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

I rise to speak about the decision by the Barnett government to close a significant number of homeland communities in Western Australia. Mr Barnett has been forced to do that by the withdrawal by the Abbott government, as part of its harsh cruel budget cuts, of funding that had been provided over 50 years.

Western Australia has one of the highest numbers of homeland communities in the country. Aboriginal people living on homeland communities in Western Australia are caught in the crossfire between the Abbott and Barnett governments as they shunt responsibility for who funds the municipal services in these communities. I draw the parallel that, if there were an issue with municipal services in a small country town, I doubt very much that the first response of governments would be to move people out and shut their houses down. In a white community we would not be standing here and saying, 'Because we are now withdrawing funding for municipal services, we are going to shut your town down.' But in that is exactly what Premier Barnett has said to those communities. Without consultation, he has said, 'We're just going to shut you down because we don't want to fund your municipal services.' Despite the fact that municipal services are funded in very small regional and rural communities right across Western Australia, they do not want to do it for these communities. Why do they get away with it? Because Aboriginal people, by and large, still remain voiceless in our country.

Both the Abbott government and the Barnett government have an appalling record when it comes to government spending. The Barnett government has wasted millions of public money on a hospital it has failed to open, which is 18 months overdue, with an amount of $118 million paid to the private for-profit operator before the hospital even opened. Imagine if the homeland communities got the bonus of being able to invest $118 million. The Abbott government says everyone has to be part of its harsh, cruel budget and share the pain. But that is not true; it still wants to continue with its paid parental leave scheme for the wealthy.

Last week we had the Productivity Commission report, which shows little improvement in key areas of Aboriginal disadvantage. But that does not stop the Abbott government from ripping millions of dollars from homeland communities in Western Australia, which, according to Premier Barnett, means that over half of those communities are now under threat of closure.

The Barnett has copped criticism over this announcement, and rightly so. My Labor colleagues caught him out when they visited those homeland communities. Premier Barnett, with his he-knows-best attitude, did not bother to visit. But Ben Wyatt and Josie Farrer did visit. A growing body of academic research over the past 30 years has indicated that life at homelands—'outstations' might be a better word—in health outcomes, livelihoods, social cohesion and housing conditions has been worse than in larger communities. Pat Dodson, a Yawuru man and a well-respected Aboriginal leader, came out this week and said it as it really when he said we would create an internal group of displaced persons. He said:

You'd have displaced Aboriginal people from their homelands or their traditional country, relocated ... on to lands and into places that are not necessarily country that they identify with or have an affiliation [with] … and to be mixed among peoples who they may or may not have good or lasting relationships with.

He went on to say:

There's some kind of assumption that by a process of osmosis, people will be absorbed into the mainstream of Western-life …

Even the Barnett government has it confused. The Premier said communities with less than five people living in them were on his target list. At the very same time, his Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in the Legislative Council was saying something quite different. He was saying that it was absolutely nonsensical that communities with five people or less would be closed. So here we have the biggest bungle we have seen which will impact on the lives of Aboriginal people if the Abbott and Barnett governments do not get their acts together. I am saying that Aboriginal people need to be treated like every other Australian and that either the Abbott government or the Barnett government needs to put the municipal services in place and respect the rights of Aboriginal people.

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

I rise tonight to speak about the failure of the government and the failure of the self-proclaimed Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs to properly address the disadvantage in Aboriginal communities. The government have ripped over half a billion dollars in funding out of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programs, they have failed to include justice targets in the Closing the Gap strategy and they stand silent on the proposed closures of remote communities in my home state of Western Australia.

The Indigenous Advancement Strategy started as a complete mess and has continued in that way. I have been extremely concerned about the process of the Indigenous Advancement Strategy ever since it was announced. I have asked many questions in estimates to try and find out how the process would operate, how it was put in place, who was consulted and how the granting process was continuing. The announcement earlier this week that the government needed to extend the period for funding applications for the IAS was an inevitable outcome of the flawed process. Community organisations and service providers have been deeply concerned by the new funding application process implemented under the advancement strategy. The combination of cutting so many programs, the tight time frames and the application process changes has put a lot of pressure on organisations, as has been shown by the large number of applications, the quality of the applications and the fact that many organisations have even not applied. Even more concerning is the unwillingness of some organisations to speak out about the government for fear that their funding would be affected and they would not get their funding application through the process.

Given the flaws in this process that we have seen, it is inevitable that the government would be faced with the choice of either extending the funding application process or seeing vital service providers close their doors. While this extension from the government is important, it is only a last-minute reprieve for a short time in that organisations have no certainty of what happens after that.

Organisations and programs that are relying on this process play an essential role in communities and in people's lives. They deserve to be treated with more respect than this process has shown them. They have staffing and resources allocation that are extremely important where decisions have to be made and these are all under a cloud of uncertainty that this government has created.

The government needs to rethink this process urgently and develop a process that delivers vital community driven services and supports. Nobody disputes the importance of ensuring that funding is linked to outcomes that genuinely help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. But this process has failed. There was no assessment of the effectiveness of the previous programs or what did or did not work. It was simply an efficiency cut, put across the board.

The Prime Minister needs reminding how important it is that we get this right. He need look no further than the Productivity Commission's report Overcoming indigenous disadvantage. The report shows that self-harm, chronic disease, alcohol abuse and disability are all significant areas where the gap has not been closed. Cutting funding from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programs will only compound these problems.

There must be an end to the policies that come from the top down and on which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have not had a say in developing. This has been no more clearly illustrated than just today by Dr Howard Bath, the Northern Territory Children's Commissioner, where he talked about school attendance and the need for community ownership and community driven programs.

If we are going to make significant progress in closing the gap we need to invest, not cut programs, as the government has done with this year's budget—for example, cuts to legal aid, the family violence program and the language program. These are all programs that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Mr Mick Gooda, has highlighted in his social justice report that has in fact been tabled today. He points out many of the problems that are faced as a result of the government's budget and the problems with the Indigenous Advancement Strategy.

I will leave the last words in this speech to the social justice commissioner, who has articulated in his just released report his concerns over the budget and the lack of community engagement, by quoting what he said:

Overall, this upheaval and lack of clarity is deeply worrying and is causing widespread uncertainty and stress, particularly among our communities.

I could not put it better than that.