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

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the responses by the New South Wales Minister for Health, Ms Skinner, and the Premier of Tasmania, Mr Hodgman, on the National Close the Gap Day motion.

I take note of the responses from both the New South Wales government and the Tasmanian government on National Close the Gap Day. As the name suggests, the resolution recognised National Close the Gap Day and recognised some of the work that is currently being undertaken. But I must admit that I am very depressed about the future of our ability to close the gap, given the amount of money that has been taken out of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programs that are specifically designed to close the gap.

This money has been taken out of a wide range of programs. During estimates, the normal time when you would expect that we would be able to interrogate the budget's programs and the measures to find out where money was being spent and where cuts were being made, we were not able to find out which programs were going to continue into the future and which were not. There is a significant amount of money being taken out of the budget over the next three years: $534 million. Some is being returned in the out year following that, but there is a large amount of money coming out. I will note that there were suggestions made in the media last week by Mr Mundine that, in fact, he thought they could find another $600 million worth of so-called savings. This would mean that over $1 billion was coming out of Aboriginal spending.

That will have a significant impact on our ability to close the gap. We are already behind on many of the indicators to close the gap. There is a serious question over whether we will be able to close the gap within a generation—the year 2030 is earmarked for that achievement date. During estimates, we were unable find out which programs were being cut. We were told—and I have seen examples of the letters—that there were extensions being made to grants or to the ongoing programs to organisations that were receiving grants. Some received six-month extensions and some received 12-month extensions. Beyond that, people and organisations do not know if they will be funded, because many of the funding programs are being collapsed into a series of five or six categories of funding. When we asked where this funding was coming from, expecting to be able to look at which programs would be funded and which were not, we were not able to be told.

In fact, they have not systematically gone through the programs and said, 'We can find this amount of savings.' They have actually said, 'We will basically cut across the board at about 4.5 per cent, and then we'll cut our cloth to suit that.' How the government can claim that this is about efficiency measures and delivering programs with less red tape is beyond me, given that they have not systematically gone through those programs. We were told, 'Don't you worry; no front-line services will be affected.' Clearly, that is nonsense. You go and make those sorts of cuts and you will clearly have an impact on front-line services.

We heard that comment made when the cuts were made to Aboriginal legal aid and with the policy around policy and advocacy. We were told that it would not affect front-line services and that the cuts to the family violence programs would not affect front-line services. I am sorry to disabuse the government of that notion. When you go and talk to people actually delivering Aboriginal legal services and family violence programs, they will tell you directly that there have been cuts to those programs, that there have been cuts to front-line services and that those cuts do directly impact on front-line services. So, no, I do not believe that there will not be cuts to front-line services.

I think $165.8 million comes out of health services. Again, we are told there will not be cuts to front-line services. You cannot cut that sort of money out of the program. Some of that money is supposedly going into the medical research fund. The problem with that is that we need to be dealing with the significant gap in health outcomes for Aboriginal people now, not in the number of years down the track that they are investing in medical research. People and those services need that funding to be delivered now, not on a promissory note into the future. I would really like to know where an additional $600 million is likely to come from. As I said, you cannot take that amount of money out of these programs and not have an impact.

We have seen report after report where we have been making a little bit of progress on some things, and that that is good. The progress on child mortality is fantastic, but that progress will be undermined if we are going backwards in other areas. Any savings that are made due to efficiencies surely should be reinvested back into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programs so that we can make up the ground in closing the gap where we have fallen behind.

Unfortunately, not only is closing the gap going to be affected by these cuts to the Aboriginal funding budget, but there are also going to be significant impacts on the other budget measures, which we have been debating in this place extensively today. For example, there are the issues around young people, co-payments and pensions. If you increase the pension age to 70, as the average life expectancy of an Aboriginal man is around 69 years, the pension age is above the average life expectancy. These measures also impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. I would argue that they would impact disproportionately on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples because of the gap in life expectancy and because of the gap in life outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

This budget is not going to help close the gap. We talked earlier about fairness and opportunity I would argue this budget is certainly not fair to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Next year I am hoping when we celebrate National Close the Gap Day that we will be able to hold our heads high and show some improvements. I am deeply afraid, however, that we will not be able to, given that at the moment most Aboriginal organisations do not know whether they will be funded in the next 12 months. They have been told they have funding—some for 12 months, some for six months. They do not know whether that will continue. They do not know what programs they will be delivering.

They also tell me they have not been consulted about this process and wonder when proper consultation will come in. I do, however, acknowledge that it is not just this government which has not adequately consulted Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. When Stronger Futures was brought in, one of the strongest complaints we heard, beside the continuation of income management, was lack of meaningful consultation by the government in the new programs they were delivering. I hope that next year the richness of the current program is still being delivered and that Aboriginal organisations continue to do the work they are now doing, and that they have been adequately consulted about the cuts which are coming their way.

Question agreed to.