Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The coalition supports the introduction of the Coordinator-General for Remote Indigenous Services Bill 2009. Its clear intent is to provide a government service coordination function that has been identified as absolutely vital in the Northern Territory intervention. For those who are listening to this debate, the vernacular for the Northern Territory intervention, the terminology, is now ‘closing the gap in the Northern Territory’, but they mean the same thing. This concept clearly is not new. To be effective, I believe that there are some significant and serious challenges that the coordinator-general has to overcome.

Anyone who has had close association with Indigenous communities will be painfully aware of the lack of coordination between government departments over years and years and the confusion and the substandard delivery of service as a consequence of that. I suppose one of the realities is that, as an Indigenous community leader, you would think that you would have a special certificate in being a professional meeting attendee, given the numbers of meetings that are required. People land in aeroplanes and they say, ‘Where are the leaders?’ and they are all supposed to jump out there and be keen. That is a huge load on those leaders, and they often do not even understand the results of the meetings or what happened, so they are very confused.

What is proposed to occur through this piece of legislation I think will make it a lot better, although we need to be very careful about this. I am certainly reminded of an attempt by the Northern Territory government in 2001, with Bob Beadman. I think the intent was clearly to have a very similar effect to that of the coordinator-general as indicated in this piece of legislation. It had some successes, but inevitably the system failed because individual departments within the Northern Territory and individual departments within the Commonwealth were not able to communicate successfully. This is nothing new. Anybody who has had anything to do with bureaucracies knows that we have silos: ‘They are your silo of responsibility.’ There is no mischief in that; that is just the way the system is built. But, unless we are able to deal with desiloisation in a coordinated way, the proposal before us will fail as others have before it.

We still think that this is a very important proposal. I think it is very important for us to understand—and perhaps, in some sort of response, the minister may indicate—the nature of the relationship between the coordinator-general and other individuals who are responsible for the running of what is now called ‘closing the gap in the Northern Territory’. Certainly government business managers have provided a number of pieces of coordination, and I think they—to a greater and lesser degree, depending on who you talk to and which business manager you are talking about—have been quite successful.

As an exemplar, I was recently in Milingimbi, and there is actually a letter of agreement between the individual who runs the shire and the shire operations and the government business manager to have a meeting on any issue that affects either of their jurisdictions. I understand that there are only two other communities in which that occurs, and the coordination of the service delivery between them just works a lot better. They are all very busy people in these communities, but we have to have a dictate that says: ‘You are going to have to meet with these individuals. You’re going to have to ensure that this happens.’ To simply set up another head of something will fail as surely as did the process that introduced Mr Beadman.

I am not sure how it can be done, but all governments at all levels have to provide the necessary support to this individual to ensure that this works very well, and we need to do that very carefully. Indigenous Australians do not need any more promises; they deserve real action. I think this is a significant part of ensuring that we deliver that, but, without the support of all government departments across the board, that is not going to happen. Perhaps, Minister, those particular notes are not at hand, but I am sure you will be able to provide that advice to me at some stage. Certainly, if that advice is not available at the moment, it will not change our position on supporting this legislation.

John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Vice-President of the Executive Council) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will be brief in my response. I thank Senator Scullion for his contribution, but he has asked me to briefly deal with some matters—I will do that as best I can briefly in summing up.

The Coordinator-General for Remote Indigenous Services Bill 2009, as you would realise, Mr Acting Deputy President Forshaw, allows for government investment to be prioritised and coordinated to ensure that each priority location has the infrastructure and services to support and sustain healthy social norms so that people can reach their potential and communities can thrive. This position has been established to address the practical problems associated with designing, sequencing and rolling out myriad programs in remote communities. The bill provides for consultation with relevant state or territory governments before the minister specifies a remote location in a particular state or territory. The bill also makes provision for the coordinator-general to arrange with the Secretary of the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs for the services of APS employees from the department to be made available. The state or territory coordinator-general for remote Indigenous services will be the first point of contact when the coordinator-general is exercising his or her powers in relation to a specified remote community in that state or territory.

To move specifically to the issues that Senator Scullion raised in his speech on the second reading—or those I am able to address at the moment—I can say that, when there is an issue requiring urgent remedy, this bill will give the coordinator-general the powers to require people to provide information and/or documents, to require people to attend meetings, and to request assistance from Commonwealth, state and territory agencies. If the coordinator-general is not satisfied with the response from the head of the agency, the coordinator-general may report the matter to the minister and also to the Prime Minister, if necessary. The coordinator-general’s approach will be to work with other parties collaboratively. The coordinator-general will provide regular reports to the minister on progress made by all Commonwealth, state and territory agencies. The coordinator-general will ensure that the delivery of all government programs in the specified remote communities is coordinated between governments, instead of being planned and delivered in isolation. If the coordinator-general fails to receive an adequate response from an agency official, this bill allows for the matter to be reported to the head of the relevant Commonwealth state or territory agency.

In conclusion, again, I thank Senator Scullion for his speech on the second reading. I will make sure that his comments are referred to Minister Macklin so that she is aware of the views that he has expressed in the chamber today.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.