Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I table the report and statement of the Prime Minister on Closing the Gap. I seek leave to move a motion relating to the consideration of documents.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the time for consideration of the documents today not exceed 60 minutes.

Question agreed to.

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the documents.

This morning the Prime Minister tabled in the House of Representatives the sixth annual Closing the gap report. Today we pause and focus our attention on how we are performing as a nation in reducing the disadvantage faced by too many Aboriginal and Islander Australians. The report is a sobering read and it is a demonstration of why we need targets. We cannot gloss over the poor results. There has been some progress but we are still failing in most areas since the targets were set some six years ago:

We do need to have targets - but in the end it is results that count.

The emotions and expectations raised in the national apology that we will commemorate at tomorrow's anniversary mean that we must deliver results. We need a new approach and the groundwork is being laid. We now have a Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs and, in me, a cabinet minister whose sole responsibility is Indigenous Affairs. We have moved most of the confused multitude of Indigenous programs into the Prime Minister's department, where they will be streamlined. We have established the Indigenous Advisory Council, led by Warren Mundine. These changes and others that will flow put Indigenous Affairs front and centre of government policy and program implementation. Our aim is to achieve long-term generational change. This government has three policy priorities that underpin the closing-the-gap targets:

Progress in these areas will undoubtedly help to close the gap in all indicators.

A recent COAG Reform Council report showed that there has been no improvement in school attendance over the last five years. In fact, sadly, it is going backwards in some areas. This is a disgrace and a profound challenge for all of us. The Prime Minister today announced a new target of 90 per cent and to close the gap in school attendance within five years. We have a long way to go—some of these schools are only half of that. But if we fail, all the words expressed in this place will come to nothing, leaving our nation so much the poorer for it. More of the same will not do it and we need action more than words.

If we are to achieve this national goal, it is my strongly held view that strategies for change must directly involve Aboriginal and Islander people. I have been taking this approach with our Remote School Attendance Strategy. In 30 schools on day 1 of first term this year, there were over 420 more students at school than on day 1 of first term last year. It would have been more but, unfortunately, a cyclone interfered significantly and affected the results on Palm Island. These results were achieved because we engaged local people, local people with the support of their communities. The results are fantastic and they are their results. After all, responsibility for ensuring children go to school lies with local mums, local dads and the local community. Governments and bureaucrats alone cannot solve these questions; that should be clear to all of us by now.

In all government activities we must credit Aboriginal and Islander people with being able to devise their own solutions to suit their particular circumstances and their particular community. I take this opportunity to particularly commend and thank Yolgnu elder and clan leader, Rev. Dr Djiniyini Gondarra. He is part of Makarr Dhuni; he is effectively the equivalent of a cabinet minister in Arnhem Land. Dr Gondarra has taken the significant step of declaring that parents' cultural responsibilities should extend to sending their children to school.

As you would know from your experience, Acting Deputy President Sterle, this is a very significant issue in Aboriginal communities. The key, I believe, is to empower locals to engage real cultural authority, as demonstrated by Dr Gondarra. I have had the same conversations with other cultural leaders in other communities. This is the sort of approach I would like to see across all programs and services.

We must redefine the relationship between Aboriginal and Islander people and this government—in fact, this parliament. Of course, we do not resile from our commitment to provide Indigenous families with the support they need at the time to regain control over their own lives. Certainly when it comes to parents, we know that if they are not in control of their own lives it is very difficult to provide the support to get kids to school. We understand this no matter what environment you are in, whether it is metropolitan, outer metropolitan or very remote areas—we know that we are going to need to support those families. So I call on Aboriginal and Islander leadership across the nation to join us in empowering local people.

Much has been said today about bipartisanship. To truly cross the bridge of partisan politics, I think we have to accept our own failures. Let us congratulate ourselves only when there is true reconciliation in this country. This year's Closing the Gap report shows that there has been far too little progress since the Closing the Gap targets were introduced. This should not be seen as a report card on the previous government. We all know this is a difficult area and that there are no easy answers. We do know that we must be prepared to challenge the status quo and to be courageous in doing so. We need to be smarter about how we target our efforts. Closing the Gap performance must be viewed with an eye to the varying results in regional and remote and very remote Australia. So today I commit to regularly making publicly available Closing the Gap results by remote, regional and urban areas where they are available.

Acting Deputy President, when you read the Closing the Gap report, whilst it is an excellent report, having broad figures tends to mask the real circumstances. In education, in NAPLAN results, for example, other results that I am aware of indicate that they are doing a lot better in the cities and far worse than that in the bush. So the disaggregation of results is going to assist us as a parliament to ensure that we are making the right decisions in this area.

More than anything else this national endeavour must unite us in this place. The way we have worked together on the path towards constitutional recognition of Indigenous people has been a great example. Today I was puzzled when the Leader of the Opposition in his detailed commentary on what might be included in a change to the Constitution appears to have perhaps departed from the carefully developed process that was agreed in a spirit of goodwill across parties. I trust that is not the case and have asked to be reassured that the process that was agreed to to take this important matter forward remains in place.

There is much work to be done and we need to focus on results. Aboriginal and Islander Australians can make it with our support and our encouragement. In this place, as I know, people of good heart, let us recommit to the task of Closing the Gap on Aboriginal and Islander disadvantage.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me first pay my respects to the traditional owners of the land on which we gather and pay my respects to elders past and present.

I welcome the Prime Minister's Closing the Gap statement today and I also acknowledge those who have delivered previous statements. I think it is worth recalling from where we have come to this, the sixth, Closing the Gap statement.

We recall that this in many ways began—to give credit where credit is due—with former Prime Minister Rudd, who at the opening of the 42nd Parliament made a formal apology to the Indigenous peoples of Australia and then a year later delivered the first Closing the Gap report. But, of course, the journey to where we are now is a much longer story and in many ways a much more tragic story. It is a story of dispossession, disadvantage and inequality. It is a story of unacceptable gaps in infant mortality and life expectancy. It is the story of the only developed nation among 57 listed by the World Health Organization that still had blinding trachoma. It is the story of much, much more.

I think it is important when we have the discussion, as we should and do today, for us to understand what we are engaged in as members of this parliament. In this place we are privileged as senators, as people elected to come to this place, to be part of what might broadly be described—and I think the Prime Minister described—as the national conversation. That is one way of talking about how it is that parliamentarians can be part of, as all Australians are in different ways, a discussion, an imagining, of who we are in this country—of how we see ourselves, of how we look at and how we speak of our history and, importantly, of how we imagine our future.

In many ways how we have come to this place has been one of the most important contributions to that national conversation of which we are all privileged to be a part. There are many things which are important in the conversation and the imagining of the Australian nation and we have debates about those things in this place all the time. But I do not think it is being overblown to say that if you want to go to the heart of who we are as a nation, if you want to go to the heart of how we must imagine our future and how we must reconcile our past, we must do what is right when it comes to our first peoples, and we must do what is right both in terms of how we talk about ourselves and how we structure our laws, what our Constitution says to us about who we are, and we must do what is right in terms of the detailed and practical measures which are referenced in the Closing the Gap targets. We must do both.

As Mr Shorten said in the other place, Labor is committed to working with the government on the task of recognition because our Constitution should recognise all Australians, including our first Australians. I do not believe—as some, perhaps not in this place, have said—that this is a theoretical debate. This is a discussion about the document that in many ways gives form to what this nation is and who we are. That document should properly respect and recognise our first peoples.

There are a great many aspects of the Closing the Gap targets which have been discussed today. I went back to the first Closing the Gap statement and reminded myself of some of the disparities that we were confronted with as a parliament but most importantly that our first peoples—our Indigenous peoples—are and continue to be confronted with. For example, in 2009 we discussed that Indigenous males die on average 18 years earlier than non-Indigenous males. Indigenous females lived to 65, on average, compared to 82. And in many ways the saddest of facts is the mortality rate of Indigenous Australian babies, which in 2009 was a rate nearly three times that of non-Indigenous infants.

Those few facts explain why it is so many people in this place, and I do believe this applies across parties, have such a personal commitment to the process of reconciliation and creating real equality. There has been a lot of talk about bipartisanship as well and I welcome that. I welcome that we are no longer in a debate about whether or not we should be saying sorry. I welcome that we are no longer in a frankly dry and unhelpful, and at times painful, debate about the difference between symbolic and practical reconciliation. I genuinely welcome the commitment from all parties in this place to the Closing the Gap framework and to reconciliation and equality.

But the fact of bipartisanship ought not to mean that we cannot say when we believe we cannot speak—when we believe that the actions do not measure up to the rhetoric. We will have debates and discussions in this place, as we should, about what the best way forward is—about what the path to equality and true reconciliation is. I say to the government: we will, as an opposition in this place, be saying to you that we believe your actions should live up to your rhetoric. We have raised concerns in this place before about the effect of legal aid cuts and cuts to Aboriginal legal services—not to make a partisan point but because of all that has been written, all that is known and all that has been experienced about the rates of incarceration of Indigenous peoples and what that means.

This topic of discussion often does, and I hope will continue to, bring out some of what is great in our parliament. Despite the bad press that a lot of politicians get, the overwhelming majority of people who come here—disagree as much as we do at times—come here with a genuine desire to improve our nation. We differ greatly on what that path should be, but that is the desire with which we come. There are a great many matters that we ought to debate; a great many issues that go to who Australians are, what this country is, what it means to be Australian, how we envisage our rich history and how we imagine our future. But in many ways none of them is more difficult, nor more central to Australia's identity and future, than reconciliation with our Indigenous people.

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to lead off for the opposition and make some comments in relation to this important statement. As Mr Shorten has said, we continue to commit ourselves as an opposition to the Closing the Gap framework—to working with all parties to try to bring about real equality with a policy approach that is built on consultation, empowerment and consensus; to providing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with the tools and resources to complement the solutions they own; and to building reforms that reach well beyond the life of this parliament, because in doing so we will truly create a more just, a more equal and a more reconciled Australia.

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

It gives me great pleasure to be able to rise again to talk about the progress—and there has been a little bit—we are making in closing the gap. I would first like to pay my respects to the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Ngunawal and Ngambri people. I pay my respects to their elders past, present and future and recognise this always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

As my colleague and the Australian Greens leader, Christine Milne, said this morning at the Closing the Gap breakfast, the Australian Greens have been strong supporters of the Closing the Gap campaign and the Closing the Gap initiative. Even before that was adopted by the government we were campaigning for this process. It is important to remember that tomorrow is the sixth anniversary of the apology, something people had been working on for decades. We need to remember and be careful that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. I express my deep concern about the number of Aboriginal children that have been taken into care in certain states around this country. I think we will potentially face the same situation again. It is very important that on this day we remember that and make sure we put policy provisions and programs in place to ensure that the number of children being taken into care is urgently reduced and we put in place programs that support and nurture parents.

We welcome the government's statement today outlining the progress made. We welcome the opportunity each year to focus on what progress we are making. On that point I welcome also the report of the Close the Gap Campaign Steering Committee. It used to be called the shadow report, but it is not called that anymore. I recognise its importance in informing what Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and communities think about progress against the targets to close the gap. As I do every year, I seek leave to table the progress and priorities report of 2014 of the Close the Gap Campaign Steering Committee. I have given the whips from the coalition and the ALP copies of the report.

Leave granted.

This is an important day to draw attention to the progress that has been made and particularly highlight the areas where we still need to make progress. Whilst there is unity in purpose and commitment to close the gap amongst politicians and the political parties in this place, that does not mean and should not mean that there is unity and agreement with the approach. In fact, it would be a failure of this process if we were not being rigorous in our analysis of the approaches that are being taken to the policies that seek to close the gap. I, like other members of the Australian Greens, have been critical of some of the approaches. I continue to be critical of approaches that are top down, paternalistic and punitive. Our concerns about income management, which is an example of that, are well known.

While we absolutely share and acknowledge the need to increase school attendance, I flag the concern here that, unless we ensure that education is delivered in a way that meets the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, it will fail. There is no use just sending truancy officers to get kids into school if those kids do not have the right curriculum and there is not a bilingual approach. It will not ensure that more children complete their education. I have outlined my concerns in this place many times about children not being able to hear. Unless we address that fundamental issue, we will not address the literacy and numeracy concerns and skills of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. Yet I see very little moves to fund that area.

It is essential that we have long-term investments and long-term commitments. We need to remember that we are in this for the long haul. Senator Milne this morning, the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and speakers here in this chamber just now have highlighted there is still a much higher burden of disease—2½ times that of the non-Aboriginal population. This for a start clearly shows we have a long way to go. While there has been some progress with decreasing mortality rates in Queensland and the Northern Territory, there have been no significant changes in the other states.

Clearly, we need to keep going. At this stage, unfortunately, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan and the National Partnership Agreement on Closing the Gap in Indigenous Health Outcomes have expired. Despite our supposed commitment to these targets, we in Australia have been unable to reach agreement at COAG and the states and territories still have not completed their commitments to the next health plan for 2013 to 2023. If we were serious about this, we would have signed on as those programs expired. Unfortunately, we are still hanging out for that agreement. I suspect we will still be hanging out for the agreement on early childhood development for Aboriginal children as well, which has just expired as well. How long are we going to have these gaps in these programs and in reaching agreement? I am very pessimistic about how soon we are going to sign off and properly implement these programs.

We are pleased to see that there has been some move, but we are picking up on the call from the steering committee, who were very clear in their report that they need to see the Abbott government set out a clear time frame of 12 months for the national implementation of a strategy for the delivery of the health plan. Prime Minister Abbott has promised to focus on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues in his first term as Prime Minister. He obviously needs to make sure that the states and territories are also on board and that everybody is committed to delivering those outcomes.

We cannot be serious about addressing closing the gap unless we have signed off on that issue. It is clear from the steering committee report that getting sign-off and implementing the health plan are absolute priorities, so we endorse those moves. We also are concerned, as is the steering committee, about potential cuts to funding, like the PBS's, that had been canvassed by the Commission of Audit. The PBS and those sorts of services are very important to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

The Prime Minister mentioned some new targets in his statement to the parliament this morning. The target that he missed out is the justice target. We need this if we are to close the gap in this country. It is the shame of Australia that we have such a high rate of incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders across the board, but in particular young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. When are we going to see a commitment across Australia to a justice target and to ending this atrocious record of incarceration in this country? One of the programs that we should be investing in is justice reinvestment. We have had an inquiry into it—Senator Penny Wright led that inquiry—and the evidence is clear: we need to be investing in it. And what will drive that investment is having a target as part of the Closing the Gap targets. It is absolutely critical. I repeat: unless we address this issue, we will not close the gap. The Greens will continue to support the Closing the Gap campaign. (Time expired)

Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In his speech to the House of Representatives earlier today, the Prime Minister, the Hon. Tony Abbott MP, noted that significant improvements have been made towards meeting the target of halving the gap in mortality rates for Indigenous children under five within a decade. During the period between 1998 and 2012, the Indigenous child mortality rate declined by 32 per cent, outpacing the decline in non-Indigenous child mortality. These changes mean that we are currently on track to meet this target by 2018. Of course the reduction in the infant mortality rate will eventually provide the platform for addressing long-term health in Indigenous Australia, particularly in remote areas. To this end, we remain committed to health services from birth and before birth.

Maternal and child health is a key focus for investment. There is a substantial body of evidence that the experience of the child—in utero, at the time of birth, in infancy and in childhood—has the potential to impact on health throughout life. High quality antenatal care provides opportunities to address health risks and support healthy behaviours throughout pregnancy and into the early years of childhood. Improving the health, social and environmental factors of babies and young children is likely to have positive flow-on effects for the remainder of the life cycle. The government remains committed to improving maternal and child health through the New Directions: Mothers and Babies Services program. This program provides increased access to antenatal and postnatal care, practical advice and assistance with breastfeeding and nutrition, and health checks for children before starting school.

Despite the success in moving towards the child mortality target, there has been a negligible difference to the life expectancy gap within a generation. Over the last five years there has been a small reduction in the gap of 0.8 years for males and 0.1 years for females. It is clear that more needs to be done if this target is to be met by 2031. Senators will be aware that Indigenous Australians have higher rates of chronic disease, including diabetes, coronary heart disease and respiratory disease than other Australians. They have higher rates of high blood pressure and cancer, and they typically have earlier-age onset of these diseases. Chronic disease contributes to two-thirds of this health gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-Indigenous Australians. The majority of deaths between 2006 and 2010 were due to chronic diseases. The leading cause of death was circulatory disease with rates of the disease in Indigenous Australians at 1.7 times that of non-Indigenous Australians, contributing to 17 per cent of the burden of disease in Indigenous Australians.

Smoking levels are high among Indigenous adults, although evidence shows a small reduction in the most recent period. Levels of physical inactivity, obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure are much higher than for non-Indigenous Australians. Additionally, low socioeconomic status is associated both with greater risk of developing circulatory disease and with lower chance of receiving appropriate treatment. At the same time, we see worrying rates of diseases which are virtually unknown in contemporary non-Indigenous Australia, including the consequences of rheumatic fever and the returning scourge of tuberculosis.

The government remains committed to addressing chronic disease and to funding activities through the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Chronic Disease Fund and Practice Incentive Payments in Indigenous health, as well as expenditure under both the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and Medicare. These activities sit alongside efforts to reduce the factors that contribute to chronic disease, such as smoking, drug and alcohol abuse, and work to ensure access by Indigenous Australians to comprehensive and coordinated primary health and hospital care that is provided by a culturally competent health workforce within a broader health system.

I am pleased to note that we have had success in recent years in the area of smoking cessation. In 2008, 47 per cent of Indigenous Australians were current smokers, down from 51 per cent in 2002. This is the most recent data, but there is strong evidence that the rate continues to fall, and I would pay particular tribute to Aboriginal medical services in delivering these programs, and to so many of our other health services who are delivering care to Indigenous Australians.

The Aboriginal community controlled health organisations provide the valuable infrastructure platform for chronic illness care and maternal and child health programs in particular. The government funds over 170 Aboriginal community controlled health organisations across Australia. In some remote locations, the Indigenous-specific system is the only one available to the local population. The task ahead is to build on this strength by maintaining momentum for improvement in the best-performing organisations and programs across both the Indigenous-specific and mainstream systems, and encouraging other providers to achieve at the same levels. It is clear, however, that provision of high quality accessible health services alone is not sufficient to improve overall health outcomes. Between one-third and one-half of the health gap is driven by social determinants such as socioeconomic status, education, employment and income.

The coalition government, as you have heard from my colleagues today, is committed to getting kids into school and adults into work and to ensuring that the ordinary rule of law applies in communities. This cannot be achieved without a continuous focus on health. Healthy kids can take advantage of education, and healthy adults are better placed to take up employment opportunities. We also know that better schooling, better employment opportunities and safer communities create better health outcomes. This is an important two-way relationship.

This government remains fully committed to achieving health equality between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a generation, for these reasons. We cannot continue to see the disparities in Indigenous health outcomes such as life expectancy, age-standardised death rates and chronic disease. We want to work closely with the community controlled health sector in order to tackle long-term problems with long-term solutions.

Nova Peris (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to respond to the Prime Minister's statement on this nation's effort to close the gap on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander disadvantage. I want to talk about areas where we are making progress but also address some concerns I have about areas where we are going backwards. The Closing the Gap report reminds us that, while we have made a start, we still have a long way to go. The aim is to have closed the gap by 2030. It might seem a long way off, but if we have any chance of succeeding we have to be making gains now. I am proud that the Northern Territory is leading the way. The Northern Territory is the only jurisdiction on target to meet the Closing the Gap targets by 2030. This is due to the long-term investments of policies of both the Northern Territory and the federal Labor governments.

There have been clear improvements in life expectancy and a reduction in Aboriginal infant mortality. Across Australia the Indigenous child mortality rate has dropped by 32 per cent. This is an achievement to be proud of. There has been a dramatic increase in the life expectancy of renal patients. The life expectancy of an Indigenous renal patient is now the same as that of a non-Indigenous patient—a real achievement that is clearly the result of an expansion of renal dialysis facilities into remote communities.

Under the previous government, investments and policies in health, education, housing and community safety all helped to improve life expectancy. However, I am worried that some of these investments and policies are being undone, particularly in relation to stopping the rivers of grog and in relation to education. On coming to government in August 2012 the CLP, the Country Liberal Party, government in the Northern Territory scrapped the Banned Drinker Register. For those that do not know, the Banned Drinker Register was an electronic identification system installed right across the Northern Territory that prevented problem drinkers from purchasing takeaway alcohol. When it was scrapped there were around 2,500 problem drinkers on the register.

This time last year, former Prime Minister Julia Gillard spoke out against the scrapping of the Banned Drinker Register. To his credit, the opposition leader at the time, Mr Tony Abbott, stated that he shared her concerns. Tragically, their mutual concerns were ignored by the Country Liberal Party government, and the consequences have been devastating. In the last year, alcohol related violent assaults have increased by 15 per cent right across the Northern Territory. Domestic violence has increased by 21 per cent across the Northern Territory. Aboriginal women are bearing the brunt of this violence. Dr Howard Bath, the Children's Commissioner in the Northern Territory, has graphically outlined that Aboriginal women are 80 times more likely than other Territorians to be hospitalised for assault. This is a shocking statistic, and one that no Australian should accept. When you travel to the Northern Territory, you can see this violence on the streets. Towns like Katherine and Tennant Creek are awash with alcohol. In Tennant Creek, alcohol related assaults are up by 54 per cent, and domestic violence is up by 70 per cent—in just one year.

None of the Closing the Gap targets can possibly be met while this continues. Until the sale of alcohol is controlled at the point of sale, the rivers of grog will flow and the violence will continue to grow. I have met with doctors in our emergency departments. Alcohol admissions in hospitals have gone through the roof in the last year and a half. Emergency departments are full of the victims of alcohol related violence. The costs of this are enormous. Such an enormous amount of our vital health resources is being spent dealing with a crisis that can be avoided.

Under Labor, alcohol sales in the Northern Territory declined for six straight years. But now they are increasing. The increase coincided with the scrapping of the Banned Drinker Register. It is beyond argument that the scrapping of the Banned Drinker Register has compromised our capacity to reach the Closing the Gap targets in the Northern Territory. Doctors, police, lawyers, judges, Aboriginal health workers and many others have called for the return of the Banned Drinker Register. Even some of the CLP's own members of parliament have called for its reintroduction to be considered.

The Prime Minister's Closing the Gap report states:

All Australians have a right to live in a community where they can be safe.

For many Aboriginal women and children, this right is not currently fulfilled. The Prime Minister says his government will continue to support tough alcohol regulations, but, unfortunately, he is passively sitting back while alcohol regulations that worked are being undone. I call on the Prime Minister and the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, as a matter of urgency, to use the influence they have with the Country Liberal Party government to bring back the Banned Drinker Register. I urge the Minister for Indigenous Affairs to proactively work to get the 23 alcohol management plans being prepared to be finalised. I urge him to not just wait until they are developed but ensure that they are developed, approved and implemented as soon as possible.

Another area I am extremely concerned about is education. Improved education is essential if we are to close the gap in the long term. Equality in education is essential. Every Australian child should have access to a quality education. As I said this morning at the Closing the Gap breakfast, my grandfather told me, 'Don't just talk about it; be about it.' To be about it, a child needs an education. A child without a proper education will miss out on opportunities for the rest of their life. The education outcomes in the Closing the Gap report are disappointing. The cuts to education in the Northern Territory are hurting the bush. Remote schools are starting this year with fewer teachers and less resources than they had last year.

Just last week I was in a remote community, and the school in that community has an attendance rate of 90 per cent, which is very high for a remote community. It is due to the hard work over 30 years of one individual teaching assistant at that school. The Country-Liberal government has just cut back his position to half time. He went from 8:30 to 3:30 and now the position has gone back to 8:30 to 11:30 after 30 years of success. The Prime Minister and the Minister for Indigenous Affairs have been busy talking about the truancy officer plan as a method of getting kids to school. This plan will not work while teachers like this man are being cut back.

I welcome the Prime Minister's commitment to include school attendance as a Closing the Gap target, but I urge him to look at the effects that current education cuts are causing. Picking up the kids and taking them to school is actually the easy bit. Keeping them at school is the hard bit—and only dedicated teachers with the resources they need can get this done.

Indigenous incarceration rates are higher, and we need to address this. The Commonwealth's decision to cut funding to Aboriginal legal services is wrong. These organisations do not just provide legal representation; they work with their clients to try and make sure that they do not reoffend. This is the area where the funding cuts will hurt the most, and incarceration rates will continue to increase.

As the deputy chair of the Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples I will be working hard this year alongside the chair, the member for Hasluck, Ken Wyatt, to promote this issue. The referendum is an opportunity to unite all Australians. We will be working to raise public awareness and to demonstrate the importance of this to Aboriginal Australians, but we also need it to be a positive step for all Australians.

I welcome the bipartisan nature of the Closing the Gap targets. But that does not mean I will not speak out when government policies are wrong.    If I believe that any government decisions compromise our capacity to reach the Closing the Gap targets then I will speak out.

Finally, I would like to thank the many people who work so hard to close the gap: our teachers in our schools, the medical professionals working hard with our Aboriginal health services, the alcohol service providers and everyone who is in a community, working with their families and children and striving to improve lives. I commend them for the terrific job in an often challenging environment.

I welcome the Closing the Gap report released today and I urge everyone in this parliament to continue to work hard to ensure we close the gap on Indigenous life expectancy.

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I just want to acknowledge this afternoon that we are standing on Aboriginal ground: the traditional country of the Ngunawal and Ngambri people—country and sovereignty which was never ceded from colonial days right up to today.

I am proud to add my voice to that of Australian Greens senator Rachel Siewert, who has spent years travelling across this country listening to communities to effectively bring their views into this place. I am reminded of the words of a friend of mine in the Top End, who noted that one of the gaps we are trying to close here is the gap in understanding. This gap exists initially in our minds: the gap between the lived experience of Aboriginal people across this continent and the mostly white politicians from far away, who set about designing bureaucratic structures to address the aftermath of racism, discrimination and inequality in this country.

At its best, closing this gap of imagination and experience leads to some of the community controlled service delivery that we celebrate today—services that are making a meaningful difference to people's lives. And at its worst, we get things like mandatory sentencing and the NT intervention, which saw the worst kind of disempowerment levelled at vulnerable people in order to provide white politicians with a cheap photo opportunity.

Today I want to join my voice to those who have spoken in this debate so far to acknowledge the people across all parts of this spectrum of understanding who have sought, against the odds, to wrench back meaningful service delivery and community self-determination in the areas where they are needed most, and to confront directly the epidemic of youth suicide, the indiscriminate imprisonment of Aboriginal people, and the chronic health conditions which needlessly cut short so many lives.

This morning as I joined colleagues, activists and service providers to hear the Prime Minister, the opposition leader and the Leader of the Australian Greens renew our commitment to Closing the Gap, I allowed myself a moment of optimism. There are gains recorded in this year's annual report. They were hard-fought and, if anything, they highlight how much further we have to go.

Senator Siewert has ably described the big picture and the role that the Greens play in working to secure lasting improvements in health and wellbeing for Aboriginal people. I want to focus on one example of the kind of organisation that we should be supporting if we want to see the gap in life expectancy and health close in a meaningful way. Senators may be aware of the Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation, which operates in Perth's southern suburbs. Director Robert Eggington, project officer Selina Eggington and their colleagues over many years have built the unique and important organisation. Dumbartung welds together crisis care and culturally-appropriate healing services with an unrivalled collection of artwork and cultural materials, referral services and political advocacy.

I particularly want to acknowledge Dumbartung's work in taking on youth suicide, surely the most tragic consequence of the multiple challenges faced by Aboriginal families. The organisation proposes a break from old habits. It envisages an Aboriginal task force and the establishment of a three-tier safety net of safe places that begins with culturally-appropriate services delivered by Aboriginal people. It is designed to move people in crisis through a sequence from crisis response to a referral service to mainstream health providers.

Western Australian premier Colin Barnett has acknowledged that even as funding to mainstream service providers has gone up so the tragedy of youth suicide has increased. We need a new approach, because what we are doing at the moment is not working. We do not need the continuation of an approach that originates in the premier's office or even in this parliament but one that arises from the communities most affected and best placed to identify the kind of help they need. That means changing and channelling the direction of some of the funding streams. Dumbartung and advocates like Robert and Selina should not have to spend half their days on the scrounge, looking for funding to continue the kind of work that they do from month to month. It sucks up so much time that could be so much better spent.

I want to add my support to the justice reinvestment approach that Senator Siewert mentioned, and to thank my colleague Senator Penny Wright from South Australia for championing this initiative. Anybody who has heard the former Human Rights Commissioner Tom Calma speak out about justice reinvestment will know that this is the way to go for Australia. We need to build communities, not prisons.

I also add my voice to those of Senator Nova Peris and Senator Siewert in condemning the closure of the Aboriginal legal services. If anything, we should be increasing the funding to these stretched community legal services, which do extraordinarily important work in preventing people from being incarcerated in the first place.

To Robert, to Selina and to everyone who works for the protection of kids, country and culture: may your campfires burn forever.

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tomorrow will be the sixth anniversary of the apology to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for the stolen generation that was given in this parliament. It was a symbolic day and much has been said about that. It was an important day in history for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, but in my view it was also a very important day for non-Indigenous Australians. We all recall that day. It was an important day and one of the days that I think all of us will remember long after we leave this place. It was a day of tears and reflection, but it was a day of hope and a day of focusing on the future.

I think it is a day when many non-Indigenous Australians, potentially for the first time, truly engage in issues that affect our first peoples in this country. It is a day when some of the divisions of the past—some of the very unpleasant, horrid and hurtful divisions of the past—are put aside. It was a day when the Prime Minister, Prime Minister Rudd, committed to the Closing the Gap strategy as well. He laid out a strategy that would identify targets and strategies to achieve those targets. That is the way we will close the gap.

It is important today, on the sixth anniversary, that we actually do receive the sixth report on Closing the Gap. I think it is important to recognise that a single target and a single strategy on its own will not close the gap. It has to always be a coordinated approach, where the strategies complement each other, and where we are not doing one thing with one hand and on the other affecting the community with another strategy that does not work. It is really important that this work be designed with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. If we do not do that, there will not be ownership. It will not feel as if this is a shared vision and a shared goal to achieve equality across all Australians.

I also want to say that the type of engagement that we have with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people has to be local; it has to be open and honest. I really do urge people against the use of the word 'consultation'. I am a former primary school teacher. Attendance at school is a necessary condition of getting an education. You simply cannot learn if you do not go to school. Children have to go to school to learn. In that vein, Labor welcomes the target to achieve improved school attendance.

But in saying that, I want to reserve my opinion about the strategy that will achieve that. School attendance officers—some of them are in Queensland—are in place now. I have been a schoolteacher; I have gone and got kids too. But you have got to have a relationship with children and their families in order for those children to come into your classroom. I hope that this strategy works. I hope that this strategy will mean that our children will come to school and want to come to school. I think that we probably need to look a little bit deeper into some of the reasons why those children are not attending school.

We have to look at what is happening in our schools. In saying that, I want to commend the many, many fantastic teachers who work in Indigenous schools and with Indigenous children, and who are achieving great results. I particularly want to commend the work of Indigenous teacher aides, as they are called in Queensland. Without them, we could not do our jobs.

But I am concerned, as our opposition leader Bill Shorten identified this morning, that today—school started a couple of weeks ago—we are hearing reports that we have fewer teachers in our remote schools and, as Senator Peris has identified, fewer teacher aides. We all know that the relationship between a teacher, the teaching staff and a child is the biggest indicator of a fantastic educational outcome. We have got to build on that relationship to get the results that we are looking for. I commend all those who work in that space.

I also want to identify in the health space that increasing life expectancy is the ultimate goal. That is where we have all got to focus. To get there, we have got to focus first of all on children. I am pleased that the report identifies that there has been a reduction—and, in some states and territories, a massive reduction—in child mortality. That is great and that will achieve great results. I also want to note the work that is being done to reduce tobacco use by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. That is a great outcome. We know that the use of tobacco by Indigenous peoples is at a far higher rate than non-Indigenous peoples. We know that that directly results in a decreased life expectancy.

Like Senator Peris, I am concerned that if alcohol is not managed all of the work that we do—this is the point of coordination that I am talking about— to focus on child health and to focus on reducing tobacco usage will be for nought, particularly in our remote communities. The figures that Senator Peris quoted in the chamber are horrifying. We must work better to control alcohol use by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

In saying that, can I commend the people who work in Aboriginal health and the people who work in our Aboriginal medical services. Particularly, I want to commend Indigenous health workers. There is a lot of research that shows that employment of Indigenous health workers will result in fantastic outcomes or much improved outcomes for Indigenous people. Indigenous people, unsurprisingly, want to get health advice from people they trust—we all do. They want to get their advice about their health outcomes from a person who understands their circumstances.

I join with Shayne Neumann, the shadow minister for Indigenous affairs in the House of Representatives, when he identifies that we must be looking at incarceration rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Particularly in remote areas, they are—the word is almost hard to find—unconscionable. We cannot sit around knowing that 80 per cent of the people in some of our prisons are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Therefore I am very concerned about the cuts that we have seen to Aboriginal legal aid. I think there is absolutely a direct link between people who are not getting quality legal aid services and more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in our jails.

The target that Labor proposed, which we should put into place along with a strategy to achieve it, of improving access to disability services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is one that I would commend to the government. From the work that has been done we know that access to services by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability is much lower, for a whole range of reasons. There are cultural reasons and there are access reasons. Unless we put a target in place and a strategy to address it then we will not to achieve equity and fairness for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have a disability. In that sense I commend the First Peoples Disability Network, a new peak body in the disability space, for the work that they are doing to educate in many respects disability service providers about the way they need to engage with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and make sure that their services are culturally appropriate.

Finally, I do believe that constitutional recognition is an essential part of achieving not only the practical outcomes, the real outcomes, the on-the-ground outcomes that will change people's lives, but also the sense of inclusion that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will feel when they are finally recognised in the Constitution. Congratulations to Reconciliation Australia for the work that they are doing to pave the way for that outcome to be achieved. As Mr Shorten said this morning, this is a responsibility not just of the parliament but of the whole community.

Question agreed to.