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

On behalf of the Prime Minister, I table the Closing the gap: Prime Minister's report 2016 and the accompanying ministerial statement. I seek leave to move a motion relating to the documents.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the speaking times relating to a motion to be moved to the document shall not be more than 10 minutes and that standing order 169, relating to the total time for debate on the motion, shall not apply.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the documents.

Firstly, I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, and pay my respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across the whole country, and their elders past and present.

I speak today as a senator for the Northern Territory, where 30 per cent of the population is Indigenous. But I also speak as Leader of the National Party in the Senate, a party whose members and senators represent many of the largest Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in the country—tragically, in a conventional sense, some of the poorest. And of course I speak as the Minister for Indigenous Affairs.

In presenting this year's Closing the gap report, the Prime Minister spoke of his respect for the endurance of the oldest continuing culture on earth. He acknowledged that we—as a nation—have not always shown genuine respect for the diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders' cultures, languages and experiences; nor for the 'humanity and imagination' of the First Australians. There is no doubt that that is absolutely true.

We can also acknowledge that a lot has changed in the 10 years since the Close the Gap campaign was launched, when then Prime Minister Rudd acknowledged the importance of addressing Indigenous disadvantage by providing an annual report to parliament. I am pleased that this annual focus on Indigenous affairs has continued to this day as a bipartisan commitment. I believe that we all in this place and the other place—and, I would hope, all Australians—remain determined to turn the hopes and aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders into a reality. The coalition government has committed to improving engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. As the Prime Minister said, we will do with, not do to.

I want to use this opportunity to thank those that have been working with us and share our commitment to improving the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across the country. In representative bodies around the country, bodies like the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council and the Torres Strait Regional Authority; in cultural leadership, from Murdi Paaki to the Dilak in north-east Arnhem Land; and in service providers like Winun Ngari in Broome and the Arnhem Land progress association, we have some of the most committed and hardworking organisations and individuals.

I want to thank everyone who is part of our efforts and everyone who has taken the time to welcome me to their community. Since the beginning of last year, I have visited more than 70 remote communities on almost 100 occasions and I can tell you there is real sense of change occurring and, in many communities, optimism for the future.

People have been telling us for a long time that closing the gap is not just about the numbers and momentum; it is about 'how' you get it done. We must continue to work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, not for them; and we must continue our efforts to work locally. This has been a major change under this government. When government and communities are working well together, there are marked improvements in education attainment, in employment, economic participation and community safety.

As always this year's report is a frank assessment of our progress. It acknowledges our achievements and identifies areas where we need to accelerate our efforts. There has been mixed progress on the targets. For instance, the target to halve the gap in child mortality by 2018 is on track. This report, however, also outlines the remaining challenges ahead. For instance, although there have been long-term improvements in Indigenous mortality rates, the life expectancy gap of around 10 years remains unacceptably wide and I am concerned that this target will not be met by 2031. We need to do more.

In education, one group that I have enjoyed working with over the past year has been our school attendance officers and supervisors. They are motivated, hardworking community members who ensure children go to school as part of the Remote School Attendance Strategy, and their hard work is paying off. In Northern Territory and Queensland government RSAS schools, the number of students attending was nine per cent higher in term 2, 2015 than it was at the same time in 2013. Obviously, we still have some way to go in education.

Reading and numeracy targets also show mixed results. But four of the eight measurements for students achieving national minimum reading and numeracy standards are on track. And the year 3 reading target is very close to being achieved. This should give us all hope that the target can be met and it should focus our effort—across all political parties, across all levels of government—to ensure it is met.

On any given school day, the majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students are attending school and we can now say that more of these students are attending school than before our Remote School Attendance Strategy commenced. This is an achievement that should not be underestimated. More young people are also staying at school and making their families proud, placing the target to halve the gap in year 12 attainment by 2020 on track.

This is crucial to ensure that in the generations to come we have more and more Indigenous students finishing year 12 and continuing on to university, to ultimately become the professionals of the future—the doctors, nurses, lawyers, engineers, nutritionists, dentists and eye specialists, all professions which play such a crucial role in closing the gap. We remain committed to the scholarship and mentoring programs that will help more people stay with education right through to year 12.

Another target I hope we can achieve soon is that of early childhood education. The target to have 95 per cent of four-year-olds enrolled by 2025 is within reach

We need to make meeting this target a whole-of-community effort, by using the Community Development Program, linking in with the school to create a clear pathway for a child's education and by using whatever other resources we can to make this happen. I am convinced that education is the way to prosperity. I have met many people for whom education paved the way to a job, respect, dignity, aspirations and financial security.

Another life-changing target is the employment gap. It has felt in the past like we are taking one step forward and two steps backwards in relation to jobs. We are more than aware that there is a need to accelerate progress against the target to halve the gap in employment by 2018. But I am optimistic that the significant reforms that have been made in our jobs and other programs will help halve the jobs gap, because we are beginning to see results. Since September 2013, the employment initiatives in my portfolio have supported 36,650 job placements. That is over 50 jobs every day. In our 29 Vocational Training and Employment Centres, 3,639 people have commenced jobs, and we are on track to reach our target of 5,000 jobs through the VTEC program. In the Employment Parity Initiative, which works with major employers to get their own workforce to parity and beyond, we have already signed 10 contracts for more than 6,800 jobs, and there are more are on the way, putting us on track to achieve the goal of an additional 20,000 Indigenous people in jobs by 2020.

The new Community Development Program is underway and is beginning to gain traction to get people into work. At the start of this year almost 75 per cent of CDP job seekers required to attend Work for the Dole activities were in fact placed in activities. That is a huge increase, and I hope it signals a return to the success of the old CDEP when most people in communities were engaged and undertaking activities that helped build personal, family and community pride.

Just last week I was on Elcho Island to see the progress on the rebuild of Galiwinku, 12 months on from Cyclone Lam. It is a real credit to the local community to see so many local community members involved in the rebuild. They are building the houses the community needs, and they are building a future for themselves—a future in which they have the skills and practical experience needed to secure a real job—a real future. The rebuild includes local businesses like Gumatj, who have won the contract to build roof trusses. It is because of efforts like this that we are already seeing a steady increase in real pathways to employment for remote job seekers.

Since 1 July our procurement policy has seen 116 separate contracts worth about $40 million awarded to 52 separate Indigenous businesses. That is compared with about $6 million in procurement from Indigenous businesses in all of 2012-13. With a continued effort, this will build huge momentum amongst the Indigenous business sector and see more businesses opening up, and, as a result, employing more and more Indigenous people.

Other reforms are driving success for Aboriginal and Islander people and businesses in the mainstream economy, including native title administration, township leasing and opportunities presented in the northern Australia white paper. None of these initiatives are a quick fix. But they reflect our absolute determination to find enduring solutions to complex problems. As the late poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal from Queensland once said, the 'present generation' is 'responsible for the present and the future'. She added that it is our 'responsibility to change things for the better'.

Closing the gap is everyone's responsibility. And we will endeavour to get even better at closing those gaps in a way that works with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. The 'closing the gap' report will continue to hold all of us to account for that better present and ideal future.

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

I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and pay my respects to elders past and present.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were the first lawmakers in this land, but for too long, their successors—the lawmakers in this place and in state and territory parliaments—have often let Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders down. That much is clear from the Closing the gap: Prime Minister's report 2016.

I will start by recalling the origin of this report. It had its origin in the meeting of the Council of Australian Governments—the COAG—on 20 December 2007. At that meeting, first ministers of this nation agreed to close the gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and other Australians by embracing six key targets: closing the life expectancy gap within a generation; halving the gap in mortality rates for Indigenous children under five within a decade; ensuring all Indigenous four-years-olds in remote communities have access to early childhood education within five years; halving the gap for Indigenous students in reading, writing and numeracy within a decade; halving the gap for Indigenous people aged 20 to 24 in year 12 attainment or equivalent attainment rates by 2020; and halving the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a decade.

In February 2008 the then Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, restated his government's commitment to closing the gap, during his apology to the stolen generations. The following February, again at the initiative of Prime Minister Rudd, the first 'closing the gap' report was delivered to the national parliament.

Ahead of today's debate, I went back and had a look at that first report to remind myself what that report said and how it said it. I was struck by how candid it was—how free it was from the self-justification, the blame shifting and spin that characterises so much of government self-reporting. The report said this:

In remote areas, successive governments have failed to properly coordinate their efforts and to fund them adequately, resulting in acute and visible need. In urban and regional areas, services provided for all Australians have not been accessed by or effectively delivered to Indigenous people. Blurred responsibilities have allowed Commonwealth, state and territory governments to avoid accountability for their failures.

It is a sentence worth repeating:

Blurred responsibilities have allowed Commonwealth, state and territory governments to avoid accountability for their failures.

It also said governments must be accountable for improving outcomes for Indigenous Australians and noted the COAG Reform Council would monitor progress. That was the first report, and today we are discussing the eighth, and I do have to say that there are some aspects of this report that trouble me—they trouble me greatly.

I am, of course, as we all are, concerned about the lack of progress towards many of the Closing the Gap Targets. I will turn to some of these in a moment.

I am also troubled by changes to the report itself, because its tone, its language and maybe even its purpose appear to have shifted. Nowhere in this year's report do we find reference to failure, even where governments' failure to make progress towards agreed and measurable targets is manifest. Instead, the Prime Minister exhorts us to focus on 'encouraging progress'. We learn he is heartened by 'positive gains'. In his foreword, the Prime Minister tells us how proud he is of jobs generated by the government's Indigenous Advancement Strategy—devoid of acknowledgement that the target to halve the gap in employment by 2018 is not on track.

The report notes that 'overall progress has been varied and that meeting many of the Closing the Gap targets remains a significant challenge'. But instead of acknowledging the Commonwealth's critical responsibility for failing to make progress on targets, the report reiterates the roles of the states and territories, saying:

State and territory governments will continue to have a critical role in making progress against the targets.

I again seek to recall the words in the first Closing the Gap report, which remind us that blurred responsibilities have allowed Commonwealth, state and territory governments to avoid accountability for their failures. The Closing the Gap report must be an honest reckoning of progress made towards eliminating the disadvantage of our First Peoples. Where progress is not being made on critical targets, the Closing the Gap report should not gild the lily. It should not shift the blame, offer excuses or promote programs that yield little more than anecdotes for inclusion in a Prime Minister's foreword.

Poor progress should make government uncomfortable. It should make all of us uncomfortable. The very least we owe Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians is some honesty on the progress we are making in key areas of life expectancy, infant and child mortality, early childhood education, literacy and numeracy skills, school completion rates, and employment outcomes. This is not a partisan point I am making. Notwithstanding my manifest and many differences with the former Prime Minister, I would say that last year's Closing the Gap report presented by then Prime Minister Abbott was in many ways a more honest document than the one we are debating today. In that report Prime Minister Abbott told parliament that, despite good intentions and considerable investment by successive governments, progress in meeting targets had been far too slow. Twelve months ago, Mr Abbott expressed disappointment that most Closing the Gap targets were not on track. The table in last year's report that illustrated progress against the targets appears to have been omitted from this year's report. This year, progress against targets is buried in the text of the report, and more often than not justified or excused lest any reader seek to hold anyone to account.

Closing the gap in life expectancy was the first target on the COAG target list agreed in 2007. It lies at the very heart of the Closing the Gap project. The 2016 report confirms we are not on track to close the life expectancy gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and other Australians by 2031. That is a national shame. The gap and the failure to make progress towards a generational target set more than two decades hence shames all of us. For reasons I have already stated, I am not surprised to find that, contrary to previous years, life expectancy is no longer the first target subject to reporting this year. The target to halve the gap in employment by 2018 is also not on track. In the 2016 report this fact is accompanied by the statement:

… although no progress has been made against the target since 2008, Indigenous employment rates are considerably higher now than they were in the early 1990s.

The report includes an Indigenous unemployment table incorporating statistics from 1994—13 years before the COAG goals were set. It seems as if whoever was drafting this report was wanting to make a qualification, even if the qualification, frankly, was irrelevant or related to a time long past.

In relation to the failure to make progress towards the employment target, the government continues to make excuses, asking the reader to ignore the impact of the decision to axe the Community Development Employment Program, or CDEP, in 2015, and telling us:

To get a more accurate sense of the employment gap, it is better to focus on the non-CDEP employment rate and how this has changed over time. While this rate fell between 2008 and 2012-13, the decline was not statistically significant.

The 2016 report shows little progress towards the goal of closing the gap in school attendance by 2018. It reports mixed progress on the target to halve the gap in reading and numeracy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students by 2018, achieving national minimum standards on track in just four of eight areas.

The report notes that COAG has renewed the target of ensuring access to early childhood education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander four-year-olds. It notes that the previous target related to access for four-year-olds in remote communities 'expired unmet' in 2013, but does not say why. And nowhere in the report are the consequences of the coalition's decision to cut half a billion dollars from Indigenous services and programs in its first budget explained; nor the decision to make additional cuts worth tens of millions from indexation pauses, including $17.8 million, confirmed by PM&C in an estimates hearing today; or the decision to sack hundreds of Indigenous public servants; or the decision to axe the COAG Reform Council. There is a lot left unexplained. It does show some welcome progress. It is a good thing that the target of halving the gap in child mortality by 2018 is on track and the target of halving the gap in year 12 attainment is also on track. These are good outcomes. One addition that should be made, which the Leader of the Opposition has spoken about, is the target that tackles the increasing incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Mr Shorten has spoken about in the other place.

Successes and failures on the path to closing the gap should be reported objectively. Success should be celebrated. Failure should be addressed, and it must not be explained away with irrelevant data or hollow words. Closing the gap matters too much for that.

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

Before I commence, I too would like to acknowledge the Ngunawal and the Ngambri people—the traditional owners of the land on which we meet—pay my respects to elders past, present and future and acknowledge that this was and always will be Aboriginal land.

I rise today to speak to the Prime Minister's Closing the Gap report 2016 and his statement on that report. I would like to note that this is the 10th anniversary of the Close the Gap campaign. The Prime Minister's report clearly shows that we are not making enough progress. We are not on target to close the gap. We have not made significant progress on life expectancy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples since the last report. Although we have made very welcome progress on two of the targets—reducing infant mortality and school leavers look like they are on track—targets for life expectancy, reading and numeracy, school attendance, and employment are not on track or show mixed progress at best. It is clear that if we do not improve what we are doing we will not close the gap.

The Australian Reconciliation Barometer still shows that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples experience high levels of racial prejudice and discrimination: 33 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples reported experiencing verbal racial abuse and 62 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander respondents believe prejudice is high. Tragically, things are getting worse in many areas. We know that Aboriginal children are nearly 10 times more likely to be in out-of-home care and the number of Aboriginal children going into out-of-home care is increasing. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults are imprisoned at a rate 13 times higher than non-Indigenous adults. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men are twice as likely to be in prison as in university.

In this country, we still have unfinished business. Sovereignty was never ceded in this country. Sovereignty and treaties are still rarely spoken about outside of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, and that has to change. If we are going to achieve constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, which I know many people want to achieve, we need to look at this issue of unfinished business as well. I contend that unless we deal with this unfinished business, we will not close the gap.

Each year, the Close the Gap Campaign Steering Committee reports on progress, through the Progress andpriorities report, which has in the past been known as the shadow report, and each year I table in this place a copy of that report. I seek leave to table that report. I also seek leave to table Reconciliation's Australia's report The state of reconciliation in Australia: our history, our story, our future.

Leave granted.

The Progress andpriorities reportsays:

… progress against this headline indicator of population health has been difficult to measure but appears to have been minimal. While there is some good news to report, improvements are yet to be reported at this high level. Both absolute and relative gains are needed in future years.

The report also makes several key recommendations. They include that political parties—that is this place, folks—commit to:

Make Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing a major priority for their election policy platforms, and fund the Implementation Plan for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan (2013–2023) until it expires in 2023.

It also recommends that we adopt a justice target, which is critical when you think about the incarceration rates that I have just gone through, and that we adopt a target for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with a disability. I have asked the Social Justice Commissioner some questions about this in estimates and talked to the Disability Discrimination Commissioner as well, who articulated that in fact Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with a disability suffer double discrimination and prejudice through being Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and also having a disability.

The report also talks about the need for    Aboriginal controlled health services to be the preferred approach for Aboriginal primary health care and planning, and says that there should be a national inquiry into institutional racism in healthcare settings. I urge you to look at The state of reconciliation in Australiareport. You would be quite distressed to see some of the figures for discrimination reported in some of our institutions in this country. The report also commented and made recommendations on the disastrous Indigenous Advancement Strategy changes. The report states:

Another area of concern for the Campaign Steering Committee is the impact of the Indigenous Advancement Strategy (IAS) on the social determinants of health.

More than any single policy, it is critical that we work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. In his speech, the Prime Minister quoted advice he received from Dr Chris Sarra on how to truly make a difference in policy. One of the pieces of advice he received he said was very important. It was:

Do things with us, not to us.

It is very good advice, and I wish politicians and decision makers would listen to it and take it to heart. Sadly, all too often the government—I have to admit not just this government—has done things to Aboriginal people and not worked with them. This is a consistent pattern of doing things to, not working with. Too often, government policies have left Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples worse off, with critical gaps in their services.

The Indigenous Advancement Strategy has been a disaster for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and organisations. We heard about it yet again when the Finance and Public Administration Committee was in Darwin having another hearing on this matter just last week. We heard again of the problems that this has caused. There was no consultation. Mick Gooda, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner highlighted yet again in last year's report and in 2014 the lack of consultation on that program, which, in many cases, took funding off Aboriginal organisations and gave it to non-Aboriginal organisations. We had funding taken from Aboriginal legal services. Some of it has been given back. We heard in Darwin last week that funding is not assured for many of the programs that deliver critical legal supports and services to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community and that that funding runs out in June this year. It is time that that changed. They need long-term funding.

The Northern Territory intervention is one of the most recent glaring examples of doing things to Aboriginal people, and it is still having ongoing ramifications. It is still in place in another guise, called Stronger Futures. The final evaluation of that report shows quite clearly the failure of that policy. The cashless welfare card—income management on steroids—is yet another example of doing things to Aboriginal communities. We heard on Friday all about the Community Development Program, which many Aboriginal communities have been told is CDEP coming back

Well, it is not. Be very concerned about that particular policy. These policy failures make things worse. They have a real impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in this country, who face the challenges of decades of inequality and injustice.

As we work to close the gap, we need to talk about reconciliation in Australia. I have just tabled The state of reconciliation in Australia report. I urge all people to read that report. Again, the things they talk about are critical if we are going to close the gap. They talk about five dimensions that need to be considered: race relations, equality and equity, unity, institutional integrity and historical acceptance—do you hear a theme here? This is a theme that we need to be working on. We need to be addressing all of those issues if we are going to close the gap.

We do not need shock jocks getting on the radio and saying that we need another Stolen Generation. That is ignorance, and a complete lack of understanding of the current situation facing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in this country and the way that Aboriginal children are taken disproportionately into care without looking at the broader context and without providing the necessary supports that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders need. They do not need chopping and changing programs, failing to address the issues around race relations, institutional integrity, equality and equity, unity, historical acceptance and realising that we have unfinished business in this country that is critical to address.

I look forward to hearing and seeing a much better report next year on this vitally important issue.

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

I acknowledge the Ngambri and Ngunnawal people, the custodians of the Canberra region. I acknowledge my elders past and present. I begin by thanking the Prime Minister for beginning his first Close the Gap speech of 10 February in the language of the Aboriginal traditional custodians of this region. It was a remarkable thing. But what is not remarkable—and most of us in this chamber know this—is that we are on track to fall short again on almost all of our Closing the Gap targets. So we need to get real about what we are doing.

Today I had the pleasure of attending the National Press Club to hear eminent journalist Stan Grant give an address on his family's story—both Aboriginal and Irish, yet so Australian. His story is so familiar to me and to virtually every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, because we share the same history. I echo Stan's words that all Aboriginal people in Australia continue to live with the weight of our history, we bear the burden of our survival, we share common wounds and it is unbelievable that we have been classified at least 64 times by government as half-castes, quarter-castes, octoroons or coloureds—the list goes on and on.

I come before you today not to quote statistics but to speak about human citizens, citizens of this country. I want to share with you my concerns as to why the whole Close the Gap campaign has effectively stalled. For 10 years, the infamous talking stick has been going around and around in circles, so my question is: who in this chamber will stand up, step out of the circle and begin a brand new dialogue with Aboriginal people?

Today, I want people in this chamber to know what it is like to walk in the shoes of an Aboriginal person. I want you to be able to see through our lenses, not yours. My uncle Patrick Dodson spoke wisely when he stated:

There's a lot of aspiration and maybe good intention, but unless you get participation from Indigenous entities at a local level and community level, it's not going to work.

Aboriginal people come here year after year with the solutions—that is right, the solutions. They continuously own the problems that have been caused by failed government policies and decisions. What sickens me is when our mob finally get a program up and running that is benefitting all in their community and their children, the rug is ripped out from underneath them, with funds being removed without due notice.

There is no denying the issues we face, but there is also no denying the government's nitpicking and micromanaging of our lives. We are at a crossroads and it is time to reassess. Let's stop with examining the oppressed; instead, we should be examining the oppressor. Our lives are not expendable, and we need to acknowledge the reality of how our decisions here in this place affect our families, children and communities back home. Enough of the rhetoric. We need to move forward together side by side and hand in hand to get it right for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and communities—and for all of us. After all, we are Australians.

We cannot keep coming back year after year nodding our heads and being a part of the problem. If the Close the Gap campaign is at its use-by date, then, Prime Minister, you said:

It is equally important we listen to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people when they tell us what is working and what needs to change. It’s our role as government to provide an environment that enables Indigenous leaders to develop local solutions. Again, Mr Speaker, it is time for Governments to ‘do things with aboriginal people, not do things to them’.

I say this, Prime Minister: imagine if all 339 recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody had been implemented, then how many lives could have been saved by the wisdom in this report. Imagine, Prime Minister, if the $245 million spent on remote policing in the Northern Territory was instead spent on our kids and early childhood programs, instead of a mere $13.42 million.

Imagine if Aboriginal children could have access to excellent educational and innovative programs irrespective of where they live, whilst maintaining their languages and cultural identity; then an Aboriginal child would be proud knowing that their own identity is valued this country. Imagine if Aboriginal peoples' incarceration rates were comparable to the general population; then the imprisonment rates for young Aboriginals would not be higher than school retention rates. Imagine if we had a national approach that had consensus from the states and territories for a grassroots driven and culturally appropriate out-of-home care program for our children in care. Our children should not become statistics in a flawed system.

Imagine if all of us here in parliament did more than just nod at the United Nation's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Imagine if we actually acted on the articles of this declaration and implemented policies reflecting them; then perhaps our priorities would lead us to maintain the dignity and aspirations of Australia's first peoples. Imagine if the government let Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples assert their rights to participate in decisions that directly affect our lives and imagine if the protection of their lands, waters and culture were seen as our inherent responsibilities by everyone in this country. Imagine.

Imagine, Prime Minister, if Labor's national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicide prevention strategy of 2013 was enacted; perhaps we could have saved the lives of those 300-plus Aboriginal people who took theirs. Imagine if Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people could create their own jobs with their own dreams and aspirations of what will work and sustain their community and cultural values. Imagine if we could all understand and respect that healing takes time—often, it takes decades. Imagine if Australian's black history was intertwined with white Australian history so that it was all one Australian history. We know that this country is not fair and that we are not all treated equally. But instead of criticizing this inequality, we must embrace and respect everything that makes us different. This can be an even greater country. We cannot change where we were born, or the circumstances in which we were born into, but we can work together to overcome the challenges that stand before us. If we cannot do this then the only thing we have to look forward to is more failure. Finally, I would like to remind this place of another time, in the past, when another senator gave his maiden speech, because despite the intervening decades, not much has changed. He said:

…all within me that is Aboriginal yearns to be heard as the voice of the indigenous people of Australia. For far too long we have been crying out and far too few have heard us.

…   …   …

It would be an understatement to say that the lot of fellow Aboriginals is not a particularly happy one. We bear emotional scars - the young no less than the older.

…   …   …

…my people were shot, poisoned, hanged and broken in spirit until they became refugees in their own land.

…   …   …

Whilst I commend the Government for its awareness of the need for improved programmes of housing, health and education, I want to take this opportunity to point out that in common with all citizens, Aborigines of Australia are most certainly not looking for handouts. They have suffered enough from the stigma of paternalism, however well intentioned it may have been.

Those were the words of the late Senator Neville Bonner, quoted from his first speech, in September 1971—the year I was born—and here, today, we are still debating the very same single issue. Today, Stan Grant said much the same at the National Press Club. For the betterment of this country let us all strive for a different story at next year's 'closing the gap' report.

Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to the debate on the response to the Closing the gap: Prime Minister's report 2016. In doing so, I first acknowledge the traditional owners, both past and present, on the land on which this parliament meets. We all know the horrific statistics, the disadvantages and the injustices that afflict and torment Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people—the sum of which produces a reality, which is our national shame—namely, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on average die decades earlier than non-Indigenous Australians.

This Prime Minister's 2016 report on progress on closing the gap does nothing to lessen our national shame. The difference in average mortality rates has become known as 'the gap' and the question everyone has been trying to find an answer for is: how do we close the gap? How do we stop Aboriginal Australians from dying sooner than non-Indigenous Australians? Apart from the obvious calls for better Indigenous health, housing, education, job training, work opportunities, social condition and prison reform, over recent times many high-profile Indigenous leaders have focused our thoughts on policy creation, and I agree with them: Indigenous people should create Indigenous policy. Imagine if great Indigenous Australians like Stan Grant and Chris Sarra held the balance of power in this Senate, and in every vote in this chamber they were able to make a speech in this Senate and then cast a vote as their consciences dictated, not how their Liberal, Labor or Greens party bosses wanted them to vote. What a mighty nation we would actually become. How grown-up we would seem. And then over time, with greater Indigenous involvement in government policy making, credible and workable solutions will be found to close the gap.

The key question is: how do we encourage natural Indigenous leaders and great Australians like Stan Grant and Chris Sarra to become involved in political parties, and then help them become elected into this place? And it has to be this place, not an ATSIC, or some other symbolic Indigenous group, because it is here in this Senate, in this parliament, that the policymaking and deals happen that affect Australia's Indigenous people. It takes a rare Indigenous person, and luckily we have a few of them in this parliament, to put up with all of the BS and corruption that automatically comes with the baggage of all Australian political parties.

If you do not have the ability to introduce private members bills into this parliament, then you really are not at the cutting edge of policy making in this country. That is why I say we should look to New Zealand, Canada and some states of America, where Indigenous people have had the ability to submit their bills to their parliaments and as a result have managed over time to close the gap. Therefore, today, I will again repeat an offer to this chamber I made about a different approach to closing the gap between the first people of Australia and those who joined them from countries all over the world. This parliament that we serve can be overwhelming, if you let it, because of its size and grandeur. This Senate can intimidate and frighten with is complicated rules and procedures. However, stripped away to its bare essentials this is a place where we make decisions on how to share Australia's national wealth and prosperity with its people, through argument and debate. Put simply, we sit at our nation's table, have a conversation and we carve up the pie. We decide how much of the pie each Australian receives and how it is eaten. How can Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians ever have any chance of receiving a fair share of the pie and determine how it is eaten if they do not have a permanent voice at our nation's table. My message today is simple: if you want Australia's first people to have a fair share of our national wealth and a proper say in how it is spent then every piece of legislation that passes through this parliament must be scrutinised and spoken to from an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander point of view.

This democratic objective can be achieved in number of ways. We could establish parliamentary committees that review all legislation and ask the questions: one, will this be good or bad for first Australians; and, two, how can we improve this legislation to help Indigenous people? The other way to guarantee that every piece of Australia's national wealth is wrapped up in the documents we consider in this Senate, and is spoken to by an Indigenous voice, is to establish dedicated Indigenous seats in this parliament. This is not a new concept. A number of progressive countries have already established dedicated Indigenous seats in their parliaments. Our brothers and sisters across the ditch in New Zealand established dedicated Maori seats in 1867; and, importantly, in countries that have dedicated Indigenous seats the gap in mortality rates between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people is lower than Australia's gap, and it is lower by a long mile. In 2007, an international health and human rights research article, which examined the human development index of Indigenous people in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, showed that Australia was the worst-performing country and the only country that did not have dedicated Indigenous seats.

Sitting suspended from 18:30 to 19:30

The study confirmed the Maori mortality gap of 8.5 years and closing is not as large as the gap for Australia's first people at 23.2 years and widening.

If two or three per cent of Australia's population is Indigenous then I cannot see why two or three per cent of our seats in parliament cannot be designated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander seats. This one change—dedicated Indigenous seats—while not a silver bullet, if international experience is to be valued and respected, will do more to close the gap than any other symbolic or practical measure that has previously been put before the Australian people.

Recently there has been a public debate about who is and who is not an Indigenous person. An article in The Australian by Michael McKenna says:

A landmark finding disqualifying a claim of Aboriginality by a former senior NSW public servant has led to indigenous leaders calling for tougher identity checks amid warnings that “fake Aborigines’’ are involved in widespread rorting of benefits, government jobs and contracts.

The politically sensitive issue dominated a meeting of the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council late last year to discuss a new commonwealth procurement policy that at least 3 per cent of all government contracts should be allocated to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses.

A formal submission has since been made by the council to Malcolm Turnbull’s office to abolish the practice of local Aboriginal land councils signing off on claims—often on the basis of a single statutory declaration—with power given to native title groups to use certified genealogists.

Council chairman Warren Mundine and Queensland Aboriginal leader Stephen Hagan, who until recently headed a council of Australia’s Federal Court-vetted native title organisations, said the existing system to approve claims of Aboriginality was outdated and being rorted. “You can go to any town in the nation with a significant indigenous population and you’ll see not one, but numerous ‘white blackfellas’ falsely claiming Aboriginality to get jobs and benefits that should go to our people,’’ Mr Hagan said.

In Tasmania there has been a similar debate on who is Indigenous and who is not. The fact remains that the Commonwealth recognises about 25,000 Tasmanians who are indeed Indigenous and the state government recognises only 6,000. This is because the Tasmanian state system for Indigenous recognition for decades was corrupted by the TAC and the Mansell family, who were allowed under extraordinary state laws to be the final judges of people's Indigenous heritage. The Mansells, with successive state Labor, Greens and Liberal governments, have rorted and corrupted the system of identifying Indigenous people in Tasmania, even denying hundreds of Indigenous Tasmanians who had submitted themselves to scrutiny from a federal tribunal in 2002.

Over the decades, millions of dollars have gone missing or been denied to tens of thousands of Indigenous Tasmanians, causing the gap in Indigenous disadvantage to widen. I condemn the politicians who have stood by and allowed this rort to happen and congratulate the whistleblowers for the courage they have shown to speak out about these injustices.

David Leyonhjelm (NSW, Liberal Democratic Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I was a kid in primary school, I shared classrooms with kids from Aboriginal families. By the time I got to high school, those kids were no longer there. Not one of them went on to high school with me and my peers. That was over 50 years ago, but little has changed since. Too many Aboriginal kids see no reason to go to school, and neither do their families. Too many suffer from diseases that the rest of us regard as a thing of the past. Too many live in households where their diet comprises chips and soft drink. And too many never become productive members of society when they grow up.

Considerable blame for this lies with our governments. With the support of people who ought to know better, governments maintain policies that foster dysfunctional Aboriginal communities, attitudes and behaviours. In doing so, they are holding back improvements in Aboriginal living standards. The gap is not narrowing. At its heart is a preference for fawning and hand wringing rather than pragmatism, for sounding good rather than doing good, for empty symbolism rather than practical change and for truthiness rather than truth.

The gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous living standards is largely explained by the poor outcomes in rural and remote Aboriginal communities. This is where Aborigines go to school the least, where employment is rare and where we see the most hospitalisation from assaults and substance abuse. And it is where we see the most appalling family violence, child abuse and neglect.

To their credit, many Aborigines are voting with their feet and getting out of these hell holes. May there be many more. But the government holds back this exodus with programs like the Community Development Program. This gives Aborigines more money, with fewer conditions compared to the dole, so long as they stay in these dysfunctional communities. Under the Community Development Program, Aborigines are supposed to do some community service during the week. Decisions about what this involves are devolved to self-appointed Aboriginal leaders and can entail tasks like mowing the yard of these same Aboriginal leaders. It is neither a job nor preparation for a real job.

The Closing the gap report re-affirmed the squalor of rural and remote Aboriginal communities. But the government's response is to redouble already failing efforts, repeating the mantra of local empowerment. As it stands, local empowerment is a big part of the problem. The local Aboriginal leaders who act like bosses under the Community Development Program have no expertise or qualifications in preparing people for real employment, have no track record in improving the lot of Aboriginal communities and, in many instances, were not chosen by those they lord over. What is more, as the program boosts their status and power they have a strong incentive to keep it going and preserve their fiefdoms.

The Closing the gap report makes little effort to scrutinise policies affecting Aborigines. For a semblance of scrutiny you have to go back to 2010, when the accountants in the Department of Finance wrote their Strategic Review of Indigenous Expenditure. This was only made public thanks to freedom of information laws. It uncovered poor governance and leadership in rural and remote Aboriginal communities and called for government intervention to help Aborigines leave unsustainable and dysfunctional communities.

But this message fell on deaf ears. The government continues to treat Aborigines in rural and remote areas like museum exhibits, with policies that perpetuate violence, child abuse and neglect. Governments regularly use language that casts Aboriginal offenders as victims. The Prime Minister said:

When young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men see jail as a rite of passage, we have failed to give them a place in society, in our community, and an alternative pathway where they can thrive.

I accept that support is sometimes needed to remain within the law. But people can rise above their upbringing and anyone can reject violent behaviour. It is irresponsible for the Prime Minister to wave away the notion of personal responsibility. Governments prop up dysfunctional behaviour by having Indigenous sentencing courts. These give Aboriginal offenders more options for sentencing, but they have not reduced the high rates of Aboriginal re-offending.

Governments enable child abuse and neglect through their Aboriginal child placement principles. These require child protection departments to consult with Aboriginal organisations prior to the removal of any Aboriginal child, to arrange alternative care with extended family or another local Aboriginal family if possible and to ensure that the child maintains a connection to Aboriginal culture. This results in delays and uncertainty regarding the removal of children at risk, does not necessarily mean the child is any better off and discourages people from reporting abuse and neglect. The idea that a kid is better off growing up illiterate and unhealthy in an Aboriginal household, rather than literate and healthy in a non-Indigenous household, is destructive racism. Irrespective of whether the stolen generation was a result of racism or paternalism, we should not pretend that it is okay to allow kids, Indigenous or not, to remain in situations of neglect and abuse.

Finally, our governments are holding back Aboriginal living standards by propping up dysfunctional attitudes. Governments maintain affirmative action programs, including targets for government employment of Aborigines in the public service and government procurement from designated Aboriginal businesses. These programs extend to anyone who is accepted by Aboriginal elders as being Aboriginal, even fair-skinned people who have had more opportunities than many of their fellow Australians.

Affirmative action programs encourage Aborigines to get ahead through special pleading and they encourage non-Indigenous Australians to view Aborigines as charity cases. Governments tell Aborigines fairy tales, which encourages them to consider themselves special. They say our nation is as old as humanity itself, as if the out-of-Africa thesis were debunked. They say Aborigines were undoubtedly the first Australians, as if they know exactly what happened 40,000 years ago. These comments are not true, but they are 'truthy', in that the speaker desperately wants them to be true. Encouraging Aboriginal exceptionalism with truthiness is a mistake because it risks making Aborigines think the rules for getting ahead that apply to everyone else do not apply to them.

Governments also encourage dysfunctional attitudes by lamenting the injustices done to Aborigines, while failing to note that this refers to previous generations. Many non-Indigenous Australians have ancestors who suffered terrible injustices too. Hanging on to injustices that were not done to you is paralysing and should not be encouraged. Finally, governments routinely tell Aborigines that they are defined by a strong connection to country and culture, so those who do not feel a strong connection to country and culture feel they are not really Aboriginal.

Aboriginal living standards are not improving as they should. We honour Aboriginal culture and want to see it preserved, but we should not expect Aboriginal Australians to endure third-world living, health and education standards in the process. Their culture is not at risk when they own freehold property, when they learn to read and write in English, when they gain a decent education, when they are encouraged to move to where the jobs are, when they get real jobs instead of pretend jobs and when their kids are removed from abuse and neglect.

When refugees come to Australia we expect them to join mainstream Australia. Indeed, we go to great lengths to help them achieve that. The gap would close a lot quicker if we took the same approach to our Indigenous people.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In 2008 the then Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Tom Calma, made a statement in a speech in Brisbane. He said:

Back when Mick Dodson was Social Justice Commissioner in the early 1990s he referred to what he called the ‘industrial deafness’ of the Australian community. By this he meant the phenomena whereby the Australian community had become so accustomed to stories of Indigenous disadvantage that they had become immune to it, and came to expect it.

Over the past decade, the community and government have come to believe that this situation is intractable, too difficult to shift and for some people, the fault of Indigenous peoples themselves.

And at some point, as a nation we stopped believing that equality of opportunity for Indigenous peoples was a realistic goal. And so we stopped trying to achieve it.

In 2008 he made that comment to all of us. It was indeed a challenge, because what we had to do as a community, white and black together, was to say that we were not going to stop trying to change it. Out of that came the Closing the Gap statements.

Out of that challenge came the expectation that there were issues that we could look at clearly and truthfully; we could identify that there is a gap and we could see what we could do together to end that gap in our community. That continues to be the focus of what we do each year when the parliament, as together, talks about what has happened in closing the gap in the previous 12 months. The original theory was that by 2030 we would close the gap and there would be genuine equality, particularly at that time around the issue of health. The genuine focus of the original Closing the Gap process was around ensuring that we would have health equity. To achieve that, there was an acknowledgement that the social determinants of health—education, employment, living standards, safety and opportunity—would be able to be identified and, as we have heard through the contributions this morning, truthfully assessed to see how we could work to ensure that we could make a difference.

There was never an intent of charity. There was never an intent to have some kind of focus in our community on helping people along, on giving people some help along their way to achieve equality. Closing the Gap said that we as a nation expected that everybody in this community would have equality, and we knew—the data was there in 2005, 2006 and onwards—that there was not equality in our community. The reality is that in 2015 there is still not equality. When the report came into our parliament in the previous sitting, leaders of all the political parties got together and said that we had not done well enough. We had information that, on the guidelines that we faced at the time, there were only two on which we were meeting the expectation to achieve equality by 2030. That has caused a great deal of consternation in the community. In fact, my friend Jackie Huggins, in her analysis of what is happening in Australia at the moment, said:

… we do see that there is lack of engagement, not a general commitment to the needs and the aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in their community.

…   …   …

I've worked for many decades now and I can't remember such a low point in our history where our people on the ground are just not getting the services.

That indeed is the telling factor of the Closing the Gap situation as it exists now. We have the challenge now, 10 years down the track, of assessing how far we have gone and what we hope to achieve. It is a pretty sorry process that we face at the moment.

Previous contributors have commented about the way the program is operating now. But I am looking back at the previous Closing the Gap processes in this place, and I have spoken in a number of these sessions. I had a quick look at some of the things I talked about in previous times, one of which was eye health. Tonight upstairs in this place, Vision 2020 is talking about international eye health. In looking at how our aid program can make sure that people in developing countries can achieve effective eye health, we acknowledge in 2015 that one of the original aims of the Closing the Gap program was to identify trachoma in Australia. It was one of the original processes. Where are we 10 years down the track? On the data we have been able to find, we are actually going backwards in this area. We are not effectively looking at the eye health needs of the community. We have a national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health program signed up to by all people in this parliament, but we are not achieving something that was clearly identified 10 years ago as one of the things that had to be faced immediately. Are we actually saying that we are not achieving it? We are not even quite saying that. We are saying that we need to do more. We need to move forward. But I do not think we are meeting the challenge that was laid down to us earlier. So I put that into one box. We have not met that process.

Another element of Closing the Gap is incarceration and imprisonment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia. In last year's session on Closing the Gap, I talked about the need to have justice targets in the program. We still have not got overall commitment in this parliament to effective justice targets in our Closing the Gap strategy. We do have the data. This is one area where the data cannot be questioned. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people are 14 times more likely to be in prison than non-Indigenous young people. We have the alarming statistic that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are 34 times more likely to be hospitalised as a result of violence and 11 times more likely to die as a result of family violence. In this case, there is a clear indication that there is a challenge to ensure we have safety in our community, and we are not meeting that target. In fact at this stage we still have not acknowledged in the parliament that there should be justice targets. Our side of the chamber believes there should be. This has not been taken up by the government of today. The community is saying this is something they find to be most important. The parallel report again this year highlights that we need to look at justice targets.

We hear from Aboriginal and Islander people that they want to be engaged; they do not want to have programs imposed on them. There seems to be reluctance in some areas to acknowledge that—even though, consistently through the rhetoric, we talk about working together and working cooperatively. My understanding is that Closing the Gap is a cooperative process where, together in our community, we accept that there needs to be change and we identify how we can ensure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, citizens in our country, have equality of health. Wrapped around the issues of health come all those other things that I mentioned—housing, safety in community, education, employment opportunities. All of these things wrap together to achieve a whole, which is what people were hoping for in 2005, when Tom Calma said:

It is not credible to suggest that one of the wealthiest nations in the world cannot solve a health crisis affecting less than 3% of its citizens.

That was the challenge. We had the opportunity to ensure that we look at our programs, assess those programs, analyse the data and once a year one of the clear commitments is that the parliament then has an opportunity to review what has occurred and to re-assess how we go into the future.

Again, I do not see this as charity; I see this as a genuine challenge to all of us because we have to accept that there must be equality of opportunity and we must accept that there has not been. We have made the commitment together that we would move forward and accept the challenge to close the gap. It cannot simply be rhetoric—in fact, there is a fabulous quote about the breakdown comes between the rhetoric and putting action into place in the community. When we made the commitment to close the gap, it was not just about fancy words and making people feel better. I acknowledge that that can be a trap people fall into: you can have wonderful rhetoric without making change. We have the opportunity in reporting to parliament to ensure that there is a clear analysis and an opportunity to make change. If we do not accept that, we have failed.

Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, let me acknowledge the traditional owners, the Ngunnawal people. I want to pay my respect to their elders, past and present. The official Closing the Gap report and the civil society reports are very clear—we have a long way to go when it comes to achieving equal health, social and economic outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Of course, the statistics tell the story—they are damning—but there is no substitute for seeing and experiencing.

Let the say a few words about my own experience of working in an Aboriginal community controlled health clinic. For young graduates coming out of medical school, there is no need to travel overseas to experience the health conditions that we see in developing countries. Indeed, conditions that have effectively been eliminated in most wealthy nations exist right here in Australia. We see diseases like trachoma—a disease which causes blindness and is entirely preventable but which is prevalent within Indigenous communities—and rheumatic heart disease, which was wiped out generations ago for non-Indigenous people. We see the scourge of hearing loss and the impact it has on young children's ability to learn language skills and to develop and thrive at school. Then there is kidney disease. I have had the experience of a young boy who came to see me at the age of 10 because he was failing to thrive—his kidneys had stopped working. We did not have haemodialysis and we had to set up a system basically to try to keep him alive in the community in which he lived. The incidence of diabetes and the many complications that flow from that—poor eye health, peripheral vascular disease, kidney disease and so on. And then there are the problems with grog—alcohol fuelled violence, domestic violence and the issues that stem from that.

There is no substitute for seeing and for experiencing those conditions. It is true that we have made some gains in the area of maternal and child health, for example, but, gee this, we have a long way to go. It is one thing to see it and experience it from the perspective of privilege, which was the perspective I had as a young graduate in my late 20s, thinking I had all the answers and knowing what needed to be done. I have come to learn that what is absolutely critical here is that we listen—that we listen to the voices of Aboriginal people if we are to make progress on this issue.

We had an intervention from one of those Aboriginal voices today—Stan Grant at the National Press Club. He said:

For so many of my people, Aboriginal people, this is true, there is a deep, deep wound that comes from the time of dispossession, scarred by the generations of injustice and suffering that have followed. And this wound sits at the heart of the malaise that grips Indigenous Australia.

What he is saying is that we have to come to terms with our past if we are to make progress.

We must come to terms with our past. It is true that we now have a national debate around constitutional recognition—one small step forward—but if we are really and truly to come to terms with our past we have to do much more than that. We have to truly reconcile and we have to ensure a treaty with our Aboriginal brothers and sisters. At the heart of what needs to be done is understanding that solutions must be owned by Aboriginal people. I know there are many good people who think they know what needs to be done, and some of the interventions in this space have been guided by goodwill, not malice, but they have failed and they have been counterproductive. The Healthy Welfare Card, for example, aimed to stabilise communities and to move people away from the use of welfare cash to buy grog and to get people off welfare and into work. We know that in the communities where that has been tried, it has failed and it is failed badly.

We know that the most detailed investigation, according to Nicolas Rothwell in the Australian, who made a very insightful contribution to this debate on the weekend. He talked about the Northern Territory Emergency Response, the intervention, and all of the downstream programs that came with it and about the devastating conclusions that the intervention report revealed in 2014. There was no improvement in community wellbeing, no financial autonomy for people—and indeed an increased sense of dependence on welfare—and a complete failure to meet the stated objectives of the intervention. The report itself says:

The tools envisaged as providing welfare recipients with the skills to manage have rather become instruments which relieve them of the burden of management.

We saw too the former head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Michael Thawley, who said with laser-like precision that the effect 'has probably been to increase the sense of dependence in the Indigenous community, whereas we actually have wanted to try to build their capacity to manage themselves'. So what can we do? Let us start by funding the implementation plan for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan, which is critical given that the National Partnership Agreement on Closing the Gap in Indigenous Health Outcomes expired in 2014 and the funding under that agreement has been discontinued. I know what people will say—money alone will not solve the problem. That is true, and some money in this area has not been spent as effectively as it could have been—but the health dollar has been underutilised because Indigenous people simply are not afforded the same level of access. Of course, there is the other retort that we cannot afford it. While this government might be locked into the notion that we need to reduce spending and lower income tax, we think that in a decent society we can raise revenue to pay for the sorts of things that we value—that we can pay for health, education, infrastructure; that we can address growing income inequality and contribute to improved productivity simply by ensuring that we have a fairer tax system.

We need to ensure that, rather than seeing this area as a drain on the budget, spending in health for our Aboriginal brothers and sisters is an expression of the value that we place on health. If we are going to extend the improvements we need more consistent quality primary health care that is delivered in culturally appropriate settings. We need more Aboriginal health workers, Aboriginal nurses and Aboriginal physiotherapists and doctors, and thankfully we are starting to see some change. We need to provide basic essential primary health care to prevent disease and to diagnose it early and treat it when it is picked up. We need to address the social determinants of health. That means addressing, again, the huge disparities that exist when it comes to income.

If we are going to do that, we need to have effective strategies to create jobs for Aboriginal people. We know that employment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is linked to completion rates at school and higher education—vocational education and university. That means we need more effective education strategies. We need to support role models, those people who are doing incredible work in this space, not just the sporting heroes—the Adam Goodeses and Cathy Freemans—of the world but the workers who are caring for country through their terrific ranger program, and people who are coaching sporting teams and the like. Role models are critical. The story of Adam Goodes is significant. He is a proud Aboriginal man, a leader in his field, and through the embrace of his culture he has brought to the surface some of the issues that we as a nation need to tackle. He has shown that racism does need to be addressed, that much more work needs to be done, and that as part of our education response and employment response tackling racism is critical. It needs to be called out and addressed wherever it is. We have to encourage more innovation in the health space—new ideas; something that we know can be driven by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

In the end, this is a question of will. As a parliament we can do something about this—I just hope that this Prime Minister is not going to join the long line of Prime Ministers who finish their term and say, 'I wish I could have done more.'

Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is the 10-year anniversary of closing the gap. This year we should take stock not only of what we have achieved but also of how far we still have to go. I have heard some of the contributions already made by senators tonight on that. The fact is we have made some long-term gains, but this report also shows that progress in closing the gap in a number of key areas still remains to be met, including employment, life expectancy, literacy and numeracy and other health parameters, which have all stagnated. In fact, there is just one target which Australians can be confident is on track to be met, and that concerns the progress made in reducing infant mortality rates by more than 33 per cent. Out of seven targets, two are almost on track but only one is completely on track.

I attended, with many others in this place, the closing the gap breakfast and I also sat in the House of Representatives to hear the speeches by both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. They had a very clear message—there are no results without cooperation and without respect. We cannot address the issues of closing the gap with any kind of politics in mind—there needs to be goodwill and good heart by all members and senators. I think the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Mick Gooda, articulated this when he said at that breakfast that government has all the resources but they don't have all the knowledge. Noel Pearson said years ago that the problem is that the people and the communities, who have 80 per cent of the knowledge, only have 20 per cent of the power, whereas government, who has 80 per cent of the power, only has about 20 per cent of the knowledge, so somehow we have to recalibrate those figures show there is real power sharing. That is a stark reminder of how we do need to move away from the top-down policy implementation approach. Only if we take that approach will we really move towards truly reconciling.

There are a number of ways we can move towards reconciliation, and a lot of those have been adopted over a number of years. The apology to the stolen generations by the then Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, is a case in point. I hope that in the not too distant future an amendment to our Constitution to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will be another symbolic moment which moves us towards reconciliation. We also need to ensure that Aboriginal people, with the knowledge they hold, make the decisions. That is why Labor in our address committed very much to setting new targets to close the gap, to focus on addressing the unacceptable incarceration rates among Indigenous Australians and on increasing safety in those communities.

Out of a number of statistics or parameters or factors that could be highlighted, in the short time that I have in this place I want to highlight what is so meaningful for me about Closing the Gap. I want to highlight the issues of justice and incarceration rates. Half of all Aboriginal prisoners in custody are under the age of 30. The re-imprisonment rate for Aboriginal young people is higher than the school retention rate. This is simply not acceptable. In the last decade, imprisonment rates have more than doubled, growing faster than the crime rate. And for Aboriginal women, there has been a 74 per cent increase in the past 15 years, meaning they make up one-third now of our female prison population. These are very stark statistics.

We in this place have a policy decision role to listen to Aboriginal people and to invest in the services that are required to turn these statistics around. One of the ways we can do that of course, is by funding adequately, appropriately, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services. Unfortunately, that has not occurred and there has been a continual cut in those NATSILS over the last couple of years. I think that is one very easy and small budget way in fact, that we can turn around and try to support those people that are in need of these NATSIL services that are provided through legal services.

These kinds of new issues around justice and incarceration must be tackled. As my friend and colleague Senator Nova Peris stated, 'We walked free many years ago on this country. Now all my mob are locked up.' I think it is time we moved past the politics and ensured that those front line legal services are funded and that we have an emphasis on diversion programs rather than on locking them up. Wayne Muir, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services chairperson said:

It is about justice reinvestment and, as I think I heard Mr Shorten say, this isn't about being soft on crime, this is about creating safer communities and reducing the recidivism long-term.

When I was once minister for corrections I learnt these tough statistics in my home state of Tasmania. However, in that state we did not have a high percentage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. But when I learnt of these statistics during the Closing the Gap 10-year anniversary report, of so many young Aboriginals under the age of 30 who happened to be in our prisons, in custody, it simply made me feel very sad inside. I think that if there is anything out of the targets that need to be met, that is the one that I really wanted to share and focus on tonight.

Of course there are so many others: closing the life expectancy gap within a generation by 2031 is not on track; halving the gap in reading, writing and numeracy achievements for children within a decade by 2018 is not on track; halving the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a decade by 2018 is not on track; 95 per cent of all Indigenous four-year olds enrolled in early childhood education by 2025 is the new target—the original target was to ensure all Indigenous four-year olds in remote communities had access to early childhood education by 2013, but that was never met. There are so many other stark reminders in those seven targets that make up the Closing the gap report that need all of our attention in this place, no matter what side of the parliament you sit on. It is our duty and it is the respect that we definitely owe to Indigenous Australians to ensure that we close the gap.

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

I acknowledge that tonight I am speaking on the lands of the Ngunawal and Ngambri peoples, and I pay my respects to leaders past and present and emerging leaders. As Stan Grant in his book Talking with my Country says:

I grew up to understand that conflict doesn't end when the guns stop. That its legacy is passed through generations. I learned how it casts a shadow, and that shadow doesn't recede, and no matter how far we travel from the battleground that shadow hovers still.

For as long as these unacceptable gaps in key health and other indicators are there, those gaps between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples continue, that shadow will remain.

In 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered the national apology to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, in particular to the stolen generation. Those words that Aboriginal people had waited so long to hear were followed by Labor's commitment to close the gap on Indigenous disadvantage. In March 2008, we signed a statement of intent to close the gap—one of the few times that parliament has come together as one, as it did on that occasion and continues to do so, marking the importance of everyone in this place recognising that we must close the gap.

Labor's Closing the Gap framework provided, for the first time in our nation's history, a clear, properly funded framework that holds us all accountable to making progress. The framework was supported by the then opposition and by all Australian governments through the COAG process. Then in April 2008, the Labor Australian government, once again supported by the then opposition, agreed that the Prime Minister would provide an annual report to parliament on progress towards closing the gap.

It is worth revisiting some of this statement of intent, the commitment between the government of Australia and the Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia. Two of these commitments in particular resonate:

Over the past weeks, we have heard many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders saying their voices are not being heard and their solutions are not being implemented. Like Stan Grant, they know that the shadow of the past does not recede while the gap continues. Indeed, in some areas the gap has widened. That inequity is widening. We now have some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders saying that they have lost faith in the Close the Gap targets, and it is not working. But that is a view that is not shared by all.

The chair of the Close the Gap Campaign Steering Committee, Dr Jackie Huggins, said:

In my working life, I have never seen Aboriginal affairs at such a low point … There is no engagement, there is no respect and I agree with Patrick and Noel—

Patrick Dodson and Noel Pearson—

that we are in deep crisis.

Dr Huggins went on to say:

Sometimes I don't feel part of this society because it breaks my heart to see the conditions my people are continually left in without any leadership from the top.

Governments would be well advised to listen and to act on the recommendations of the Close the Gap Campaign Steering Committee.

The warning signs that we were not on track were there in the steering committee's 2015 report. Indeed, in the executive summary of the 2015 report, the committee states that there must be a clearer connection between the Indigenous Advancement Strategy and closing the gap. The committee raised further concerns that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health gains could be 'negatively impacted' by measures in the last budget which cut funding to programs that target smoking rates, healthy eating, nutrition and physical activity. We all know that primary prevention through Aboriginal controlled health organisations must be the starting point. A year on, the campaign steering committee's 2016 report states, again:

Another area of concern for the Campaign Steering Committee is the impact of the Indigenous Advancement Strategy … on the social determinants of health.

It believes:

… the IAS should be nationally coordinated along with state and territory governments, and demonstrate how it will contribute to achieving the close the gap targets.

Of course it should, and we must ask and demand why the Indigenous Advancement Strategy does not reflect the Close the Gap targets.

In 2015, we saw the launch of the Implementation Plan for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan. This must now be appropriately funded. The committee is calling for 'an overall increase in resources directed towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health' and the committee once again stresses the plan should support the preferred model for health services—that is, delivered by Aboriginal controlled health organisations.

If we look back over the last 10 years, there have been some improvements, but those improvements are too slow and, without increased focus, respectful engagement and solutions led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations, we will fail to meet our targets.

We know that Aboriginal Australians die about 10 years earlier than non-Indigenous Australians, on average. I was shocked to hear Dr Huggins say at the launch of the report last week that, in fact, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have the shortest life expectancy across the world's indigenous peoples. I saw her later in the day and I asked, 'Is that correct?' and she said, 'Yes, it is.' I said, 'I didn't know that stat. What a shameful stat. for Australia to have.' We know that there has been some decline in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander infant mortality rates, but again that is not fast enough to meet our goals. Sadly and significantly, employment gaps have increased rather than narrowed.

Labor is calling for justice to be part of the targets. It is very sad day when we hear the Turnbull government's Minister for Indigenous Affairs say he will not consider including justice targets and he believes that in fact they would single out Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Well, they are singled out. They are absolutely over-represented currently in the justice system. In my state of Western Australia, around six per cent of juveniles are Indigenous, yet they make up almost 80 per cent of the prison population. They are singled out, and we desperately need to look at better solutions. It is absolutely horrific that a young Aboriginal person has more chance of being locked up than completing their schooling—significantly more chance. Those are not statistics that we should be proud of or that we should allow to continue. Some of that has to do with the harsh mandatory sentencing laws in Western Australia, but that stat. is repeated across the country. I would urge the minister to really take a look at what is happening and to inform himself of the appalling imprisonment rates, which are very high for women and very high for juveniles. This is not something that we should allow to continue.

The steering committee retains its optimism that we can achieve health equality in the future, but to do that we must be ambitious. This generation can and should be the generation to finally close the appalling life expectancy gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and non-Indigenous Australians, but it requires a new vision, it requires solutions that are led and implemented by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and it requires respect and appropriate action from governments and oppositions.

Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to make remarks on the Closing the gap: Prime Minister's report 2016. I attended the House of Representatives and listened with a very keen ear to the report from both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. I want to put some remarks on the record about the devastating reality that still presents for our first peoples in term of the terrible gap in life expectancy. I would like to reflect in this contribution this evening on the appalling statistics that we are hearing put before us.

Senator Lines' presentation just moments ago talked about the level of imprisonment amongst young Indigenous people across Western Australia. When we go to these areas we hear stories about the fact that imprisonment often happens to these young people because they have not been able to learn to read, so they drive without a licence and they end up in jail with a series of fines. Part of the reason they have not learnt to read is that they could not hear properly at school. Funding for health matters in profound and possibly transformational ways. The reality is the gap is still far too large. That is what I took away from listening to the contributions of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition this year in the other place.

There are initiatives that change how our first peoples, the Indigenous peoples of this country—Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders—can think of themselves and share what they understand with the rest of us. I want to pay tribute to the investment made by a number of governments, but particularly the Rudd/Gillard government, in making a home for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Dance and Skills Academy, known as NAISDA, which is in the seat of Robertson where I live on the Central Coast.

Last year young people from right across Australia who attended NAISDA gave an end-of-year performance. At the end of the very first half of that performance, which was entitled collectively as Kamu and was directed by Frances Rings, there was a dance called 'To Close A Gap?' It was part of a larger work that was envisioned by the choreographer Ian RT Colless. Some of the AV and the audio that they used was from Queen Elizabeth's 1954 visit to Australia. They positioned 'closing the gap' in its historical frame about this ongoing silencing and description based on Australian law about what Aboriginal people are and who they are at the heart of their identity. The dance that they shared with us was a powerfully political statement about exactly what Senator Lines closed her contribution with—Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have had, and continue to have, so much done to them rather than by them, and that it is not just for the benefit of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, but for the rest of us that we need to lift our vision of ourselves as Australia about what is possible, what is right and what is fair.

This type of artwork and telling of what might be possible and reflecting on what has gone wrong is very powerful. That those young people chose the words 'to close the gap' tells us that something important is going on every year in this parliament when this report is handed down. It is a report card for a nation—a report card that reminds us that we are failing. We are failing to achieve equity and fairness for the first peoples of this nation. If our desire is really—genuinely—to close the gap, I think we could say that this government proceeds at its peril with the continuing cost-cutting drive in such important areas as health and education, because these are vital and transformative elements of anything that is going to improve the life outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

When we in this place hear talk of millions and billions of dollars being slashed here and there, the message does become unwieldy and lost in the huge list of zeros and figures in question. But when we talk about things in smaller amounts it means that those cuts become more tangible on the ground. I was recently given an anecdote by far-south-west-Sydney doctor, Dr Fred Betros, who likened the health system to a flowing river. He said that people move through the health system to the areas that they need: into the emergency department, if need be, through wards out into the community. That connection can only work for all people if there are no logjams. But cuts have been felt most deeply in the areas of community nursing and mental health, in which the illnesses of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are profoundly overrepresented.

We have seen community nurses' cars taken away because of cuts inflicted on them through this government's austerity drive. As those nurses and mental health workers are less mobile and can only see 40 patients a week instead of the 100 that they were seeing, for many of these elderly and Indigenous people a simple procedure like having a dressing changed once a week has now become impossible. In the grand scheme of things, when billions and billions of dollars are being talked about, a simple procedure such as that might seem inconsequential, but it is something that is connected back into the hospital system. Back at the hospital the doctors are reluctant to release elderly, immobile patients who they feel will not be able to have access to proper and regular visitation by community nurses, particularly if they are not able to do that with cultural safety for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of our country. Consequently we have people staying in hospitals, and bed block follows. Bed block connects to the hospital emergency department out through the door into ramping—all these things are linked.

The statistics that we saw in the report to the parliament just a little over a week ago reveal the impact of federal government cuts to these vital services that are absolutely at the heart of what is required to close the gap. This year's Close the Gap report reveals that just two of seven targets are on track to be met. This is a sobering reminder that the uncomfortable and persistent gap remains when it comes to Indigenous disadvantage. Progress in closing the gap should always be celebrated and in key areas—including employment, life expectancy, reading and numeracy—sadly, we find stagnation. This year's report is a clear warning to the Turnbull government that if they continue to cut and pay lip-service to genuine engagement and authentic partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the risks to closing the gap are only going to increase.

There is just one target that Australians can be confident is on track, and that is the reduction in infant mortality rates by more than 33 per cent. I truly celebrate this. In terms of long-term progress there has been a narrowing in the gap in year 12 attainment, with a significant boost to the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students completing secondary schooling. I note today that Stan Grant, himself a graduate of high school, who was inspired by a teacher and went on to do amazing things, is an inspiration to young people to take up the opportunity of education and further education. But I have to say to you, Mr Acting Deputy President, that an Aboriginal child facing the thought of a $100,000 degree is not going to see that as being very appetising or very accessible to them. Those gaps in what young people think of as possible are the barriers between where they are now and where we might hope they will be.

It is very important to note the announcement that Labor will invest an additional $9 million for optometry and ophthalmology services and prevention activities to close the gap in eye health and eliminate trachoma. We cannot close the gap while Indigenous incarceration and victimisation rates are at national crisis levels. So between health, incarceration and education we need to do much better as a nation, and I look forward to the 2017 report. (Time expired)

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I just want to make a brief contribution to this debate. I thank the minister for his statement today and congratulate him on the work that he has done and the care and concern that he has shown for Indigenous people. To all of the contributors to the debate today, I thank them for their accounts of what they believe to be the situation. I must say I have a more positive view of Indigenous Australians than those who have spoken tonight. I look forward to the day when there is no difference at all between how all Australians are treated and how they exercise their rights and their opportunities in this great land. The speeches I have heard, mainly from the other side, have highlighted the negatives. There are many positives, and real progress has been made, and, again, I congratulate the minister for that.

I like to concentrate on the success stories—and there are many, but I just want to mention a couple of people. The trouble with mentioning a couple of people is that you always leave out many other deserving people. I know the mayor of the Carpentaria shire, Fred Pascoe. He is chairman of a council in Queensland. He just happens to be Indigenous, Aboriginal, but very proud of it. He is a great man, a great visionary. He has done a lot of thing in his life, and it would take me more than my 10 minutes to even go through half of them. He has shown what Indigenous people can do, given the opportunities. He does not class himself as being any different from anyone else. He is a genuine success story—and there are many like him. I mention also Alf Lacey, the mayor of Palm Island. Alf has had a colourful life. Again, he is doing things.

I am conscious that I live in North Queensland. I am interested in the stories and accounts from other senators about where they live in capital cities and major regional towns, and I appreciate what they say. I understand and accept their concern and their view on what is happening, but I live up there with these people. I know that Senator Scullion is the senator for the Northern Territory, where a great percentage of our Indigenous population live. I know that my Liberal colleague Warren Entsch represents the electorate of Leichhardt, where a great many of our Torres Strait Islanders and Aboriginal people live. I know that my Liberal colleague Melissa Price represents the north-west of Western Australia, where there is a huge number of people of Indigenous descent. I know that it is an area that you, Mr Acting Deputy President Back, represent with skill and compassion. The federal seat of Kennedy, for which I have the honour of being the patron senator for our party, is again an area where there are a lot of Indigenous people. While you can get up in this chamber and highlight some of the negatives—and I accept that that is done with some genuineness—I would like to hear about the positives: the people who are succeeding, how things have changed and how the gap has been closed. As I say, I look forward to the day when there is no difference. Maybe that is a pipe dream, but I do not think so. There are people like Freddy Pascoe and Alf Lacey and, as I say, there are 12 other Indigenous mayors, or mayors from Indigenous backgrounds, who have been elected by the people of their shires, which do not necessarily have Aboriginal majorities. These people were elected because of their ability, because they are good administrators and because they are doing the right thing.

I have a concern with my own government that sometimes we rely too much on other Indigenous leaders. I know of 13 Indigenous mayors from across the north of Queensland who were elected by the people in their councils. As I say, whether they are Indigenous or non-Indigenous does not really matter. They are real leaders. They are accountable for their financial administration, because, as local government leaders in Queensland, they are regularly subjected to Auditor-General's reports

They are also accountable to the people they represent, because every four years, as it is now in Queensland, they face elections, and if they are not doing the right thing by the community they represent they are voted out. So I think they are the people that we have to look to, have to encourage, have to talk about and have to highlight their successes—rather than hearing in this chamber, as we always do, about the negatives and the downsides of the way Indigenous Australians are going on. I am not for a moment suggesting that there are not negatives and downsides, but I think the country would be far better off if we encouraged those who are 'doing the right thing', those who are succeeding and those are who are making themselves role models for others of our original and First Australians.

Minister, congratulations on what you have been doing. It is not easy. You have a lot of pressure coming on you from everyone, including me. But you have done a great job, and I think we are getting there. I think if you are able to continue and promote the direction that you are set on, all Australians will find the real harmony and success that we deserve in this country. Thank you.

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak briefly on the Closing the gap report. In doing so, I also acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we gather here this evening, the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, and I pay my respects to elders both past and present.

There is certainly a lot to be proud of in Australia but, as many speakers here tonight have said, the record of governments at all levels over many, many decades in regard to the First Australians and in relation to services to Indigenous people in this country is not one of them. Many gaps remain, and that is why it is important that this annual report come to the national parliament and be discussed openly and at length. There is no doubt that, as a nation, we have let down the First Australians. It is only now and in recent times, through mapping the gaps, that we are able to look at progress towards improving life expectancy, health outcomes, involvement in education, and employment opportunities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. It is true that the movement in the right direction is not happening perhaps as fast as we would like, but it is going to take the coordinated approach of governments at every level and communities at every level working together on the solutions in order to start and continue to reap results. But there is a long way to go.

As many speakers tonight have touched on, one of the main areas of concern in closing the gap is, of course, health outcomes across Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Overall life expectancy remains 10 years shorter for Indigenous Australians when compared to non-Indigenous Australians. When we look at the reasons behind that, we see very deeply entrenched social issues that disproportionately affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. We know, for instance, that smoking rates remain still at very high levels despite some progress over recent years. We know that the level of chronic disease in Indigenous communities is also disturbingly high and higher than in non-Indigenous populations. These are just two areas where we very clearly see such a difference in rates and prevalence when comparing Indigenous to non-Indigenous Australians. We also know that Indigenous babies are more likely to be born with low birth weight and that children with hearing problems may not get the treatment and the services that they need. That, in turn, affects their experience at school and through early childhood programs. We know that by addressing some of these issues in children at a very young age, the disproportionate effect of those issues through their life is reduced and their ability to access appropriate education is greatly improved.

It is worth noting that there have been concerns raised by some of the Aboriginal controlled health organisations around some of the changes that this government has been looking to introduce, particularly around access to bulk-billing and to general practice. That particularly concerns Aboriginal controlled health organisations. I know that talk of the GP co-payment had an almost immediate effect on the number of patients wanting to come through the door at Winnunga Nimmityjah in the ACT. They had to do quite a lot of community education to inform people that those changes were just being discussed at the time and that they had not been passed. Knowing that you can visit the doctor or your local Aboriginal controlled health organisation and access health care at no cost is very important when those organisations are reaching out to their local communities.

In relation to mental health, there are significant issues in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. They show up in statistics like the suicide rate. It is really concerning that Indigenous Australians are twice as likely as to complete suicide as non-Indigenous Australians. This is something that needs a very concentrated and consistent effort to address the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and provide programs in a culturally appropriate way. I think we need to start measuring this very closely and making sure that services are provided and that the Aboriginal controlled health organisations are given the support and resources to be able to provide those services out in local communities. We know that this is an area that could do with a lot more resources. I have certainly heard representations from Aboriginal-controlled health organisations about the support that they need to address and turnaround some of the presentations that they are seeing through their organisations in relation to the mental health and wellbeing of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.

I am not for a moment saying that these are easy issues to address or that there has not been goodwill on all sides of politics to address it, but the statistics remain very clear and I think we need to do a lot more in this area. I know that, under the mental health reforms that the health minister is pursuing, there is some unallocated funding that is being used to focus in on providing resources for services like this. I have not seen where that is going to yet, but it is an acknowledgement that it is there. It is not new funding; it is coming from somewhere else. But I think that will certainly be well used. I am not sure it will fill the gap from where some of the savings have been generated from to pay for the ice task force; but, again, any effort we can put into improving the mental health outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people would be very welcome.

Here in the ACT, a relatively affluent community, I think it is difficult to acknowledge that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people face many of the same issues here in the ACT that they do around the country, whether it be in health outcomes, education or even in areas like corrections and juvenile justice. I know from my previous role that we put in incredible amounts of effort to resource those areas appropriately and see improved outcomes. We certainly did see improved outcomes in education. I know that at the juvenile detention centre here in the ACT on any given night several years ago—I think has improved now—anywhere from 25 to 50 per cent of the young people in that detention facility were of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds. It is not as if anyone in the ACT can pretend for a moment that these issues that are affecting first Australians around the country are not issues here.

I would just like to finish on the fact that the ACT did keep in place an elected body, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elected Body, which we put in place in 2008. This is elected by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members in the ACT. The elections are run every three years by Elections ACT. Those elected members meet with the cabinet twice a year, they hold their own estimates hearings with heads of departments and they provide a report on the budget every year.

I know for a fact—from being in those meetings and from having those shared cabinet meetings and shared engagement with those leaders that have been elected by the local community—that we got very good insights. The cabinet ministers were directly briefed by the Indigenous elected body. It certainly provided a channel where the Indigenous elected body was given the respect that it deserved, the community had a way in that did not have to come through government and then that elected body could negotiate directly with the government and tell us exactly what their priorities were. It was a good model, it was a respectful model and it acknowledges their right to engagement with government at the highest level. I think that is something that could be looked at more broadly, if not across the country then in other jurisdictions.

Question agreed to.