Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for School Education and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

(—) (): I present ministerial statements:

Success

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

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of Closing the GapPrime Minister's Report of 2012document.

This is a very important report. Indigenous disadvantage and Indigenous disconnect are the reality in many parts of Australia and require a commitment not only from individuals but from governments at all levels of Australia to address. When the previous Prime Minister, Prime Minister Rudd, made a commitment to produce a report on the first day of parliament in every parliamentary sitting year on the status of closing the gap, this commitment was certainly welcomed across the political divide. It was viewed as an opportunity to assess how government programs are working, what the community acceptance involvement is and whether or not we are actually closing the gap. Unfortunately, most of the reports to date have concentrated on inputs: how much money has been allocated or spent and how many initiatives have been announced. I have to say in defence of the Labor Party that in the first couple years I could probably understand why that might be the case; we have to get a database. But we have been at this for some time now and it has become apparent that the government now seems to believe that the hard work stops when the announcement has been made. I think all Australians would know that in fact the opposite is true.

An example is the government's $100 million Indigenous antismoking initiative. We know exactly what is being spent, but we have no real idea about how it is actually working. We do not know—neither does the government—the exact details of what is happening. We have the details of how much money is invested but absolutely no details at all about how many people have stopped smoking, how many people are attempting to stop smoking or the variety of communication mechanisms between Indigenous Australia and the government. Why can we not be told about the effect of the program? After spending the amount of $100 million one would expect that we would know what works and does not work. By the time we get to the end of the program it is going to be too hard to make any changes, so we definitely need some interim targets as the long-term closing the gaptargets of 10 to 20 years will mean nothing if we cannot assess how we went last year or will go in the next year. The important trend lines, particularly in closing the gap, are something that I do not think we have developed fast enough and are certainly something that we really need.

An example of that is the halving of the gap on year 12 completion by 2020. At the moment, we measure how many people will graduate this year and then we try to do a projection which is, in my view, pretty worthless. There is a much better way to do it. What we need to do is measure how many kids are in and passing grade 5 this year, because they are going to be the same students who will go through year 12 in 2020. The reason I use that particular example is that attendance records and NAPLAN results for that particular age group indicate that we have already failed to meet the 2020 target. The number of kids who have been retained in year 5 and who are actually passing year 5 is not even at 50 per cent, so we have clearly failed the target already and do not have to wait until 2020 and say, 'Oh, we've got it wrong. Let's go and do something more about it.' It is very important that we change that approach. The Closing the gapreport needs to highlight all of this information as well in the glossy brochures. It has plenty of pictures but very little qualitative data, and that needs to change. It does a disservice to both the Australian public, who want action, and Indigenous Australians, who deserve action.

The Closing the gapreport should also contain data that describes where we are right now. There should be data not designed to attribute blame or shame people but to remind Australia why we need to work so hard to address disadvantage and disconnection. It should be data, disturbing as it may be to some, such as that provided by the Children's Commissioner, Dr Howard Bath. This data was provided in Dr Bath's submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee inquiry into the Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory Bill 2011 and two related bills, and it is a salient reminder about why we must continue to intervene in Indigenous affairs. The Australian Early Development Index, the AEDI, provides a population based developmental assessment of children in their first year of school. It explains that those with multiple developmental vulnerabilities will require special assistance in order to benefit from regular schooling and all the lifelong benefits that schooling provides.

To get an idea, across Australia, 11.8 per cent of children have multiple developmental vulnerabilities—and one of the fundamentals of that is that if you are raised in an environment where you feel safe and confident then you will not fall into multiple development vulnerability. Within the Northern Territory, 46.8 per cent—that is nearly half—of all Indigenous children have developmental vulnerability on more than one developmental domain. That is half of Indigenous children across the entire Territory, but in remote communities the number of children assessed as having multiple development vulnerabilities is far worse. Research has indicated that close to 60 per cent of the children in the Northern Territory emergency response zone—that is, the remote communities and the town camps—have multiple developmental vulnerabilities as they enter the school system. So 60 per cent are significantly behind the eight ball before they enter the school system. If we look at the NAPLAN results and the attendance results—and this is all to do with it—we understand why they find it so very hard to complete an education or, in many cases, as we have seen up to year 5, attempt to start one.

It is a lot harder to identify and access these children who we need to make a concerted effort to help because they are in these remote communities. Developmental vulnerabilities are significant but there are a lot of other significant issues that contribute to the disadvantage and disconnect experienced by Indigenous Australians. One of those is the exposure to alcohol abuse and general violence. Dr Bath stated, 'One of the hazards facing children that receives less attention because it is somewhat hard to measure and difficult to talk about publicly is the impact of the exposure of children to chronic family and community violence.' You will remember that I spoke a little earlier, Mr Acting Deputy President Back, about the multiple presentation of dysfunctionality and the association with feeling safe. When we look at this, I think one of the most important areas of vulnerability is the exposure to general abuse and violence not only of the children but of the whole family. Just as a statistic, most night patrols that were funded as part of the Northern Territory emergency response are the first response to individual and community violence. In 2010 the patrols responded—and this is for a target population of 29,000 adults, and for violent episodes—to 100,000 incidents. Recent Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data indicate that Indigenous people in the Northern Territory are hospitalised for assault at twice the rate of Indigenous people in other parts of Australia. Of particular concern is the vulnerability of women and children. Indigenous women are hospitalised for assault at an alarming rate, 69 times that of other women in the Northern Territory. Around 2.5 per cent of all Indigenous women in the Northern Territory are hospitalised for assault each year. We can make some comparisons. For example, in New South Wales there are 2½ times more Indigenous people than there are in the Northern Territory. In the two-year period to 2008, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare records that 635 Indigenous women were hospitalised for assault in New South Wales. For the same period, for half the number of people, in the Northern Territory 1,729 women were hospitalised. In many of these violent incidents, children are present, witnessing, experiencing and absorbing the impact of this violence. I welcome the Closing the gap report, but as I have indicated the document is more noteworthy for what it does not say than for what it does.

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

I also rise to take note of the Closing the Gap statement. I note once again that this report was not tabled on the first day of parliament, as was originally promised. While I am pleased that the report has been tabled and has been issued, I think that, by failing to table it on the first day that parliament sits every year, what we are doing is failing to really mark that important date and say, 'We are totally committed to closing the gap.' We have missed that date every single time, so we have missed that opportunity to say, 'We are putting everything into closing the gap.'

I, like Senator Scullion, was on the trip to the Northern Territory last week as part of an inquiry into the Stronger Futures legislation. I know that we will have some time to debate that legislation in this place in the coming weeks—far too soon, I might add, because it is obviously a series of bills that make up a piece of legislation that has very many significant holes in it which have become apparent already. One of the key things that were highlighted in the trip to the Northern Territory—along with those appalling statistics that Senator Scullion just referred to and that I will refer to in a minute—was the overwhelming rejection of the inter­vention; overwhelming rejection of the Stronger Futures process and a very clear understanding that it was phase 2 of the intervention; and overwhelming condem­nation of the lack of adequate consultation throughout the process of the intervention but also in the development of the Stronger Futures legislation. Almost to a person—there was one gentleman who did think the consultation was okay—the consultation process was condemned. In other words, once again this government is taking a top-down, paternalistic approach of, 'We know what's best for you,' and selectively listening.

Last week highlighted very starkly the fact that the intervention just has not delivered. The Closing the gap report does highlight some improvements: how can we not acknowledge that it is a good thing that infant mortality rates have improved? But the gap is still enormous in many, many areas and it just has not been dealt with by the intervention. We are still seeing very significant problems with alcohol. While some people will say alcohol has improved, on one occasion some ladies came up to me and said, 'Although some of the men think alcohol's improved, it hasn't. We still have very, very significant problems.' The same is evident in other areas. While some of the legislation that the Northern Territory government have put in place most recently, in the middle of last year, started tightening up some of the alcohol controls, and they are going to be supplying us with some statistics to look at what they think is some decrease in hospitalisation due to violent incidents related to alcohol, we are still seeing enormous trauma caused by alcohol. In other words, the approach that the government has taken has failed to work. Income management has failed to work. This top-down, punitive approach, unless you engage with communities, does not work.

The issue of education is again highlighted in the Closing the gap report. There is overemphasis on NAPLAN reports. Senator Scullion was just referring to statistics about the need for special assistance for children as they go into school. Sixty per cent of the children in those prescribed areas need some sort of special assistance, but they are not getting it. I have lost count of the number of times I have stood in this chamber and spoken about just one of the issues that children need special assistance for—hearing or literacy and numeracy programs. Those sorts of programs are absolutely essential. Unless we start dealing with these programs, I and people coming after me are going to be marking this day and saying, 'We still haven't closed the gap.' When we actually start putting resources into those critical areas, that is when we are going to see the gap starting to close and when we are actually able to develop a positive relationship between children and school so that children realise there is a meaningful reason to go to school—that is, you can get educational outcomes and there may be job prospects at the end of that process. We still do not have jobs being generated in the Northern Territory for people that have been promised and promised and promised. They have not delivered.

We keep seeing short-term decision making. With CDEP, the Howard government announced it was getting rid of it and started getting rid of it. The Labor government came in, put it back for a while and took it away again, and guess what: they have put it back again. They have realised that getting rid of CDEP this July is a massive policy blunder and they have temporarily put a freeze on the transition to killing off CDEP. And what have they done? It is indefinite. So once again we have this indefinite policy process going on in the NT around employment. No-one knows when the next step is going to be taken in this flawed policy approach. Again, with Stronger Futures, we have a series of more flawed approaches: 'Let's extend the SEAM program. Let's penalise parents if they don't send their kids to school. Let's alienate those parents from the education system.' All the research shows that what we need to be doing is engaging parents with the education system, encouraging participation in developing school programs and ensuring that we can have bilingual and culturally appropriate education where parents get a say and where students get something meaningful out of the experience of having their special assistance requirements met. I cannot say to you how many people have expressed the desire to want to engage with school, to want to engage in a better education for their kids and to see something meaningful. When you go back to the Closing the gapreport, what you see is a whole lot of, 'We've done this and we've done that.' We are getting slightly better results from NAPLAN, but we cannot clearly demonstrate that we are getting satisfactory educational outcomes from sending our kids to school. The process is: 'Let's get the kids into school and the education will take care of itself.' Well, it does not do that. What makes a good education? Engagement with the parents and with the schools, and with a curriculum that is culturally appropriate and actually meets children's needs. Making sure we have the right student-teacher ratio is absolutely critical, as is having quality teachers and quality principals. Those are the keys for delivering good educational outcomes, and we are just not seeing that. The government have tabled this Closing the gap report, and they have tabled the Stronger Futures legislation, but there has been no mention of additional resources.

When we were in the Northern Territory last week we heard about some of the good things that have come out of the intervention—there are a couple. Police in the community, everyone acknowledges, is a better thing, but resources have been absolutely critical. Putting resources into primary health has been absolutely essential, as is putting resources into helping community organisations address justice issues. One of the other 'benefits' of the intervention has been the skyrocketing incarceration rate of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory. That is a great outcome, isn't it? Not! One of the benefits of the intervention, fortunately, has also been putting resources into addressing justice issues and enabling Aboriginal people to get access to community justice services.

That funding runs out in June. The government has made no commitment of resources. We do not know if those very critical health services are going to continue. We do not whether those critical justice services are going to continue. The government have announced an expansion of the income management process both in the NT and in the other states. We do not know whether there are more resources there to cope with that. And, with the same program, the government said that they will commit some social workers, but we have no idea if that very substantial change in education in the Northern Territory is actually going to get additional funding from the federal government.

In a couple of weeks we in this place will be asked to vote on legislation that goes for 10 years. That will expand the intervention, which will have been in place for 15 years. We are being asked to vote on that legislation, but we do not know if there is going to be any money to implement it. We do not know how much more money is going to be invested in closing the gap. The shadow report that the Aboriginal organisations tabled on the day of the Closing the gap report highlights that as a critical need. It highlights the absolute essential need for the government to commit to resources, to all those health programs that are about to run out in June. It is essential if we are going again to close the gap that we no longer have this stop-start process of funding programs and of people being on short funding cycles. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.