Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday in this place, Senator Back accused me of being 'loose with the truth' and 'ignorant of remote Aboriginal communities' in Western Australia. The truth is that it is Senator Back who is out of touch. I did not, as he implied, join together the closure of communities with the closure of schools. But Senator Back, it seems, never lets the truth get in the way of a good story, because he went onto to say he had never heard the Barnett government say it was closing schools in remote Aboriginal communities and said this was neither the time nor the place to be making spurious and false statements. Well, the false statements are all Senator Back's, as I did not make this claim.

It is Senator Back who is out of touch, and tonight I will continue to put the truth in the Hansard and before the Australian people. For the benefit of Senator Back—who, allegedly, as he told the Senate, takes a keen interest in what has been made public—who seems to have missed this, I draw his attention to a piece in The Australian, and I quote:

West Australian Premier Colin Barnett has admitted his government would be forced to close up to 150 of the state's remote Aboriginal homelands after accepting a one-off $90 million payment from the Abbott government to take over responsibility for municipal and essential services.

But the real story starts with Minister Scullion. Earlier this year, in the Senate Minister Nigel Scullion hailed a 'historic agreement' with a number of states, including WA. This agreement involved state governments taking responsibility for municipal and essential services at all their remote Aboriginal homeland communities.

However the WA government did not hail Minister Scullion's agreement as a 'historic agreement', or as a success. In fact, the WA housing minister described the move to end this funding from 1 July next year as 'reprehensible' and said this would lead to the closure of camps—his words not mine. 'This was not an agreement; it was an ultimatum. We had a gun pointed at our head,' Mr Marmion is on the record as saying.

The 150 of the 180 communities the Barnett government will close within the next two years is most of the homeland communities that the Commonwealth was funding in remote Western Australia and has been funding since the 1960s—for more than 50 years. Withdrawing this funding will cost the state around $10 billion over 20 years, according to Mr Marmion's published media. So it seems that both the state Liberal government and the Abbott government—indeed, the Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs—have washed their hands of these small homeland communities and both will be responsible when the state Liberals close these communities. These homeland communities have been funded by the Commonwealth since the 1960s—for more than 50 years—and the Prime Minister his indigenous affairs minister think it is just okay to walk away from this 50-year commitment. That is disgraceful. Is it any wonder that Mr Warren Mundine, the head of the Prime Minister's Indigenous Advisory Council, has described this failure as 'almost like an infrastructure apartheid system'?

But, while this buck-passing is going on, what is happening to these homeland communities? It seems the same old same old is what is going on. Despite this argy-bargy between the Commonwealth and the state, which has obviously involved more than one meeting, despite Mr Mundine's declaration that it was almost like an infrastructure apartheid system, which assumes Mr Mundine knows what is going on, and despite at least three out of the four shires in the Kimberley being willing—with funding, of course—to pick up these municipal services, which implies again that there has been some discussion with them, there has been no discussion with any of the homeland communities, no discussions with local Aboriginal leaders, no discussion at all. It is the old adage of 'whitefella business' or 'We'll tell you what's going on; you don't need to be consulted'—which is exactly what Colin Barnett did when he announced through the media that 150 homeland communities would close over the next two years. This was the first time that homeland communities got to learn that, for some of these communities—in fact, for most of these communities—the axe was hanging over their heads.

Right now my state Labor colleagues Ben Wyatt—shadow Treasurer, shadow minister for Aboriginal affairs and shadow minister for the Kimberley, amongst other things—and Josie Farrer, member for the Kimberley, are in the Kimberley meeting with homeland communities in Broome, Looma, Fitzroy, Balgo and Halls Creek, to name just a few. And it has been confirmed to Ben and to Josie that all levels of government have had conversations about the future of homeland communities but no-one has had conversations with leaders or anyone in these communities.

These homeland communities are people's homes. Some have schools, some are dry. The people who live in these communities have different histories and different language groups. In the past the Commonwealth has had policies which encouraged the development and settlement of homeland communities, and the Commonwealth has a long history of funding involvement to these communities. The truth is that these homeland communities do not need to close, but it seems that Colin Barnett, the Prime Minister and Minister Scullion will just close these them. And what does that mean? Josie Farrer, a Gidja woman and member for the Kimberley, has seen all this before. Josie has firsthand experience, and I took this recollection from her first speech to the WA parliament:

Moola Bulla was closed in 1955, and all the Aboriginal families were forcibly removed from the property. We were relocated to Halls Creek so that the station could be sold and run as a privately owned pastoral lease.

Josie goes on to say:

This story of my early life may seem a long, long time ago, but, unfortunately, the reality for many Kimberley Aboriginal people today is similar. In recent years many people were forcibly removed from Oombulgurri, not by packing them into a truck like we were, but by turning services off, not repairing power generation, switching off water and closing the school. They were sent packing to Wyndham before adequate housing was provided for them. Today we can drive into Wyndham and see many of these people sitting in the middle of town, still without homes, jobs, training or possessions; they are living hard in parks, bushes and mangroves.

Is this the intention of the Prime Minister, Minister Scullion and the Barnett government? Frog Hollow, a small homeland community 150 kilometres from Halls Creek, has 11 houses, a school and a bore. What will happen to this community? Will the Barnett government consult with this community or just go back to the old ways of the recent past and cut off the services? Who will take responsibility for rehousing? Where will the community go? What about Looma—a dry community? Will its residents be sent into town where liquor is freely available? What about Balgo, a large community with 400 residents: where will they go?

Mr Barnett has shown complete ignorance of these communities as his government has described some of them as failing to develop. The first matter which must be sorted out is land tenure. It is so convoluted, no-one knows who owns what; so is it any wonder that there is a failure to thrive when land is held in trust, marked as a reserve or held by the Aboriginal Lands Trust? This does not allow commercial loans or free use of land by homeland communities. This is not a failure by the community to thrive; it is a failure by the federal government to continue its 50 years of funding to try to shunt this issue onto the state. And it is a failure by the state in seeing as the only solution the closure of communities.

This is not infrastructure apartheid, as described by the PM's man, Mr Mundine; this is racism. In not sitting down and consulting with homeland communities, this a failure to acknowledge the first people of our land. This is a failure to acknowledge ancient cultures and connection to land. It is a disgraceful act by the Abbott government, who, by its actions in cutting funding, have put at risk once again generations of families living on these homelands. And it is a failure by the Barnett government because it has, once again, taken the decision making from those most affected by this decision and has simply declared that homeland communities will close.