of creating closed communities. Then there is this wonderful jump in logic which links the permit system and respect for land and community with child abuse. This argument rolls off the tongue with such ease but is actually so damning and so condemning. In fact, there was not a skerrick of evidence put before our committee that demonstrated a direct link between child abuse and criminal activity and the permit system. It is way too easy to make simplistic statements and then not have to justify them.

There was evidence, and it is in the committee report, from the Northern Territory Police Association, who said that they actually worked effectively with the permit system and communities as a way of having some security with respect to who was moving around the area. No-one claims that it is a single way to stop all crime and no-one at any time has claimed that the permit system stops child abuse. That would be an impossible argument to maintain just as it is an impossible argument to maintain that having a permit arrangement, which is open and transparent, does in any way encourage or enable crime or child abuse to happen.

As we all know, much of the activity that was created was stimulated by the Little children are sacred report. I think—in a good way, in a sense—it actually forced the confrontation of what was happening in the Northern Territory by the local community and across our country. This is a wonderful report. It is a shocking report; although that does not mean that people were not previously aware that there were problems because, as Senator Siewert has said, there have been many reviews and reports over the years that have pointed out the evils that have occurred in a number of communities, amongst them those in the Northern Territory. Sometimes we get way too focused on the Northern Territory, as though the only place in the world where there has ever been child abuse has been in remote localities in the Northern Territory. That is not true. As my friend Jackie Huggins continues to state in public arenas, the issue of child abuse is not an Indigenous issue.

However, the Little children are sacred report had a series of strong recommendations about what must occur in the Northern Territory to provide effective education, health and child safety for all people and all children in the areas, noting that there have been cases which we need to confront and respond to. At no stage in that whole quite detailed report was there any argument about permits. The Little children are sacred report—and it probably would be useful to wave it around a bit but it is a bit heavy, so I cannot do that—which should be essential reading for anybody who is a part of this discussion, does not say, did not actually argue, that there was any need to change the existing permit system in the Northern Territory.

But, amongst all the other processes that happened when the previous government brought in the legislation, this was automatically linked in as though, to the world, this was a message that if you change the permit system that would prove that you would be able to end child abuse. We argued that that was not true during the debate around the original legislation. We continued to argue that and now we are responding by saying we are going to remove the restrictions on the permit system that were brought in by the previous government, but we are going to work with the communities, with the Northern Territory government and with any other interested person to ensure that the openness and transparency, which is important, is maintained.

So the arguments about how it works and any confusion that there would be will be addressed. Certainly, I know the minister has had ongoing discussions with the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance about the role of journalism and also with other areas about exactly how that would work. I have spent a considerable amount of this short process talking about my concern around the permit system. But this debate around the issue of permits has been, I think, poorly handled. It is important that it, as a tool, is identified and not damned so easily because, as I restate, there is no evidence to say that the permit system by itself has any role in the process that we are talking about.

In terms of the evidence that we had, it would be hard for me to talk about this without quoting Mr Tilmouth from the Tangentyere Council because he has given so much evidence in support of various committees that we have had. But I will quote what he has said, and it is a statement about those people who claim that there is a closure of the process:

Aboriginal people’s lives are not as private as yours or mine. We are open to scrutiny every day of the week. When anyone wants to orchestrate media against us, that will happen. We are under surveillance in every walk of life.

I think that was quite a painful response to the kinds of arguments that we heard and the way that people tried to focus that there was innate evil somehow and that Aboriginal people were conspiring to close out other people’s interest in their ways. My own experience is that when we have asked to visit any particular community there has been an openness and a welcome that makes us very proud of being able to work effectively with people who are a part of our democratic system.

I do want to talk a little bit about the process around pornography because there was considerable mention in the Little children are sacred report about the problems of pornography and perhaps the behaviours that are linked with that. There is an ongoing international issue about the linkages with pornography and the behaviours that are learned from it. Nonetheless, in terms of the Little children are sacred report, it was identified as an issue.

This government has worked very strongly with industry, and in particular with AUSTAR, who provides the pay TV service to the Northern Territory, to look at the process of access to what is called pornography—in this case, it must be remembered that what we are talking about is R-rated material. There has been no argument about the X-rated elements of pornography. That is banned; it has been under the previous legislation and it continues to be banned under this legislation. So the argument of watering down does not work in that way. But in terms of R-rated material that is only available through the pay TV process, there has been work with industry, and I know Senator Siewert spoke about that detailed process. It was brought up that there were very few homes in remote Aboriginal communities that have access to pay TV, but there are some. That was identified by industry.

The provisions in this act effectively put into place a process where community, government and industry can work together to come up with a solution for their areas. It links all parts of the process so that, if there is a genuine desire from the community caused by any reason such as fear about what is going on or worry about pornography coming into their area, there can be designated exclusion from those areas and a ban would happen.

In terms of what we hope for in future interaction and how we continue to work effectively together to ensure that the processes identified in reports such as Little children are sacred, it would seem to me that this process, which fits in with the Racial Discrimination Act very well, actually seems to be bit of a model for the future because it engages all those who are stakeholders in coming up with a solution. So we think that this is a very strong movement in trying to engage with community and industry to determine what is effective for them. Rather than blanket banning, which was in the previous legislation, we are saying that this is a strengthening of the process because it allows people to take ownership themselves of what is happening in communities. Fears were put forward by Senator Bernardi about whether people would have the encouragement or the strength to raise an issue; this is a different issue. This goes back to exactly how we effectively work in the communities to make people strong and aware and to give them the support they need to identify the issues themselves and to come forward.

There are a whole range of other issues within the NT response which looks at how we can improve child support services, child welfare services and also policing. But it is not peculiar to this one element of how pay TV access occurs. Once again, it is an attempt to say that my response is somehow stronger than yours. I do not agree with that methodology. The government’s response identifies the issue, responds to the Little children are sacred report and comes up with a solution that meets the requirements.

The roadhouses, as we have heard, are being licensed under the same process as community stores. There is a very detailed process under the NT legislation that looks at how this licensing is done. This actually widens the provisions to allow roadhouses to have that amenity for local communities, and we support that. Of course we support it—we are putting forward the legislation. The other element is the policing element dealing with people travelling through an area carrying material that is pornographic or illegal in some way. There is no disagreement with those processes.

However, I think it is very important to respond to a little of what Senator Siewert was saying about the review, about which this government has a very strong view. We said that we were in support of elements of the NT response legislation when it came in but that we had a whole range of concerns that we put forward in arguments. We made a commitment to a full review into the situation and a 12-month process. You and I know that that is underway and that at the end of this month we are expecting a review. I understand clearly the concerns that were raised by Senator Siewert. When you say that you will be operating an effective review, there is an expectation from all parties that the review will be open and will respond to the issues raised during that process. We will have that review at the end of the month, and I think there is a true challenge to everyone in this place, as well as to all citizens of the Northern Territory, who are the subject of this process, to closely examine that review and effectively respond to any recommendations and processes that emerge from it. That will be an important element of what is an ongoing response to the issues that were identified.

All governments needed to investigate what was happening in areas where concerns had been raised about child abuse. That is the job of effective government. What we need to understand is that it is not a short, quick-fix process. It will not be a single response that will solve these problems. A long-term, strategic, resourced process will have to be put in place at all levels of government and in the communities themselves to respond to the Little children are sacred report. The bill in front of us today looks at four key elements. It is a consolidation of the original legislation and is part, I believe, of an ongoing response to a very significant problem.

Judith Adams (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I would like to take the opportunity to speak about the Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Emergency Response Consolidation) Bill 2008. As my colleagues have said, the bill is reviewing not the whole Northern Territory emergency response but certain crucial aspects. However, these amendments could put the success of the intervention at risk. I believe there can be little doubt that the first year of the Northern Territory emergency response made a great difference to the lives of many Indigenous Australians who live in some of the most remote areas of Australia. There can also be little doubt that this action was urgently needed.

In June 2007 the Little children are sacred report shocked many Australians who were not aware of the parallel world that many of our Indigenous families experience every day, a world full of violence, neglect and despair. Many Australians at that time did not know that there are welfare dependent communities, tucked away out of sight and mind, with no-go areas protected by a no-visitor permit system. For others such as teachers, police officers and health service professionals working in those remote areas, the issues raised in the Little children are sacred report were of no surprise. It was just another report in a long line. May I say from a Western Australian point of view that General Sanderson released a report but, despite all the evidence it had about the northern part of Western Australia, unfortunately it was also put on the shelf to gather dust.

Finally it was the Howard government that said enough was enough. The then Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, refused to be trapped in further endless consultations. Instead, the former Howard government decided to take action and committed nearly a billion dollars to ensure every child in the more than 70 prescribed communities could have a health check with follow-up treatments. The package of legislative changes and policies introduced by the Howard government is, without doubt, the most important Indigenous affairs initiative seen in decades. Law and order had to take first priority. Policing was immediately and substantially boosted. Children who often suffered from hunger because their parents gambled away or drank the proceeds of their pension now had a greater chance to receive food and clothing, as these welfare payments were quarantined. Housing was to be improved, pornography was banned, alcohol and drugs were controlled and the permit system was modified so that people touring the outback could visit public places in Aboriginal communities.

While I was travelling between Alice Springs and Hermannsburg on a NORFORCE exercise, I took a photo of an Australian government initiative with a sign which says: ‘Warning—prescribed area’. It has a photo of a glass and a bottle with a circle around them and a line through it. It states in very large letters: ‘No liquor to go past this point’ and ‘No pornography’. To me, that is a very impressive sight on the side of the road. It also has, ‘For further information, contact the Australian government Northern Territory emergency response hotline,’ with the 1800 numbers. I would not like to see this removed, because it really does send a very, very strong message when one is driving along that road.

With the Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Emergency Response Consolidation) Bill 2008, the Rudd government is suggesting amendments and a review of four crucial areas, which my colleagues spoke about earlier. The old permit system is to be reinstated, with the communities once again locked away from general scrutiny. More than 35 per cent of pornography is to be allowed back on pay TV, and access to pay TV services will recommence. In addition, the transportation of pornographic material across prescribed areas is under review, meaning that people will soon be able to carry alcohol and pornography through the prescribed communities. Labor also intends to license roadhouses. I support this measure, which means that those roadhouses can be recognised as community stores. Also, for their financial management they will be set up with the software to allow them to cope with that.

This is definitely positive and I certainly do support that measure, but I have a query with it—that the government has yet to define ‘substantial dependence’ in practical terms. In addition, the government has to answer broader issues relating to the community store licensing system, especially how it intends to prevent the cost of attaining licensing accreditation being passed on to welfare dependent consumers, making healthy, nutritious food in these remote areas even more expensive. Having travelled extensively through the north-west of Western Australia and through the Northern Territory, it was quite horrifying to see just how much it costs for fresh vegetables, apples and milk for people living in those areas.

Although this does not relate to the Northern Territory, I was at Balgo a few weeks ago with another committee. The cost of transporting food stuffs every week into the community store at Balgo is $15,000. This gives an indication of the effect of the rising cost of fuel on outback areas. We think it is bad enough around the cities and in regional areas, but this huge cost for the transportation of food has to be handed on to consumers in outback areas who are therefore having to pay for it.

Through my committee work I have been very involved with looking at the effectiveness of the Northern Territory emergency response. In April, along with my colleagues Senator Moore and Senator Siewert, who have already spoken, I participated in committee hearings in Alice Springs and Darwin for the inquiry into the Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Emergency Response Consolidation) Bill 2008.

My Liberal Senate colleagues Senator Gary Humphries and Senator Sue Boyce and I believe that many provisions of this bill constitute a retreat from the principles which underline the Northern Territory emergency response announced and commenced by the former coalition government. As stated in the dissenting report by Liberal senators on the emergency response consolidation bill, Senator Humphries, Senator Boyce and I believe that the measures in the bill forestall the results of an independent review of the NT emergency response which is to report by the end of the month. I would question why the government is pushing this bill through the Senate today when we have a review currently going on which is to report by the end of the month. It really is pre-empting that review. I wonder whether the review will highlight the issues that the coalition is raising and whether it will suggest the need for change.

We believe the bill undermines the basis on which so much federal effort and money has been expended since June 2007. Such measures run the risk of confusing those benefiting from the emergency response, and those working on Commonwealth programs and initiatives constituting the intervention, as to the federal government’s position on the fundamental objectives of this exercise. The proposed amendments also appear designed to confuse and deflect the focus of the former government’s initiative.

Although I appreciate the bipartisan support with regard to the Northern Territory emergency response, I cannot support the suggested amendments proposed by the Labor government in this bill. As a consequence, I urge the government to leave in place the permit system provisions that have enabled access to public land; to impose a blanket ban on all pornographic material in prescribed areas; and to prohibit the transport of pornographic material through any prescribed area. There are positive signs the emergency response is working as it was designed by the former Howard government. Even the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, admitted this a year after the intervention started. She said that there has been an increase in the amount of food purchased and school nutrition programs are leading to children putting on weight. I did visit the Tea Tree school when I was in Alice Springs. It was great to see these children. They came out to inspect all the army vehicles. Each one of them had a pear. They had school uniforms on and they looked really very fit and healthy. I was very impressed with the way the school had trained the students. They all lined up to have their turn at climbing into the vehicles, tooting the horns and playing with all the different things that they were able to access.

In my view, Ms Macklin is now threatening this crucial work by introducing amendments relating to access to Aboriginal land, pay TV and R18+ programs and transport of prohibited material through prescribed areas. I really do not want to see the permit system re-introduced. The former Minister for Families and Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, was convinced that removing the permit system and allowing entry to Indigenous communities was essential for the success of the whole emergency response. An increased external scrutiny is in the interests of vulnerable persons in ‘closed’ communities. As a result, the former government had reduced the restrictions for access to some 0.2 per cent of Aboriginal land. There is an idea that the whole of the Aboriginal land has been opened up, but that is not right. These measures do not interfere with permits to access the vast holdings of Aboriginal land. Aboriginal people should have total control to practice their culture and to protect their sites. However, there must be exceptions granting general access to schools, medical centres, police stations and airstrips.

Arguing in support of the re-introduction, the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, the Minister for Housing, Tanya Plibersek, and the member for the Territory seat of Lingiari, Warren Snowdon, said the permit system was a vital tool in stopping ‘rivers of grog’ from entering the communities, but I would really question this information. An article published in Monday’s Australian quoted police figures which point out:

… the great majority of people summonsed or arrested for bringing liquor into alcohol restricted communities in the Territory in the past 15 months were Aborigines who did not need permits to enter their land.

The statistics show there was no basis for linking the flow of liquor to communities to non-indigenous grog-runners, or to the permit system. Rather, it was Aborigines who ran grog and supplied it to their own people.

The article was written by Mr Paul Toohey, a journalist from the Australian who has been reporting about Indigenous communities for many years.

At a hearing of the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs in Darwin, Mr Toohey presented the committee with an insight into his work. He made a very interesting point regarding the permit system. Mr Toohey said:

The permit system does not just work to keep people out; it also works to keep people in. People have this idea that this is a precious, special world that they are protecting, even if they are not quite sure why it is special and precious, because the community is living in the conditions I have described.

He went on to comment about Port Keats:

It is remarkable to look at Port Keats. I believe this has changed in the last year, but Port Keats has one of the biggest populations of an Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory. For the last three decades it has not produced one footballer for the Northern Territory Football League, which is an outstanding statistic given the physique of Port Keats people, who have a pretty tough warrior mentality. That is what I am talking about when I refer to keeping people in. The fact is that there has been no football player produced from Port Keats, let alone any artwork or any known artist, in three decades. There is not one piece by a Port Keats artist hanging on the wall of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, because there really are not too many Port Keats artists. It works to keep people in as well.

Whilst the permit system works to keep people in, it also works to keep business out. The Northern Territory opposition’s Indigenous spokesman, Adam Giles, recently made a very important point regarding the economic realities of remote Aboriginal communities in the territory. Speaking to the media he said:

“One reason remote Aboriginal communities remain mired in economic deprivation is that the permit system has isolated them from the wider Australian economy,” said the indigenous MP.

           …         …         …

“Without the free flow of goods and people into remote Aboriginal communities there will be no breaking the chain of welfare dependence that binds so many.”

I also call on the government to impose a blanket ban on all pornographic material in prescribed areas. At the committee hearing in Darwin, Helen Wodak, Advocacy Manager for the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency, made an interesting comment about sexual abuse. She said that, at times, pornographic material plays an important role in the grooming of people for sexual offences. I find that absolutely abhorrent. Of course, the overcrowding of homes with small children and adults all together certainly does not help in this respect. So I believe that housing is an absolutely essential component in these communities and we have to move a lot faster on this than we are.

The Little children are sacred report found that sexual abuse among Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory was serious, widespread and often unreported, and that there was a strong association between alcohol abuse and sexual abuse of children—and, to a lesser extent, between the use of pornography and sexual abuse of children. Liberal senators heard no evidence in the course of this inquiry to suggest that the magnitude or urgency of that problem in Indigenous communities had lessened in the last year. The suggested amendments to the bill proposed by the Rudd government would allow communities to lift the ban on pornographic TV coverage after adequate community consultations. I find this quite impractical. Whilst I am a strong supporter of community consultations, I am nevertheless concerned that this would lead to the removal of protections and put women and children at risk. To me, the safety of a child should remain the first priority.

Next to this rather ideological belief there are serious practical difficulties with this amendment being imposed upon the subscription TV industry. The bill proposes amendments to require that particular pay television licensees not provide television channels that contain a large amount of R18+ programming to certain prescribed areas. These amendments would cause serious difficulties for the subscription TV industry in trying to comply with the legislation as originally enacted. At the committee hearings in Alice Springs, Austar representatives noted that the difference between how it locates its customers and how the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007 defines prescribed areas means that it is not possible for Austar to know with certainty whether one or more of its customers is located within a prescribed area. According to Austar, this would create a number of issues should a blanket ban on R18+ rated programming across all prescribed areas be introduced. I therefore urge the government not to amend the current restrictions on pornographic broadcasting in the prescribed areas.

The former Chair of the Northern Territory Emergency Response Taskforce, Dr Sue Gordon, who has just finished her term as chair, said to journalists:

“While I appreciate that a lot of people were opposed to the NT emergency response, either as a package or in part, I would urge you to read what women and some men in the communities are saying about how it has changed their lives,” ...

Major-General David Chalmers, Operational Commander of the Northern Territory Emergency Response Taskforce, said to journalists:

THE Northern Territory intervention must run well beyond five years to make a real impact in indigenous communities ...

Furthermore, the article says:

General Chalmers said there was evidence the intervention had led to decreased violence, increased school enrolments this year, and more money being spent on food.

So I do hope that, when the review report is handed down, the people involved will come up with some really positive moves. We have started something that I think is very positive and I am very supportive of it continuing but I do not want to see these amendments, which would take us backwards, made to the legislation.

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was interested in the comments of the previous speaker, Senator Adams. She was crying crocodile tears over the high cost of living in the Northern Territory. I think it is quite interesting that one of the features of the industrial relations system under the previous Labor government was a system of what were called ‘district allowances’ in the Northern Territory. Those district allowances enabled the people in the Northern Territory to be paid an allowance because they were living in places where there was a higher cost of living. Under the Howard government’s Work Choices legislation, in my experience, many people in the retail industry lost their district allowance. So one thing that the Northern Territory was able to do was provide a higher wage rate for people and, of course, under Work Choices, people lost that. It is quite true that it was more difficult under the Work Choices regime for people in the Northern Territory to meet the higher costs associated with getting products to the Northern Territory.

I am very pleased to speak today in favour of the government’s Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Emergency Response Consolidation) Bill 2008. This legislation has a very direct impact on the Northern Territory. I have a personal connection to the Northern Territory that goes back a very long time. My father served there at Larrakeyah during World War II. I first went to the Territory in 1976, just after Cyclone Tracy, to help rebuild Darwin. I spent six months there on that occasion and, in my previous occupation, I went back there about four or five times a year.

I think it is true to say that, although the Northern Territory does not have the highest number of Indigenous Australians in population of any state or territory, as a percentage it does have more Indigenous Australians than any other state or territory. I was very pleased that the first time I entered this chamber as a senator was the day that our Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, delivered the national apology to the stolen generation in the House of Representatives. It was a very proud moment in Australia’s history, marred only by the fact that it was so long overdue. The former Prime Minister, Mr Howard, steadfastly refused to give that apology to the stolen generation—an apology that all Australians wanted to hear. It is interesting that not everybody in the previous government adopted that sort of hostile attitude to reconciliation. I was very pleased to read in Mr Costello’s new book that he was willing to embrace the concept of reconciliation. Of course, he famously participated in the walk across Sydney Harbour Bridge some years ago.

This legislation seeks to correct imbalances that were inherent in the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill 2007, which was rushed through the federal parliament last year—in fact, it was rushed through both houses of parliament in just one day.

Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was an emergency.

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We will get to that. The justification for such haste was that there was a state of emergency in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory that required immediate action to remedy the situation. While I have no doubt that the situation is dire in many Aboriginal communities, this has been a problem for many years. It was many years in the making and did not simply arise overnight. As with so many issues that the previous government found on its plate, it took a long time to get around to dealing with it.

I am supportive of any measures that help bring disadvantaged communities out of despair and poverty. The Australian government remain committed to the Northern Territory intervention. We supported the intervention because the Little children are sacred report urged government action to protect Indigenous children from abuse and violence. One of the authors of that report was Pat Anderson. I had the great privilege of meeting Pat. She was very committed to solving these problems in the Northern Territory and did a great job on that report.

We are also committed to undertaking an independent review to report on the effectiveness and efficiency of all the Northern Territory emergency response measures. This review will report before the end of the year. It is important to address the serious issues in the Northern Territory in a professional and responsive manner. One of the key differences between the Rudd government’s approach to this issue and that of the previous government is the inclusive way in which the Rudd government has involved the Northern Territory government. The Rudd government wants to ensure that both governments are working with communities to solve problems rather than making unilateral decisions for them.

In its submission to the Senate inquiry into the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill 2007, the Northern Territory government at that time was scathing in its assessment of the new legislation, calling it:

... totally unexpected and totally unprecedented.

It went on to state:

The Northern Territory Government wants to make it fundamentally clear that it is opposed to the parts of the intervention legislation that remove the permit requirements of the Land Rights Act and the sections that allow for the compulsory acquisition of Aboriginal Land.

The Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Paul Henderson—recently re-elected; he is a great chap, a fantastic chap—understands the importance of involving the community to help solve social problems. He said last year:

Let’s move forward in a spirit of cooperation rather than intervention and let’s engage Indigenous people in these reforms, let’s get some ownership of these reforms, let’s get some commitment for the reforms.

Paul Henderson understands that real leadership involves bringing people along with you, just as he did in his successful re-election only a couple of weeks ago.

Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just!

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No; he got back and he is going to do a great job. He is very impressive. With all due respect to Clare Martin, he is going to be a great chief minister for the Northern Territory and it is no wonder that he was re-elected. He will continue to do a great job.

Leadership requires one to convince others that you have a workable plan to improve the situation and that it is worth their while to follow you to achieve that plan. The fact that there is such wide-ranging opposition and concern in the Northern Territory to the way in which the intervention was executed illustrates the poor leadership of the previous government on this issue.

There are, of course, aspects of the intervention that have been beneficial. In the area of welfare reform the Australian government has made good progress. Fifty-four government business managers are in place, servicing 73 communities and town camps in Darwin, Alice Springs, Tennant Creek and Elliott. As at 27 August, income management is in place in 69 communities and associated outstations, and 10 town camp regions.

As at 22 August, 15,602 people were income managed, including 612 auto-income-managed customers. There are a total of 67 community stores which have been licensed: 39 stores are operating under store-specific licences; eight stores with store-specific licences are managed under Arnhem Land Progress Association consultancy agreements, and 15 stores are operating under corporate licences issued to Outback Stores and the ALPA.

I note that schedule 4 of the bill allows for roadhouses to be classified as community stores when a community is substantially dependent on them for grocery items and drinks. This recognises the way in which retail services are delivered in the Northern Territory. I think this is one area where it is very clear that the intervention by the previous government was so rushed. It did not even appreciate the way in which retail services were delivered in many of these communities. Of course there was the community store, but in lots of these communities retail life revolves around the roadhouses. This is just, I think, a clear indication of how out of touch the government was when it made some of its decisions relating to the Northern Territory.

As at 27 August, the school nutrition programs were in place in 68 communities and associated outstations and 10 town camp regions. As at 27 August, there were 31 community employment brokers in place servicing 57 communities and associated outstations, and two town camp regions. So it is clear that much progress has been made by the Rudd government, but obviously—

Judith Adams (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Adams interjecting—

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You laugh, Senator, but we are making progress up there, and we are making it in a way that involves the Northern Territory government and the people of the Northern Territory. That was the very thing you failed to do with this issue. You waited and you waited until the very end of your government to do anything about this issue. It is just like the way you treated the Murray River: you waited and you waited. Your program looks more like a script of The Hollowmen than a serious attempt to deal with the issues of the Northern Territory. But the federal Labor Party and the re-elected Henderson government in the Northern Territory are going to fix this problem.

We are going to go there. We have started the process, and the process involves conciliation, discussion and consultation with the people of the Northern Territory. This is where the previous government made their mistake. They did not consult with the people of the Northern Territory. This bill will fix that problem. We are going to solve the mistakes that the previous government made in relation to this issue.

Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are going to regret saying that, one day, Senator Farrell.

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will not regret it, Senator, because what I am saying is absolutely true. The cooperation between the Rudd government and the Henderson government in the Northern Territory will solve this problem. You have to take the community with you on this issue. The only way these issues are going to be solved is by taking the community with you—and that is what we are doing, and that is what we will continue to do until the problem is solved. That is why it is so important that we pass this piece of legislation.

As I said, we have made progress, but more needs to be done. I believe it is important to note that the legislation is compliant with the Racial Discrimination Act. This legislation does not override the Racial Discrimination Act as the previous National Emergency Response Act did. The Racial Discrimination Act allows for positive discrimination to assist disadvantaged members of the community, which in this instance are Aboriginal children in remote areas. The Racial Discrimination Act is important legislation that protects the rights of the most vulnerable in our society against unfair treatment and should never have been cast aside in the rush for a quick fix.

The other significant aspect of the legislation is that schedule 3 restores the permit system that is so important to Aboriginal communities. The government is committed to implementing all the key elements of the emergency response. However, there is no evidence that changes made to the permit system by the previous government contribute to the objectives of the emergency response—namely, protecting children and making communities safe. In fact, Vince Kelly, President of the Northern Territory Police Association, and a very fine fellow—I think he might now be the President of the Police Federation of Australia—has stated that the permit system does have an important role in policing these communities and keeping out grog and drug runners.

The changes to the permit system made by the previous government, which included allowing public access to major communities, came into effect on 17 February 2008. The Rudd government’s election commitment to retain the permit system also included allowing greater access for journalists and government contractors. Once the bill has been passed and the permit system has been reinstated, the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs can make a determination to allow journalists as a class of persons to access Aboriginal land.

The Australian government is of the belief that Aboriginal people should have the rights over their traditional lands. At no point was the case conclusively made that the permit system somehow contributed to the sexual abuse of children in the Northern Territory. The permit system allowed Aboriginal communities to have some control over those who come onto their land. Just like any homeowner, you need to be able to choose who you let onto your property and who you do not. The permit system allows Aboriginal communities the option to get rid of outsiders who are harmful to their community and I wholeheartedly support that regime.

I do not understand how the Australian government was supposed to generate trust and enthusiasm for its programs by pouring resources into the Northern Territory but at the same time removing land rights from Aboriginal communities. I fear that the Liberal Party’s overemphasis upon free and unrestricted movement of people through Aboriginal lands has led them to misdiagnose the problems facing Aboriginal communities. There may be some instances where the provision of services is hampered by the process of asking for permission to enter Aboriginal lands. But I think it is highly doubtful that Aboriginal communities would reject genuine offers of assistance and legitimate requests to visit their land.

I believe poverty is the biggest factor that leads to child abuse. Of course, that was the substantive issue that the report of Pat Anderson dealt with. If we are to stop the abuse of children, the Australian government must take concrete steps to address poverty, not engage in side issues such as simply removing the permit system. I commend this legislation to the house and I urge all senators to support it.

Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In his remarks just now, Senator Farrell has reaffirmed a tone that we have heard again and again from Labor members speaking about the Northern Territory intervention. The Australian government’s official position is that it supports the intervention. It is in favour of the intervention. It gave support to the Howard government when it made the decision to intervene in the Northern Territory and provide a sweeping range of services and changes in those communities that were affected. Yet when Labor members and senators rise in places like this as well as outside in the community to speak about the intervention, they dip their comments in vitriol. They spike them with criticisms and reservations about the intervention. They tell us more reasons why we should not support the intervention than reasons why we should.

The fact is that the Australian Labor Party is deeply ambivalent about this major social reform in the Northern Territory, but they do not have the courage to say to the Australian community, ‘We are not in favour of this and we intend to undo it,’ because before the last federal election they did not think the Australian people wanted to hear that. As a result, they decided to say to the Australian people: ‘Yes. We support the Howard government’s decision to intervene in the Northern Territory.’ This is summed up by what one reporter said in the Australian, quoting a Labor MP:

One MP said: ‘We didn’t want to get into a debate about this before the election but we have to relook at it now.

This was just after the federal election in November. Indeed, that is true and Senator Farrell’s comments have confirmed that yet again. This flip-flopping, this inconsistency about the legislation does Labor no credit because it sends the signal to both Indigenous Australians and other Australians that Labor’s position just cannot be pinned down, that they are sort of in one camp and they are sort of in another. I do not think that serves this community very well.

I want to say that I am very clear about my position. I think the intervention is conceptually right. It is appropriate and necessary for us to move into communities which are extremely dysfunctional and provide services and support to deal with immediate and real problems. That is what the intervention was intended to do. That is what the intervention has succeeded in doing in many places. No-one pretends, least of all the previous government, that the intervention was the complete solution to the myriad problems facing Indigenous Australia. But we believed then and we believe now that action to deal with immediate and real problems, particularly those affecting the welfare and safety of children, was absolutely required.

Senator Farrell was at pains to point out that he did not feel we had done anything about the welfare of people in Indigenous communities, but he then proceeded to list a whole range of activities that were taking place: welfare reform, clean-up community programs, community stores and school nutrition programs. He read from the latest FaHCSIA Operation Update, the operation headed by Major General Dave Chalmers, who spoke to the inquiry of which I was a part. Those things, of course—in case Senator Farrell was unaware—were facilitated, were only possible, by virtue of the Howard government’s decision to intervene in the Northern Territory. That is what we did. It happened while you were in office, but we initiated that program; we made it possible. I think that it falls back on Senator Farrell and his colleagues on the other side of the chamber to work out where they are going with all of this. Are they in favour of decisive action to deal with the indicators, at least the symptoms, of dislocation, dysfunction and societies which are in need of urgent repair, or do they wish to sit back and mouth platitudes about this or make claims like that made by Senator Farrell in this debate that we are going to fix this problem, obviously using some different mechanism from the one that is being put in place and which they have inherited?

I have to say that I contribute to this debate more in sorrow than in anger about the way in which this is all proceeding. We have here an unpicking of key elements of the former government’s legislation, again without a coherent alternative strategy being laid out for us all to see. If Labor came to this place and said, ‘Here is our alternative; we have a new scheme to deal with the problems of Indigenous Australia, which everyone can understand and talk about and it’s all laid out for us to discuss,’ I would feel a little more confident that they knew what they were doing. But I see here a series of changes which are designed to appease certain stakeholders with whom they have a certain relationship. They made a promise to get the permit system back in place and they promised to do something about access to narrowcasting in these communities, and they do not really particularly care whether or not that fits within a coherent system of policy towards Indigenous Australia.

I want to deal with some of the issues that the legislation deals with. One, of course, is the permit system, which has been much discussed. We believe that the permit system presents a series of real problems to the environment in which we face these issues, and we believe that the permit system needs to be seriously reconsidered. We note that, in the course of the inquiry conducted by the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs, there had not been a single formal complaint about the abolition of the permit system under the 2007 legislation. We think that the evidence is highly ambivalent about whether or not the permit system is successful and, as such, it is a mistake to pull away from the reforms that we made in this area with so little evidence available about whether those reforms might have been successful.

We had a number of witnesses give evidence to the committee and, although it is true that many of the Indigenous stakeholders and their advocates or spokespeople defended the permit system, there was other very powerful evidence against it—and as members of this place would know we do not operate on a poll system, we do not tick off the number of people for or against a proposition to determine that that is the way we decide whether or not an idea is supported; we look at the quality of argument. The argument put by Paul Toohey, a senior journalist with News Ltd, who spent a long time in the Northern Territory, were very compelling arguments, ones which the committee took very seriously. He said to the committee:

I think it is a tragedy that the permit system will be reintroduced for townships.

                        …                   …                   …

Keeping these townships closed is backwards, negative and basically a dangerous act which does not help anyone. No-one has any issue with requiring people to have a permit to access the vast holdings of Aboriginal land. The roads leading to them and the townships are a different issue altogether. If people want to practice their culture, protect their land, protect their sites, run businesses on their land and require people to have permits, so they should. It is land that had been won under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act or vested even earlier than that. I fully support Aboriginal people having total control over that except on the roads and the towns where there are schools, clinics, police stations and shops. I fail to see why these places need to be closed.

Indeed, he makes a very good point. We are not talking about the entirety of Indigenous land when we say that the permit system should be wound back. We are talking about those places which, in any other community in Australia, would be considered public places: places around schools, roads leading into and out of communities, areas around shops, police stations—those areas where you close access to the outside world and you create closed communities. Philosophically, I think, we need to ask ourselves whether that is a wise position from which to advance a series of solutions to problems which themselves involve the perpetration of acts and crimes behind closed doors. That is the issue we are facing here: what is being done to people, particularly to women and children, behind closed doors in situations where the law has not been able to reach them or protect them. To perpetuate the problem of closed communities around those issues is, philosophically, I think a mistake. I am not being dogmatic about this. I do not say that the permit system is absolutely wrong and should necessarily go. What I am saying is that the reforms put in place only last year should be given a chance to work, to be tested, to see whether they actually make a positive difference to the outcomes for people in those communities, as unquestionably some other aspects of the legislation have been successful for those communities.

I notice that Warren Mundine, the erstwhile President of the Labor Party, has also made some comments on the question of accessibility to communities. On 26 January this year, he said:

If you want to create a real economy you’re going to have to have more commercial activity happening and that happens by allowing people to flow in and out of places.

On another occasion last year he said:

I think we should take advantage of what the former government did. We have to build on that. The biggest fear I have is that we start to fall back into our old ways and start some of the failed policies of the past.

Another journalist, Nicholas Rothwell, in an article entitled ‘Back to a system that permits social rot’, wrote:

The primary effect of permits has long been to cut off remote Aboriginal societies from the outside world: to hinder economic activity, to kill tourist curiosity, to protect the incompetent administrators and local leaders presiding over their dysfunctional little kingdoms.

Those are strong words. Perhaps they are too strong, but they create an environment where I think we ought to reconsider the rush to put in place changes so soon after this set of reforms was installed by the previous government.

The legislation also winds back the arrangements made by the former government with respect to narrowcasting of pornographic material into these communities. Again, the government has not seen fit to let these changes take root before they are prepared to weed them out. We do not believe that this material benefits Indigenous communities, particularly when there is obviously a high rate of sexual crime, and we think it is important to make sure that communities are protected against this kind of material being accessible to them. The effect of the government’s legislation is to make protecting those communities harder to achieve. That is the effect of what they are doing. It will be harder to achieve the kinds of insulating programs that the previous government put in place. I do not think that the government has justified that change. The industry, when they came before the community affairs committee, attempted to justify their support for winding back the policy—in other words, their continuing capacity to sell their products into these communities—and they were comprehensively unconvincing. They argued that there was a constitutional reason why you could not prevent Indigenous communities from having access to this material. Their attempt to justify that was, frankly, quite pathetic and they suggested that there were all sorts of technical difficulties with being able to engineer this change. I am completely unconvinced and I think the industry’s self-serving statements in these circumstances were quite transparent.

Senator Farrell, in his remarks, also made comments on Senator Adams’s remarks about the cost of living and attempted to link that with Work Choices. The fact remains, of course, that there are far too few Indigenous people in the Northern Territory who are in employment. One of the measures that we could see benefiting from the winding back of the permit system is the capacity for more commercial activity in Indigenous communities and the prospect of real employment to be created as a result.

We need to carefully consider whether we are making a serious mistake by this piecemeal approach to undoing the good that was done with the raft of reforms by the previous government. Nobody wants to pretend that this is more than it actually is. Nobody—on this side at least—wants to pronounce that we have discovered the magic bullet that will solve the problems of disadvantage and disempowerment in Indigenous Australia. They are very real problems, they are very severe problems, they are problems that will take generations and a succession of governments to solve. I think Senator Farrell was extremely brave to say, ‘We are going to fix this problem.’ I do not think it is mere coincidence that governments of both persuasions over at least 30 years have failed to do that. We need to test propositions empirically and see whether they are capable of relieving the underlying causes of those problems I just referred to.

We have a review being conducted into the Northern Territory intervention package. That review is due to be released to the community at the end of this month. But today, in the middle of the month, we are debating the repeal of certain elements of that legislation. The question is: why have the government seen fit to unpick certain elements of it at this stage? I think it is because they have made promises and they have people to appease, and since they do not have an overarching narrative to give us about where they are heading on Indigenous affairs, it does not really matter if you move certain bits of that around because it does not affect the overall picture at the end of the day. I do not commend this legislation. I suggest the Senate should look at it very seriously. I particularly commend the amendments which have been moved by Senator Bernardi. I suggest that we take steps to ensure that we protect the value of the reforms that have been put in place and acknowledge and try to consolidate the gains that have been made as a result of the NT intervention to date.

Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also wish to speak on the Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Emergency Response Consolidation) Bill 2008. I support the comments I have just had the pleasure of hearing from Senator Humphries. I also cannot support this bill in its current form. As Senator Humphries has outlined, amongst other matters this bill seeks to reintroduce is the now discredited permit system for entry onto Indigenous lands in the Northern Territory.

The permit system was originally established with the best interests of the Indigenous people of the Northern Territory in mind, but it is now abundantly clear that the system has become an Iron Curtain behind which crimes can be committed and children placed at risk. When this legislation was introduced into the other house by the Indigenous affairs minister, Jenny Macklin, she justified its reintroduction on the grounds that the permit system was a vital tool in stopping ‘rivers of grog’ from entering the communities in the Territory.

This very reason from the government has been dramatically undermined by police figures that were revealed in the Australian newspaper this week. According to these figures released by the Northern Territory police, the great majority of people who have been summonsed or arrested by police for bringing liquor into alcohol restricted communities in the Territory in the past 15 months were in fact Indigenous people, people who did not need permits to enter the land. The statistics show that there is no basis whatsoever for linking the flow of alcohol into communities to non-Indigenous grog runners or to the lack of a permit system. Rather, it is Indigenous individuals who are running grog and supplying it to their own people.

In reality, the problem of grog running in the Northern Territory is almost exclusively an Aboriginal related problem. The Territory police figures that were released this week show that, since 1 July last year, 98 Indigenous people have been summonsed for bringing liquor into a prescribed area, compared with five non-Indigenous people and one person of unknown descent. Police arrested 65 Indigenous people and two people of unknown descent for the offence. Police have said that 40 Indigenous people and three of unknown descent had been summonsed for consuming liquor within the prescribed area during that period, while 41 Indigenous people and one non-Indigenous person were arrested for this offence.

On that basis, it is deeply disappointing that the Rudd Labor government used its numbers in the House of Representatives to defeat an opposition amendment to this bill that would have allowed free movement into the townships of the communities. Of course, that was a key part of the original Territory intervention laws developed by the Howard-Costello government.

The Rudd government has argued that the permits protected Indigenous Territorians from negative outside influences, including alcohol, sexual predators and dodgy art dealers. I regard this as outrageous paternalism. What other Australian communities are protected by the government deciding who comes and goes? What other Australian communities would tolerate government or, for that matter, community leaders speaking on their behalf in terms of deciding who comes and goes? Most importantly, as alluded to by Senator Humphries, what other Australian community would feel safer because someone else was deciding on their behalf and without independent scrutiny who could come in and who could not?

In another context I have warned that the minute we treat any group in our community as special and put them in special places with special rules we invite corruption and perversion to flourish. Closing the doors or the gates and stopping normal social interaction is always wrong. The truth is, as the Northern Territory arrest figures show and as this government refuses to accept, the negative influences do not in the main come from outsiders. But even if that were true, this return to the bad old status quo without any sort of a trial of what openness and freedom might mean is absolutely the wrong answer.

Senator Humphries has spoken about the evidence taken by the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs in relation to the Northern Territory intervention, and I was struck during evidence that was given by the outright paternalism displayed by a number of Indigenous leaders, never mind the very strong evidence given by the journalist Paul Toohey. The committee heard a number of times that the permit system was there to protect naive and ingenuous people from outsiders. We were told by Indigenous leaders that, if this did not happen, vacuum cleaners would be sold to people who did not have carpets, people would buy mobile phones when there was no network coverage in the area and so on.

Firstly, there was no mention of drug or grog problems made by these leaders, and there was only grudging acknowledgement from them of any problems with violence or sexual abuse in these communities. I do not think that these witnesses were in any way deliberately trying to mislead our inquiry, but they were painting a far rosier picture than the reality. They were burying their heads in the sand in regard to the true source of dysfunction in their communities.

Secondly, not one of these witnesses suggested that teaching people to identify con men and tricksters might be another and perhaps a far better way to protect people from scams and abuse. There was no suggestion of overcoming ignorance with consumer education, just paternalistic protecting. Yet we had reports yesterday in the financial press that Indigenous landowners at Uluru are part of a consortium planning to bid for the $400 million Ayers Rock resort. If we want more Indigenous groups to have the skills to undertake projects such as this, to fully participate in economic development in the Territory and, dare I say it, to get jobs, then education about business and smart consumerism is surely a better answer than straight-out protective paternalism.

The police figures that were revealed by the Australian clearly demonstrate that these issues are, by and large, ones for Indigenous communities to fix from within. This cannot happen while communities pretend that the dangers are in fact coming from without and while communities are kept closed by leaders with paternalistic attitudes. The reintroduction of the permit system, a system which was designed to keep non-Indigenous Australians and others out, will not stop the vast majority of the grog runners, who happen to be Indigenous themselves, from entering Aboriginal lands and bringing contraband into communities.

The reintroduction of the permit system will mean that less light is shone on these perpetrators and that innocent and ingenuous people will go on being their victims, without any support or input to change this process by the government. If community leaders and grog runners act in collusion, as has been suggested in a number of areas, reintroducing the permit system means that other community members have very little chance to have their voices heard and that there is very little chance of anything except sustaining the system that currently oppresses them.

The communities are in fact in desperate need of intervention—they are in desperate need of being opened up to the expectations and help from the rest of the Australian community. We cannot do this by closing the doors and pretending that this is somehow beneficial to the people who are being cruelly paternalised by the system. The Howard-Costello government made some very significant and beneficial reforms for all Australians, and I believe that the Northern Territory intervention, which was a decision taken towards the end of our time in office, was one of the most important long-term decisions that the government made. As Senator Humphries pointed out, for 30 years governments of all persuasions have been acting in what they believed to be the best interests of Aboriginal people. They have acted with goodwill towards those people with their policies. But it is pretty clear that what we did up until the time of the intervention was not working. The horrific evidence from the Little children are sacred report was evidence that we had failed and failed miserably.

Now we have the opportunity through the legislation passed under the Howard-Costello government’s Northern Territory intervention to take a new approach—an approach that empowers and enables people. Yet one of the first acts of this government is to turn this on its head and to go back to the paternalistic protectionism that has allowed the problems that were outlined in the Little children are sacred report to flourish.

The Northern Territory intervention proposals, as adopted by the Howard-Costello government, if allowed to be seen through, if allowed to run their course, if allowed to be trialled properly, had the potential to dramatically improve the lives of many Indigenous Australians now and in the future. They had the potential to do this by giving people back their self-esteem and by giving people the power to change their own lives and not have some external group tell them what was in their best interests.

The Labor Party’s support for the hasty reintroduction of the permit system is both sad and dangerous. It demonstrates that the Rudd Labor government has not been able to stand up to the noisy special interest groups—some of them, sadly, within the social services industry itself—that have lobbied so loudly to reintroduce the system. It was a system that benefited them but not the people they were supposed to be helping. The government has not been able to stand up to other vested interests in the Northern Territory who, again, have their own perpetuation more at heart than the welfare of people from the Indigenous community. The Rudd Labor government has not been able to separate itself from the autocratic demands of the Left—the people who believe that they are the only ones who are right, that they are the only ones who understand. Certainly their history of success in this area would suggest that they are anything but the ones who understand or the ones who have the correct answers. The people from the autocratic Left are the ones who are so very concerned about rights, but they have no interest in responsibilities. In particular, they have no interest whatsoever in helping people to develop their own freedom of thought, expression and action, and they have no interest in the responsibility of every resident in the Territory to abide by the law, whether they are Indigenous, white Australian or non-Australian, or whether they are in communities or out of them.

I cannot support this bill in its current form and I would encourage other senators to give the abolition of the permit system time to work, particularly within the townships. Other Australians enjoy freedom of movement, freedom of expression and freedom of difference. If that is not an allowed commodity, we cannot hope to see any future development. I would ask other senators to oppose this area of the bill. Thank you.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

After listening to some of the contributions during this debate, I think it is helpful to return to the facts about what this bill represents. I do not think it would hurt to even look at some of the background, because certainly the positions being put forward from the opposition fail to acknowledge the process that we went through in coming to this position. The Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Emergency Response Consolidation) Bill 2008 will reinstate the permit system in all Northern Territory communities in line with the government’s election commitment. This was a government election commitment, it was obviously supported by the community in the election, we are now in government, and we are honouring that commitment.

The bill repeals most of the permit system amendments which came into force on 17 February 2008. The argument that we should allow those amendments further time to come into force are simply not sustained, and they are not sustained because there was no case for them in the first instance. But I will come to that point. The exceptions to this repeal are those provisions dealing with access for government workers, which will remain. We acknowledge that that is one important area that needs to be dealt with. Again, from listening to some of the contributions from the other side, you would think that that accommodation had not been met.

There is strong sense in local Aboriginal communities’ opposition to the removal of the permit system, which occurred under the previous government. The ability to determine who can enter your land is an important element of land rights for Aboriginal people. Reinstating the permit system will make it harder for drugs, alcohol and people with criminal intent to enter local Aboriginal communities. The government does not believe that such provisions contribute to the broader emergency response.

Let’s look at some of the benefits of returning to the previous arrangements. It ensures that normal interactions of local communities can exist without interference. It protects the privacy of locals. It respects Aboriginal culture on traditional lands and allows for effective land management by Aboriginal groups. It provides a level of control to enable communities to exclude undesirable people from entering their community and it is compliant with Australia’s human rights obligations.

Let’s look at some of the background to this matter. Previously the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory Act) 1976 provided for a permit system on Indigenous land. It was an offence for a person to enter or remain on Indigenous land except in accordance with the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act or with the law of the Northern Territory. The Northern Territory Legislative Assembly had power to make laws regulating or authorising entry onto Aboriginal land, but any such laws provided for the right of Aboriginals to enter such land in accordance with Aboriginal tradition. On the recommendation of a land council, the Administrator of the Northern Territory was able to declare an area of Aboriginal land or a road to be an open area or an open road which could be entered without a permit.

Reform of the permit system was first recommended in Building on land rights for the next generation. Report of the review of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 in August 1998, known as the Reeves report. In 2006 the then Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, referred the permit system to a review conducted by the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, and a discussion paper was issued. In 2007 the former government had sought to establish a link between the permit system and child abuse in Aboriginal communities, but it failed to provide any evidence to suggest that such a link existed.

When I looked back at this and thought in political terms of the time frame that we were dealing with here, I had renewed visions of the ‘children overboard’ affair. But on this occasion the tool for the government’s agenda was not people seeking refuge in Australia; it was the Indigenous population. I looked closely at what case, if any, had been made about the value of removing the permit system and, unsurprisingly, there was no case established. There was no argument as to how the permit system might increase child abuse. The review was used by the minister as justification for the need to change the permit system, but the minister refused to release the report and did not substantiate his reasons for removing the permit system at all. There was no evidential basis to support the abolition of the permit system. The rationale for the abolition of the permit system is at odds with the evidence provided by FaCSIA. This process was a continuation of the previous government’s attack on Indigenous land rights and a continuation of the Howard government’s attack on any marginalised group you could imagine that would heed their political advantage.

I would like to address some of the issues raised in the Senate inquiry in relation to this bill. The submissions to the inquiry argued that no case had been substantiated that provided any correlation or relationship linking the permit system to child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities. I would encourage some of the opposition senators to actually read the report. It was also noted by the inquiry that significant child abuse had been reported outside the Northern Territory, including in areas of Queensland and Western Australia, where no permit system existed or could be relied upon by the former government in their arguments.

Some submissions argued that the permit system was not a major contributor to community underdevelopment and social dysfunction. Further, the removal of the permit system was not one of the recommendations of the Wild-Andersen report and its removal would make the control of alcohol, drugs and outside predators even more problematic. So not only was this issue not part of an appropriate emergency response but, if anything, it was more likely to compound the problems. The Central Land Council, highlighting the positives of the permit system, said:

... our overall view is that the permit system is an effective and appropriate tool under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Cth) (Land Rights Act) for negotiating third party access to Aboriginal land for miners, pastoralists, developers and visitors.

The Law Council of Australia argued:

There is no evidence presented in the discussion paper that the permit system unnecessarily impedes media access to Aboriginal land, or has contributed to the economic and social isolation of Aboriginal communities. The prevailing view amongst experts in this area is that the poor economic and social outcomes for Indigenous Australians remain tied to poor service delivery, lack of housing, lack of employment opportunities, lack of education and training, poor health and life expectancy and serious drug and alcohol problems affecting Indigenous populations in both metropolitan and regional areas.

The Police Federation of Australia goes further in support of the current system, stating:

Operational police on the ground in the Northern Territory believe that the permit system is a useful tool in policing the communities, particularly in policing alcohol and drug-related crime. It would be most unfortunate if by opening up the permit system in the larger public townships and the connecting road corridors as the—

former—

Government intends, law enforcement efforts to address the ‘rivers of grog’, the distribution of pornography, and the drug running and petrol sniffing were made more difficult.

This was from the Police Federation of Australia, and I cannot understand why the now opposition and the former government did not listen to evidence of this nature.

Further, a report on the permit system prepared by Professor John Altman found that there was no evidence that the partial abolition of the permit system would reduce child sex abuse and that the arrangements which were to be enacted by the package may be unworkable in practice. So, in response to opposition senators’ comments so far, why on earth, on the evidence, would we allow more time for this strategy to continue? We knew from the outset it was poor, we knew from the outset it was wrong. There is no evidence to sustain the case and, even now, we know it is not working. Why would we not concentrate on what we know will have a greater chance of success for Indigenous Australians?

This brings me to the overall Northern Territory emergency response. The government has announced an independent review to assess the overall progress of the emergency response and to consider what is and what is not working. We know these elements are not working but we will be looking very closely at determining what is and what is not working with respect to the broader Northern Territory emergency response. The review is expected to report by 30 September 2008. This government has continued funding the emergency response in the 2008-09 budget. In total, over $600 million has been committed to the Northern Territory emergency response since the change of government in November 2007. We have not stopped responding; we have removed elements of the plan that will not work, elements we know we have a mandate for from the last federal election.

The $600 million that we have committed since the change of government represents a major commitment of government resources and an on-the-ground effort to address the chronic problems that have led to poor outcomes for the people living in communities and town camps of the Northern Territory. It is the government’s strong intention that Indigenous people be engaged more effectively than has occurred in recent years. This government has already made a departure from the previous government’s approach to the issue. This bill fine tunes a number of measures under the Northern Territory emergency response. Significantly, the measures contained in this bill are designed to operate consistently with the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. This bill contains no new provisions which exclude the operation of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 and has been welcomed by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner.

The government is committed to work in partnership with Indigenous communities to tackle the problems of child abuse and neglect and to meet our commitments in respect to closing the gap. We are committed to work with Indigenous communities. We do not see the need to take away their autonomy in ways we already know will not work, ways that the former government used for its own political purposes rather than to try to close the gap.

In conclusion, upon the passage of this legislation, the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs will make a determination to allow access to major communities for journalists and government contractors such as health workers to give full effect to the government’s election commitment. Indigenous communities voted in favour of this government at the last election, and we will deliver on our promise of reinstating the permit system. Most importantly, reinstating the permit system will restore Aboriginal control and autonomy over who enters their local communities. Tackling Indigenous disadvantage is a priority for this government and we have set ambitious targets in health, education and employment outcomes and will take an evidence based and consultative approach in working to achieve our outcomes.

Let me stress this point as a very final conclusion: an evidence based approach is what we will use. We will not use marginalised and disadvantaged communities for our political advantage. An evidence based approach on what will work is our focus and will be our focus. I was astounded when I looked at this matter because I had not been following it in detail in recent years. Mr Brough managed to succeed in providing no evidential basis at all for his measures, none at all to sustain his approach to the permit system. When asked to produce the report, it simply never came.

Perhaps that is reflective of how the Senate was operating over that period of time and, thankfully, there is a role for a good and strong opposition. But to meet that role, the opposition is going to need to do significantly better than the contributions that were made here today. Starting with being factual would be helpful, as would dealing with the facts, dealing with an evidence based approach and not demonising our marginalised communities. Working with the Indigenous community, supporting and reinforcing their autonomy and reflecting on an evidence based approach to make real and genuine progress here is what needs to occur.

I have not looked at the indicators closely in this area in recent years. I have an anecdotal feel that this is another one of those areas where Australia’s progress in social policy has gone backwards. Madam Acting Deputy President Crossin might be able to reinforce this point at some stage, but I have a sense that if we look at the health and wellbeing indicators we will find that this area is another where Australia’s performance in recent years has gone backwards. Yesterday, we had the education debate. Again, this opposition had the gall to suggest that our plans in education were failing even at this early stage and yet, when you look at what happened under the Howard government, it is just so clear that in straightforward indicators such as capacity to retain our children in school, which is critical for the future and to the nation’s future, we had gone backwards. Every other OECD nation had gone forward. So what I would like to see, as we move forward in this debate, is a focus on an evidence based approach. We look at the evidence of what is working.

Senator Bernardi shakes his head when I talk about an evidence based approach. I am not talking about evidence that there is a problem. I think we can all agree with the evidence that there is a problem. The evidence we need is evidence about what will help solve the problem. Instituting measures for which there is no evidential base, no support at all, is not going to solve the problem.

In response to opposition senators who suggest that more time is needed for this measure, I ask this very simple question: where is the evidence that these measures were going to assist? Minister Brough provided none of that evidence. In fact, he did worse: he misled us by suggesting that there was evidence. When the Senate committee inquiry looked into the matter and spoke to FaCSIA in a new environment, alas, we discovered no such evidence existed. So once again, as with the children overboard affair, the Howard government took us on a merry dance—to the detriment of the Indigenous community—instead of taking a sensible and evidence based approach to achieving advances in our social policy and dealing with marginalised groups and communities. That is what happened and I am astounded, given the mandate that exists for these measures, that the opposition is taking the approach that it is. There is now a very clear mandate and no case was made by the former minister to justify these measures. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Dana Wortley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Emergency Response Consolidation) Bill 2008. This bill is part of the government’s commitment to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in areas including life expectancy, health levels, education standards and employment opportunities. The bill introduces amendments to the framework of the Northern Territory emergency response. These came about through two pieces of legislation: the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007 and the Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Northern Territory National Emergency Response and Other Measures) Act 2007. The amendment bill before us today is aimed at strengthening protections in the communities affected. It makes good the government’s election pledge on the permit system for major Territory communities.

While the Howard government believed in getting rid of the need for permits for those visiting Aboriginal communities, this government believes such a move is not a positive one. The Rudd government believes that, like other Australians, Indigenous Australians should be able to decide who comes onto their land. So the bill brings into effect our election commitment to revoke the public access permit changes legislated by the former government. This bill will also clarify the power of the minister to authorise people to enter Aboriginal land. Once it is passed, the government will be able to ensure media access to communities for the purpose of reporting on local events, and this will be done through ministerial determination. Conditions for this access are being determined in consultation with the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance and land councils.

There are two further amendments regarding the permit scheme. The government has agreed to make clear in this legislation that the minister may not authorise entry to a sacred site through the power of ministerial determination. The other change fulfils a Northern Territory government request to extend permit exemptions to include local government candidates. This falls into line with existing exemptions for federal and Northern Territory legislative assembly candidates during election campaigns.

The other changes in this bill relate to access to and distribution of R-rated material and are designed to strengthen protections in the relevant communities. The 2007 legislation banned the supply, control and possession of certain pornographic material in prescribed areas. This bill before us today also covers R-rated content on pay TV. Subscription television pornography is an area of concern for Aboriginal people that was raised through the Little children are sacred report of 2007. This bill will address that concern by amending both Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007 and the Broadcasting Services Act 1992.

It will establish a new class licence condition to prevent pay TV narrowcasting service licensees from providing subscribers in a community declared by the Indigenous affairs minister with access to a subscription TV narrowcasting service declared by the communications minister. Services cannot be declared unless they broadcast more than 35 per cent of R18+ program hours each week. Communities cannot have their pay TV service restricted unless they are in prescribed areas according to the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007 and the Indigenous affairs minister is satisfied such a move is appropriate as the community concerned wants the service restricted.

This arrangement will have a five-year sunset provision, consistent with the pornography amendments already made to the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Act 1995. The government has included amendments in this bill to make minor workability improvements to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 and, in doing so, cut red tape. Suggested by the pay TV industry and raised by the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs, the amendments allow subscription TV narrowcasters to self-declare an R-rated service and streamline record-keeping requirements. To be more consistent with the alcohol bans, the bill also amends the classification act 1995 to allow the transportation of banned pornographic material to a destination outside a prescribed area, even if it travels through that prescribed area to get to its destination. The bill’s final measure will ensure that, if a roadhouse fulfils the role of a grocery store in a remote area, it should be able to be part of the scheme applying to community stores and be treated as such in having to meet new licensing standards.

As I have already said in this place, tackling Indigenous disadvantage is a priority for the government and we will take a consultative, evidence based approach in working to achieve our ambitious objectives in health, education and employment areas. The government has commissioned an independent review of the Northern Territory emergency response to assess what is and what is not working. That review is due at the end of this month. Apart from that review, there have been reports of positive outcomes from the emergency response in the past 12 months. These include an increased police presence and night patrols, which community members say have made their communities safer.

The School Nutrition Program, which provides a breakfast and lunch to school-age children in communities and associated stations and town camps, has been introduced and reportedly is improving child concentration and engagement in education. Newly licensed community stores are reporting increased sales of food, including fresh food, which should lead to better community health in the medium term. More than 1,300 jobs occupied by Aboriginal people have been formally recognised and remunerated as government service delivery jobs for the first time. Child health checks have identified children who require follow-up care. This is now being provided in Darwin, Alice Springs and Katherine. This government continued funding for the Northern Territory emergency response in the 2008-09 budget. More than $600 million in total has been committed to the emergency response since the change of government in November 2007. This represents a major commitment of government resources to address chronic problems faced by people living in the communities and the town camps of the Territory.

Given the government’s backing for the general direction of the emergency response until the completion of the review, the bill contains amendments to existing measures covered by the racial discrimination provisions in the Northern Territory emergency response legislation, but, importantly, the legislation before us today includes no new provisions which exclude the operation of the Racial Discrimination Act. Labor will give further consideration to the racial discrimination provisions of the former government’s legislation following the review into the emergency response.

In addition to the Northern Territory commitment, the government has set long-term national targets, including closing the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people within a generation; halving the gap in mortality rate for children under five within a decade; halving the gap in reading, writing and numeracy levels within a decade; halving the gap in employment outcomes and opportunities within a decade; and halving the gap in year 12 educational attainment by 2020. Within five years, we also want to see all Indigenous four-year-olds in remote communities participating in quality early childhood education programs. The government is working towards these targets with the states and territories through COAG. Promoting economic participation, reducing dependence on welfare and building up communities are all critical elements if we are to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. We also want Indigenous people to be involved and engaged in a partnership with governments to tackle child abuse and neglect in the Territory’s remote communities.

As I said previously in this place, it is clear that the required long-term strategies must be borne out of consultation and cooperation with leaders of the Aboriginal communities they will affect. The strong attachment Indigenous Australians have to their land must be genuinely considered and the integrity of the Racial Discrimination Act must be upheld. To be effective and beneficial, long-term strategies must be forged out of a climate of trust and mutual respect, not one of fear and mistrust. This bill is a further plank in our plan to improve the lives and opportunities of people in these communities.

In conclusion, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the excellent work carried out by the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs, chaired by Senator Claire Moore, in the inquiry into this bill. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My position is that I will support the Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Emergency Response Consolidation) Bill 2008 in this second reading debate, but I will not be able to do so in the third reading stage. Every bill that comes before the Senate is important. Every government initiative has the potential to shape this nation’s future, for better or for worse. This bill is no different.

I was touched by the comments made by Senator Ludlum is his very fine first speech yesterday. I agree that the Prime Minister’s apology was an important step in this nation’s progress and the moral thing to do. His views inform my comments on this bill at the second reading stage. Schedule 1 of this bill intends to ban R18+ pay TV services to Indigenous communities that request a ban. Given the link between pornography, sexual abuse and violence reported in the Little children are sacred report, the government is saying that this is a positive step in relation to community concerns. However, as I understand the coalition’s position, including the contribution made by Senator Bernardi, this winds back the ban on pornography in Indigenous communities which currently exists. That is something that I ask the government to provide further information on—if it was a ban supported by the government when in opposition last year when this legislation went through both houses of parliament.

Schedule 2 is therefore required to allow the transportation of R18+ rated materials through communities to destinations beyond communities. Some would see this as a sensible response to avoid unintended consequences in relation to the transportation of these materials where it would not otherwise be legal, but I note the comments and views of Senator Bernardi and others on the coalition side that it would make it virtually unenforceable. That is something that needs to be explored in the committee stage of the bill.

Schedule 4 also has a pragmatic approach as it defines certain roadhouses as community stores to enable people to use their managed income for purchases. If the roadhouse is the only store for miles around, it makes sense that people should be able to use it for food and clothing purchases. But some aspects of this bill are more complex than others. Some aspects of bills are incredibly socially complex. Some bills are about the rights of all Australians and they need to be understood on social, cultural and economic levels and not just on the political level. They cannot be reduced to well-spun media lines or politicised into ‘that is this party’s policy’ or ‘this was the last party’s policy’.

One such complex matter can be found in schedule 3 of this bill in relation to the reintroduction of the permit system. I will not go into the intricacies of explaining the legislative and regulatory arrangements at the current time, as other senators have addressed this in their speeches. I want, rather, to step back and look at the big picture. I want to look at this from a perspective that is not confined to this chamber. Every senator will agree that there are serious problems within many Indigenous communities. These include health, housing, welfare, crime, violence, child abuse, economic viability, accountable leadership, community sustainability and many others. Some say that responsibility for this must be located in the cultural shock that resulted with the arrival of white Europeans over 200 years ago. Some say that responsibility for this must be found in the cultural clash in subsequent decades between the new arrivals and the traditional owners of the land. Some say that responsibility must be accepted by governments and leaders of all political and religious persuasions who caused harm in their efforts to help. Some say that responsibility must be accepted by generations of Australians who have prospered from this land and have found it easier to turn a blind eye to the tragic situations that were unfolding. And now it is time for some responsibility to be taken by this chamber.

I have listened to the government’s arguments that this is what local communities want to help them protect themselves, and I recognise the hard work of many in Indigenous communities to build a better future. I also note, however, the number of respected leaders, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, who have raised concerns about the dysfunction and corruption within the leadership in some Indigenous communities. I also note the concerns of Noel Pearson, a man that I have great respect for, with the Cape York leadership council, about the need to break the nexus between welfare and dependency in Indigenous communities. I have also listened to the arguments of passionate advocates, such as Senator Scullion, that we must not create closed communities by closing off the single gazetted road that can be the economic lifeline in these communities. He also argues strongly that wrongdoing should not be hidden away behind a permit system. That said, I also note the minister’s efforts to respond to these concerns by allowing exemptions to permits for journalists, local government representatives and emergency workers.

As a state member of parliament I moved unsuccessfully to allow for journalists to have access on the APY lands. That was defeated. The government opposed it and those amendments were not successful. I tried on more than one occasion to do so because I believe that if there is a problem the best way to get a result and to rectify that problem is to shine a light on it. To shine a light on it is to put a focus on it and I believe that some of the work that has been done on the APY lands in my home state is as a direct result of media exposure. I have also spoken to journalists who have expressed their frustration about being able to get to the lands in a timely manner in such a way that the situation there was not sanitised for the media when the local community, or some of the leaders of that community, knew that the media was coming.

I have also listened to the concerns about treating Indigenous Australians as though they and their rights are different from other Australians. I note the issues raised in the Senate committee report about the application of the Racial Discrimination Act in this case, and the lack of consultation with Indigenous communities in the development and implementation of this permit model. These are huge issues that stretch beyond this parliament, beyond this sitting, beyond this week.

This is the start of week 3 of my first term—maybe my last term—in the Senate. In that time, and working with my two Canberra staff, we have read all bills, explanatory memoranda, Bills Digests, committee reports and public submissions before this house, as well as attended all the whips meetings and over 40 briefings in 11 sitting days. That is before we start to respond to the national and my local media and constituent issues. That is the responsibility of an Independent senator, and I and my staff embrace it enthusiastically. I also note the minister’s office’s cooperation and its willingness to provide briefings, but to be even-handed in my considerations I cannot just rely on the government’s view. While governments have departments, and oppositions can share the load across many members and senators I, with my two incredibly hardworking staff, have to cover all that comes before this house. The easy option would be to attend fewer briefings, to do less research and to vote on a superficial understanding, but that is not my style. I was sent here to do a job, and to do it thoroughly, and that is what I intend to do.

I have jokingly said in the media that currently my and my staff’s sleep needs are being outsourced to Mumbai. But the point I make is serious. This speech was started at five o’clock this morning; I was involved in a briefing with the minister at 9 am and with subsequent briefings with the coalition—with Senators Bernardi and Scullion—earlier today. I want to do my work diligently so that we are across this and other bills before us. If I am to take an evidence based and responsible approach to exceedingly complex and important legislation such as this, I need the human and time resources to do so. And on this occasion I need more time—time to consult widely, to research rigorously, and to legislate responsibly. That said, if the government wishes to proceed to the second reading stage, I will support it. However, if the government wishes to commence the committee stage today or tomorrow and, subject to the work that needs to be done to deal with this responsibly, even next week, I will oppose the bill at the third reading stage as I do not believe that I have the resources at my disposal to develop the deep understanding that is required to ascertain unintended consequences and to address amendments. I am not afraid of hard work. I am willing to work around the clock, and my staff join me in that willingness. But, ultimately, I am not here to make rushed decisions; I am here to make the right decisions. I support the second reading of this bill.

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise relatively briefly. First of all I would like to commend the contributions from this side of the chamber, particularly that of Senator Bernardi, and I would like to acknowledge the huge workload that Senator Xenophon clearly has and to thank him for the access to his office in these matters. Interestingly, when we read the title of the bill, the Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Emergency Response Consolidation) Bill 2008, the term ‘consolidation’ in regard to this bill and its impact on the intervention is a little like calling a tiger shark a goldfish. There are two fundamental aspects of this. One of them is, of course, that of the issue of pay TV into the communities. The other fundamental, from my perspective, is the effective reintroduction of the permit system. These were principle planks in the intervention.

I think that, when the intervention was supported, most Australians, including those on the other side, who supported the principles of the intervention at the time—and I have no reason to believe that the fundamentals of the intervention are being opposed by those on the other side—knew that this was a whole suite of initiatives that, to have real effect, had to be done across the board. You cannot suddenly come back and say, ‘This one is a little bit uncomfortable and this one is a little bit unpopular, so we’ll take them out,’ because the impact of the intervention will be significantly undermined.

The Little children are sacred report outlined very clearly the impact of pornography on these communities. I know we have spoken a lot about that. I have listened to many contributions from both sides on that. I think it is important that we look at the Little children are sacred report. It says:

It is apparent that children in Aboriginal communities are widely exposed to inappropriate sexual activity such as pornography, adult films and adults having sex within the child’s view. This exposure can produce a number of effects, particularly resulting in the “sexualisation” of childhood and the creation of normalcy around sexual activity that may be used to engage children in sexual activity.

The report then goes on to say:

It was subsequently confirmed at the regional meetings conducted by the Inquiry in February and March 2007, that pornography was a major factor in communities and that it should be stopped. The daily diet of sexually explicit material has had a major impact, presenting young and adolescent Aboriginals with a view of mainstream sexual practice and behaviour which is jaundiced. It encourages them to act out the fantasies they see on screen or in magazines. Exposure to pornography was also blamed for the sexualised behaviour evident in quite young children.

This comes not only from anecdotal evidence; it comes from a comprehensive inquiry. There have been a number of other inquiries at other times in other places that have indicated that pornography plays a very ugly and very large part in these matters.

One needs to understand the environment in which these communities often operate. There are quite large numbers of very young children who find themselves without supervision. I have seen them myself. In many communities you would see the parents out the back of the house having a barbecue while the children are huddled around Bambi or something like that. But in Indigenous communities, when there is no supervision, it can be something like ‘Bambi does Dallas’. In many of the circumstances in those communities it seems that children have had access to large amounts of pornography for an incredible period of time. That situation has become normalised because, for whatever reason, the communities have said, ‘It is okay to have our children sitting in front of that.’ They may not be aware. Hopefully, because of this report, the intervention and some of the very good education measures that have gone along with it, they will now be more aware of the impact on their children if they are not supervised. But we must assume that, if there is any pornography available in those communities, it will be watched by young children who are unsupervised—and that will lead to the further sexualisation of those children. So I think it is absolutely essential that we ensure that there is simply no pornography available. Fundamentally, the intervention did just that. It banned all normal access to pornography—outside of pay TV, which this bill deals with—from the community. We all agree with that, and that is a fine thing.

It is interesting to note that a document I have here, on the first 100 days of the Rudd government, says at point 9 that they have introduced legislation to ban R18+ content in Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. This is seriously a Clayton’s ban. Anybody who did not actually understand the details of this bill would think that this simply bans all pornography—that it bans access to adult channels on pay TV. But it does nothing of the sort. It takes a very easy road. I have read it closely, and I commend the committee’s report on this bill. It is a complex and sometimes difficult matter to resolve the issues of who gets access to satellite TV. But we on this side of the chamber do not think that it is too hard, because the outcome is all about the most vulnerable of our first Australians. That is why it is so very important that we get this right.

The proposition is not that it will be banned but that, ‘We will get a bit technical about this.’ There are two principles. They say, ‘First of all, it will be banned only if it has over 35 per cent of adult content.’ Somehow there is the notion that anything under that percentage is okay. Yet we have established through empirical science and what we know ourselves from our observations of the communities that no percentage is okay.

Then there is this ridiculous notion that we can rely on these communities. We know the circumstances in these communities. We know some of the standover tactics used by members of those communities. I know that it is very unlikely that people in those communities are going to stand up for a lot of things—and that has been part of the problem—particularly for the smaller people in the community, which invariably are the women and the children. How is it then that we are saying to the communities, ‘If you want this stopped, if you do not want pornography beamed into your community, can you put your hand up and we will have a bit of an inquiry and a bit of a look at everything and talk about pornography in Indigenous communities.’ I submit that there is no community that will put their hand up under those circumstances to say, ‘No, we do not want it.’ If the other side had put to us that it was a default position, we might have been part of the discussion, but to have the default position that you can have pornography beggars belief. I think that the amendments that have, quite rightly, been put by the coalition will resolve that matter.

The other completely fundamental part of the intervention is the reintroduction of the permit system. I have to say I was nothing short of disappointed—possibly in myself because, being a senator of the Northern Territory, one would have thought I would have known this—and surprised the other day to learn that permits have always been required. There was no hiatus. I know a lot more people would have been surprised, particularly people in communities who thought for a period of time after 18 February that it was all part of the intervention legislation that you could go in and out of communities on a prescribed road.

But, unfortunately, the minister has of course interpreted very narrowly but quite lawfully the old terms ‘may’ and ‘must’. It is a fundamental part of our legislation, and we always have discussions in this place about ‘may’ and ‘must’. In hindsight, I think we should have put ‘must’ in there because the minister in her wisdom, and quite lawfully, has decided to choose the process of ‘may’. She then put a media statement out on the 17th, I think it was, indicating that people would still require a permit.

There has been a number of quite confusing issues associated with this. I notice that a couple of the senators sitting opposite have in fact attended meetings—I believe the group that attended the parliament was the Alliance Against the Intervention, or some such name. But, by and large, I went and listened carefully to their complaints about that. In regard to the permit system, it was amazing that all of them talked about ‘people driving all over our sacred sites, wandering willy-nilly through the land—up hill and down dale—not knowing where they were going and what they were stepping on’.

I am not sure who did the consultations, but the facts of the matter are that that cannot possibly have been the case. In fact, it was so difficult to try to allay the fears of these individuals because whoever was doing the consultation must have been talking about a completely different proposal than that which was given in the previous legislation. Fully 99.8 per cent of Aboriginal land will still require a permit. Why: because it is private land. No-one is going to ask anybody to storm into your house, as people have indicated. It is just absolute rubbish. And I will say once again that it is rubbish and it is evil, because whoever is perpetrating these lies to the communities for some short-term political gain is, in my mind, in not too nice a category. Of that I can assure you.

So the Northern Land Council and the Central Land Council have gone down the road of consulting, we have heard, with those opposite about what an outrage it was for the previous minister to have said that there were people outside of that process who were complaining and talking to you and were not really game to speak up. It has been my experience that the people are afraid, but they are afraid because they have got the wrong information. It is time that we cleared those basics up.

What about the permit system? What about all these wonderful arguments of the people who say, ‘No, we cannot possibly live without the permit system.’ And of course there is the matter of the police. On the subject of Vince Kelly, I have no doubt that the Police Federation, or in fact Vince Kelly himself, has a very strict view about the value of the permit system. I have spoken independently to police and, in fact, I spoke yesterday to a young police officer who has spent the last 19 months in a remote community. He said it is absolutely unnecessary. The police used to want more power because it is a useful tool, but because of the grog-running legislation they can pull over any vehicle at any time. So there are plenty of powers for them to do just about anything in these matters.

Drug runners, child abusers and, generally, thieves and bad people would check off their lists: grog, check, I have got that in the back of the car; puncture kit, check; oh, and a permit—I have got to be lawful, of course, so I had better go knock down and get a permit. The whole point is that criminals doing their checklists would say, ‘I might as well be lawful and go and get a permit.’ And getting a permit: what does that do? Are we saying that the Central Land Council or the Northern Land Council actually go and do a security check on the people? Well, they do not. So the whole notion that this sometimes helps things out is absolutely ridiculous.

I have to say again that on the subject of the amount of alcohol that is going into these places, the seizures have just been fantastic! In fact, the Alice Springs News on 7 August reported that they had caught:

... 14 cartons of VB beer, four bottles of sweet liqueur, one bottle each of vodka and whiskey, four bottles of rum and assorted alcopops.

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

That is a credible newspaper!

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It does not seem that the alcopop tax is really working too hard there, Senator Crossin. But they have done a fantastic job! But, regrettably, the people who were arrested and are alleged to have been carting that particular grog live in the community. They are community residents. Of the people who have been apprehended for carrying drugs or substances of abuse since the implementation of the intervention, 98 per cent have lived in the community. The other two per cent are unknown. So, again, the notion that permits will stop all this is a completely foolish one. It has absolutely no basis in fact.

Looking at some of the fundamentals, people say to me, ‘Look, there has been no link with child abuse. Where is the evidence of the link between child abuse and the permit system? It does seem a fair way away.’ I would have thought that most people in this place would understand that the circumstances in remote Indigenous communities are, tragically, not unique in Australia. The sorts of places that are similar to them are the areas of low socioeconomic status. They are the poor areas. Poor areas are characterised by higher levels of substance abuse and child abuse. We know that. So it is not only these communities. But if you have a job and you make more money than the dole you can pull yourself away from that and get out of the demographic where these appalling behaviours are so common.

Imagine not needing a permit. At the moment tourists drive into town and are told, ‘Oh, you can get a permit.’ But they do not get a permit. They do not go to the communities now. That is why we have those circumstances. When someone drives into town they need accommodation, and where you have accommodation you will also have hospitality—someone to cook the food, someone to do the laundry, gardeners, a garage to fuel your car because people will have driven there, mechanics to service cars and retail sales assistants. And there would be a need for tourist products: biodiversity guides, birdwatching, bush tucker tours, guided fishing and hunting trips and anthropological tours—all the stuff we go into these communities and train the bag out of people to do. And they are the best in the world at it; they are fantastic. They have great products. And six per cent of Australians leave with the satisfaction of having had an Indigenous experience.

That is a shame, principally because if anybody were able to drive into the communities they would actually be able to see and do something and to interact with Indigenous people and give them the same sorts of opportunities that the rest of Australia takes for granted. So there is the connection. If you have an economy removed from the welfare state and you have a job then you are less likely to be in the demographic where you have substance abuse and child abuse. It is absolutely essential for us to understand that unless we change the economic opportunities of the individuals in these communities we are going to continue to intervene, despite the best efforts of all sides in this place.

The other thing about the permit system, tragically, is that I am not sure that it has not been abused. I cannot remember how long ago it was, so perhaps the good senator from the Northern Territory on the other side would remind me. In a Territory election about three years ago I remember a particular husband and wife outfit who lived in the house, ran the local store in the community and were going along merrily when an election was called. The Country Liberal Party preselected the woman who ran the store. It did not take long for someone to think that was unsatisfactory. The Central Land Council: ‘You’ve been living there for two years? Sorry about that!’ A policeman arrived and told them to get their gear in their trailer and leave all Aboriginal lands as they were without a permit. I do not know about you, Mr Acting Deputy President Parry, but I reckon that is serious abuse. We have had plenty of allegations of abusing the permit system by completely and inappropriately preventing people from coming to a community.

I would submit that the intervention has been a wonderful thing. It has changed the lives of many Territorians in a very positive way. I think my colleague opposite will acknowledge that there is much more to do. Many aspects of the rollout of the intervention could have been better and I acknowledge that. But the fundamentals are that the permit system was in place before the intervention. Before the intervention, if you are prepared to sit through and read the Little children are sacred report, it was a dark place. The permit system did not save anybody. It was not any miracle cure for anything. We had all that darkness that is indicated in the Little children are sacred report.

So the notion was that we had to keep the permits as they were obviously a fundamental part. Well, they were part of the past. We do not need the permits and we need to recognise that everybody understands that 99.8 per cent of Aboriginal land will still require a permit. You can access the public road that goes to the township, the post office and the medical facilities—all public facilities, I might add—and you can get access to the public airstrip if it is a publicly owned airstrip. If it is not publicly owned, that is another matter, but I think there is only one. If it is the northern end then you can get access to the barge landing. You can access all public roads provided and maintained by public funding. What is most important? Without this artery to the future and to economic prosperity these communities will remain in the darkness as they were before the intervention.

I commend listening to the carefully crafted amendments from Senator Bernardi to those in this place, particularly those on the crossbenches, and I commend those amendments very much to this place.

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

I realise that my speech on the Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Emergency Response Consolidation) Bill 2008 will be interrupted as we move to matters of public interest at 12.45 pm, but I would ask that senators on the crossbench, take a more balanced view about what they are hearing today. I appreciate the contribution of Senator Xenophon this morning and I understand and want to concur that the pressure of being an Independent senator in this place is probably great. But I would ask that Senator Xenophon and Senator Fielding have a very close look at the history of the permit system and the history of the Northern Territory emergency response.

I know Senator Scullion’s understanding of the Northern Territory, perhaps, is a little misguided when it comes to this legislation. Senator Scullion, along with a former colleague of his who was in the House of Representatives until the last election, have always come from a position that they would like to see the permit system abolished. In fact they would like to take a step further. They would like the Northern Territory Land Rights Act handed back to the Northern Territory government. In analysing the facts of this legislation we need to have a look at some of the history and political philosophies of the senators concerned. Senator Bernardi, I listened this morning to your contribution and wonder how many Northern Territory Indigenous communities you have visited since last November and on what basis you come to this chamber with a knowledge of facts and understanding after having talked to Indigenous communities and Indigenous traditional owners.

Everybody today keeps referring to the Little children are sacred report, which was another report in a line of many that highlighted problems in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. Senator Scullion, you raised the fact that it is important to read the Little children are sacred report and I hope you have done that. If you have you would see that the very first recommendation talks about immediately establishing a collaborative partnership with a memorandum of understanding between the Australian and the Northern Territory governments and, of course, the communities concerned. The first recommendation says:

It is critical that both governments commit to genuine consultation ...

‘Consultation’ means talking and listening with people, not dictating from Canberra or dictating from the now opposition, and ‘genuine’ means with some sense of sincerity, sympathy and empathy.

... genuine consultation with Aboriginal people in designing initiatives for Aboriginal communities.

Prior to last year’s federal election and in the many years, and particularly the months and weeks, leading up to that election in the Northern Territory we visited many Aboriginal communities, which we do as part of our day-to-day work. Minister Snowdon and I spend many days on the road going to those communities. We are engaged in a series of consultations with Indigenous people. The one thing they wanted us to do when we got into government was to reinstate the permit system. As a result of our genuine consultation with Indigenous people that is what they asked us to do. In my speech I will outline why they asked us to do that and their reasons for it.

We took that to the last federal election. We took that as a policy position of the federal Labor government. You only need to look at the results in the Northern Territory remote communities, in particular the 72 communities affected by the Northern Territory emergency response, to see that overwhelmingly there was support for the Labor Party. If my memory serves me correctly some 94 per cent of the vote in Wadeye was for the Labor Party. Around 92 per cent of the vote in places like Galiwinku was for the Labor Party and in each and every booth, overwhelmingly, Indigenous people supported the Labor Party and endorsed us becoming the next federal government, which we have.

Debate interrupted.