Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Nampijinpa Price has submitted a proposal under standing order 75 today, as shown at item 12 of today's Order of Business:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I give notice that today I propose to move "That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The failure of the Prime Minister to address with sufficient urgency the serious alcohol related crime across Northern Territory communities, including child sexual abuse, family violence, assault, property damage and theft, and calls on the Prime Minister to live up to his pre-election promise that he won't 'pose for photos and then disappear when there's a job to be done'."

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

I understand that informal arrangements have been made to allocate specific times to each speaker in the debate. With the concurrence of the Senate, I ask the clerks to set the clock accordingly.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (NT, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The failure of the Prime Minister to address with sufficient urgency the serious alcohol related crime across Northern Territory communities, including child sexual abuse, family violence, assault, property damage and theft, and calls on the Prime Minister to live up to his pre-election promise that he won't 'pose for photos and then disappear when there's a job to be done'.

My motion today is to highlight the ineffective actions of our Prime Minister. My community—my home town of Alice Springs—has been experiencing a crisis, not just of late but for some months now. My home town has been suffering. The rates of crime have skyrocketed through the roof. The community members in my home town find it difficult to sleep at night with the threat of home invasions. They can't even walk down their street to go shopping on a daily basis because of the threat that looms before them. There are children on the streets of my community all night until the early morning. But this isn't an issue that has come up in recent times. This is an issue that I have been talking about in this chamber since the very day I gave my first speech. These are issues that not only I've been bringing up in this chamber but certainly the member for Lingiari in the lower house has been bringing up ever since her first speech as well.

Isn't it ironic? Here I am, an Indigenous voice in parliament, and yet what I've been trying to say has fallen on deaf ears when it comes to our Prime Minister. I'd like to remind the chamber and I'd like to remind everyone in this parliament of a tweet from the Prime Minister before he was Prime Minister, stating:

If I'm Prime Minister, I won't go missing when the going gets tough—or pose for photos and then disappear when there's a job to be done.

I'll show up, I'll step up—and I'll work every day to bring our country together.

What an absolute shame on the Prime Minister given the fact that he turned up in my home town after the calls that had been happening for months and spent less than four hours on the ground in my home community. He didn't even stay the night to see what was going on in my community. He didn't even stay to see the children on our streets late at night—the children who have largely been neglected and not taken care of by their own families. They are children who are supposed to be under the care of Territory families but have been victims of child sexual abuse, violence and alcohol-driven abuse within their homes and within the town camps of my community.

The Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, in October visited my home community because he understood there were serious issues that needed to be understood on the ground. He came, he listened to community members and he listened to vulnerable women and children in my community, which then spurred him to reach out to the Prime Minister to offer a bipartisan approach to effectively manage the problems on the ground. He also called for a royal commission into the sexual abuse of Indigenous children. What have we heard from our Prime Minister on this issue? We have heard nothing, even after his four-hour, fly-in fly-out trip to my home town of Alice Springs, where the residents are beside themselves over the fact that they still feel neglected by our Prime Minister. They are furious that he came in and spent such a short amount of time on the ground and did not speak to a community member and did not speak to vulnerable people from town camps but to those he'd hand-picked himself. It might as well have been a videoconference over Teams between the Labor Territory government and the Prime Minister. This is not good enough.

In the Northern Territory, 30 per cent of our community is Indigenous. This proposed Voice to Parliament is not going to represent those voices because our votes in the Territory won't even count in this referendum anyway. How ironic is that? Here I am, a voice in parliament. I would ask that our Prime Minister work better to grow some ears and listen so that he may actually hear those voices on the ground who called out for him for so long for help within the Northern Territory and take action.

Jana Stewart (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What we are seeing in Alice Springs is absolutely devastating and heartbreaking. I don't think anybody is suggesting otherwise. The impact that it will have on some of those people's lives for the longer term will be significant. Sadly, the challenges faced by communities in Central Australia are not new, and more needs to be done to improve community safety and to support community members to thrive. What we know is that when you work with and listen to local communities you achieve better outcomes. I was interested to hear Senator Nampijinpa Price talk about listening because I feel like some of the pleas of the community for the last 10 years have fallen on deaf ears.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister announced a quarter of a billion dollars in a plan for a better, safer future for Central Australia. This is in addition to the $48 million investment in community safety announced on 24 January this year. Next week, the Northern Territory government will be introducing urgent legislation to strengthen alcohol restrictions so that town camps and communities will revert to dry zones. These responses will improve community safety, invest in health services, invest in families, tackle alcohol related harm, focus on culture and on-country learning and provide more opportunities for young people. Critically, this work will be delivered in partnership with and by listening to these communities, not by grandstanding in this place. Listening is absolutely critical. We can agree on that.

Senator Nampijinpa Price's motion is redundant. She's been talking about it for months. Those on the opposite side would do well to stop playing politics with people's lives. She should be rallying around the Australian and Northern Territory government package and backing it in. She should be working to ensure this package helps the community in the best way possible. There is an obligation on both sides of parliament to make it work, to support the community now and in the future. I'm hearing nothing from the opposite side about the good work that has been done by First Nations leaders, community members and advocates in Central Australia. I'm hearing nothing from the senator regarding the resilience of Central Australian communities and people. We are still here, despite the statistics. The Closing the gap report continues to publish statistics which show that the current policies and initiatives are not leading to successful outcomes for First Nations communities. They're not leading to improvements in areas like social welfare, education, health, social justice and more. That's just putting it politely.

I'm proud to be part of a government who are fully committed to delivering a successful referendum and the Voice to Parliament in 2023. The voice to parliament is about giving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples a say in matters that affect their communities. It's about creating practical and lasting change that will lead to better policies and improve the lives of First Nations people in areas like health, education and housing. As Aunty Pat Anderson from the referendum committee has said, everyday First Nations people don't have the megaphone of politicians, and so we need to give all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities a voice.

Whilst the opposition has sought to distract attention from the core purpose of the voice, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Minister Linda Burney continue to share information about what the voice is about—recognition and consultation. Polling shows the vast majority of First Nations people support the government's proposed voice referendum—an estimated 80 per cent. A voice is what we want and what we need to begin to move forward as a nation to address the gaps for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across our nation. First Nations communities across Australia have been working towards the establishment of a voice for many years.

The referendum taking place later on this year is an invitation from First Nations people to each and every Australian. This invitation has been longstanding and is directly from First Nations leaders across the country to you, the Australian people—not to politicians. Let's create a better future for all Australians.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the emergency motion moved by Senator Nampijinpa Price. There is no doubt that what is happening and has been happening for some time in Mparntwe—Alice Springs—is a crisis. It's a crisis that stems from a lack of access to basic human rights: housing, employment, education, health care, land and self-determination. It's a crisis that will not be solved by an intervention 2.0 approach—a top-down approach that ignores the dispossession at the heart of the crisis and perpetuates colonial oppression. The solutions must be holistic, self-determined, and community led.

First Nations communities know what is needed; the government just hasn't been listening. Communities need funding for housing to address homelessness and overcrowding. Community-led health services are best placed to deliver effective prevention and health-promotion programs, mental health services, and healing places. Communities need a significant investment in growing the First Nations health and wellbeing workforce that will build capacity within communities for effective prevention and health promotion programs, mental health services, and healing places.

Communities need access to culturally appropriate child care, education and employment opportunities. Governments must address the human rights crisis of imprisoning children in this country by raising the age of criminal responsibility. Labor must implement the outstanding recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and the Bringing them home reports, which have shamefully sat on the shelf for decades.

We welcome the funding commitment to the Tangentyere Women's Council for education work, but communities need long-term, ample funding for frontline women's safety services, and urgent progress on a standalone First Nations plan to end violence against women and children that is designed and implemented by First Nations women. And, of course, we must progress truth-telling and Treaty to start to heal this country, and a voice to ensure that First Nations people are driving the solutions.

Kerrynne Liddle (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the emergency motion moved by Senator Nampijinpa Price. I speak on this from the following informed context: I was born and raised in Alice Springs, and many immediate family members still live in and around the township. Both my parents are traditional owners of Central Australia. As a South Australian senator for Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara people who live remotely on the APY lands—which are in South Australia—I can say that Alice Springs is the closest major regional town. Visiting Alice Springs affects them.

As a member of the Joint Standing Committee late last year I heard the harrowing evidence given in Darwin and Alice Springs. I have been directly responsible for successfully transitioning more than 1,000 Indigenous people into the private sector for work—many directly from welfare. You can't get a job, run a business or function with any confidence amongst that chaos, and the chaos has been piled on in the last seven months. It's from that perspective that I highlight the failure of the Prime Minister to address the serious alcohol-related crime across the Northern Territory, and that I outline the real, devastating and lifechanging impact of allowing the Stronger Futures legislation to lapse and failing to act earlier when the disaster unfolding became even clearer.

When the sad images, the evidence and the voices became impossible to ignore because the national media turned its attention to Alice Springs, the Prime Minister had already wasted seven months blaming and waiting for others to act when he could have acted. The mistake of ending stronger futures did this. He could have used his powers under the Constitution, and we know it's not shy about fast tracking legislation when it wants to. The Northern Territory government refused to act, and this government didn't want to until the tide of evidence and public opinion were against them.

There was a 54 per cent jump in alcohol related assaults in the past year in Alice Springs and a 34 per cent rise in the same period in Katherine. In Alice Springs, house break-ins rose 22.56 per cent, commercial break-ins were up 55 per cent, motor vehicle theft was up 31 per cent and property damage jumped by 59 per cent. There was a road toll spike of 50 per cent, in the year, across the Northern Territory.

At a time when this Labor government tells us the cost of living is the most important issue for Australians, they continually fail to act as Central Australians repair broken windows and smashed property over and over and over again. Let's talk about the smashed lives. As this escalated, insurance premiums skyrocketed. They rose 50 per cent over that same time. Businesses closed, long-term locals left, tourists stopped coming and businesses closed their doors—all this, while grappling with the cost of living.

Although the Prime Minister took his own plane for that four-hour trip, commercial flights to the nation's centre had many, many cheap and empty seats. Go and have a look. There's a massive economic toll as a consequence of inaction. There are people affected because they have alcohol addiction and binge issues. There are those whose lives are tragically shattered and disrupted by antisocial and unlawful actions, and there are those who are impacted by alcohol. They are not all Aboriginal people. But those who drink to excess commonly have blood-alcohol levels of 0.4.

In fact, the doctor at the local hospital told us that in his entire life he has never seen a hospital where the police drop off more people than the ambulance does. Innocent people—women, children and the elderly, who bear the brunt of antisocial behaviour, violence and intimidation—are affected the most. And you had plenty of warning. The immediate and cumulative individual, family and community impact is devastating.

This week we hear there's a reset so that a proper transition plan can be put in place to allow communities, and an orderly decision-making process, to determine if they remain dry communities or not. You were told that. There's $250 million allocated now for programs. But—as I said in my first speech in this chamber, in July this year—money is not the only answer. The pretenders, controllers and rescuers need to be nowhere near this new money, and the public servants need to be more accountable for the programs they deliver, and politicians—all of us—need to be more accountable for the money that's spent. This is not about voice; this is about listening to those voices that told you this was going to happen.

Ralph Babet (Victoria, United Australia Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A few hours in Alice Springs—just enough time for a photo op and a hastily arranged press conference! But a few days at the tennis—plenty of time to watch the men's semi-final and the women's final, and don't forget the men's final after that. Tell me, again, how committed the Prime Minister is to helping Indigenous Australians. Probably not that much. A crime wave in Alice Springs—whatever. Children roaming the streets at 2 am because they're too scared to go home—whatever. But how good was Novak, Djokovic, Prime Minister? How good was he?

A few hours in Alice Springs but a few days at the tennis. That tells you everything you need to know about how committed this Labor government is to helping Indigenous Australians. 'Give us a wave!' the Melbourne Park crowd yelled as the Prime Minister happily obliged. He waved to the crowd, laughter all around, a bit of a hoot. That's all that this Prime Minister is good for, a wave. Give us a solution to the crime wave in Alice Springs. How about that, Mr Albanese? Give us a solution to the wave of suffering, Mr Albanese. Give us a solution to the wave of school truancy in Indigenous communities, Mr Albanese. There's nothing, nil, nada. Signalling to the crowd is where the Prime Minister excels. He is good for a wave, a gesture and a sleight of hand, but with no substance behind it. He ignores the voices of Indigenous leaders like Senator Jacinta Price, all the while claiming that we need to listen to Indigenous people. He spent a few hours in Alice Springs and a few days at the tennis. Indigenous people in this country deserve much, much better.

Malarndirri McCarthy (NT, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Nampijinpa Price for bringing on the matter of urgency in regard to Alice Spring and Central Australia. This is certainly an issue that does hit at the heart very personally, and I do understand, deeply, the concerns of the senators opposite. But I'm also concerned about the families in Central Australia and the businesses in Alice Springs. There is no doubt that there has been, and continues to be, deep trauma in terms of what people see as their future and the kind of future they can have in Alice Springs and in Central Australia.

There is no doubt that there is a lot of anger and a lot of hurt. But we have moved to ensure that there is a circuit breaker and that there is change. And this is really critical. It's critical because people cannot take it, if we do not do more. That is why we're working with congress, with Tangentyere, with SNAICC, with the hospitals, with the police, with the family and children's services and with the Northern Territory government. Yes, there is no doubt that there are decisions that the Northern Territory government need to rethink and redo, but we are enormously pleased that those bans in the communities across the Northern Territory and in Alice Springs itself will be back in force as of Wednesday next week, once the Northern Territory assembly does sit and pass the amendments that are required under the Northern Territory legislation.

People like Marion Scrymgour, the member for Lingiari, and, of course, Senator Nampijinpa Price, raised it in their opening speeches here. We know in the Northern Territory, from the intervention in 2007, that there is also a concern within Aboriginal communities right across the Territory, not just in Central Australia. This has been something that I've also struggled deeply with and continue to do so. But we'll no doubt ensure the $250 million that we've said must go into the areas that hit at the deep cause of the problem, not just alcohol—to the health system, looking at foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, and the hospital system that requires assistance to protect our women and children. And we know that, for the youth, the programs that we put together through the funding have to work. For those businesses in Alice Springs, there is no doubt that the pain you have suffered and continue to, in terms of your own economic future, has resonated greatly not just here across the parliament but across the country.

But this is the turning point, and I say this to the residents and families of Alice Springs and Central Australia: this is the turning point of this parliament. No more do we want to see the pain and suffering that we have witnessed at extreme levels in the past month and, even more personally, amongst those families in the town camps around Alice Springs. No more. Enough.

We do accept that we have the responsibility here to make things better, and we take that responsibility on board very seriously. I'm enormously grateful to be able to stand beside Marion Scrymgour, Linda Burney and Patrick Dodson and know that we are doing everything we possibly can, in terms of the federal jurisdiction, not to intervene as they did in 2007 but to ensure the accountability and governance that should occur by a Territory parliament to do what it needs to do. I look forward to the Northern Territory parliament doing that next week, but, in the meantime, we are going to ensure that those families on the ground do feel safe, do feel that we care, do feel that things will turn around for the better and that, instead of despair and trauma, they have hope for the future.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I support Senator Nampijinpa Price's motion before the Senate today and note that, if this had been a natural disaster, the Prime Minister would have been on the first VIP plane out of Canberra to get his feet on the ground to assess the damage and offer comfort, solution and a big bucket of cash to affected communities. But because it was a national shame; a national disgrace; a crisis occurring far away from capital cities, far away from the tennis and cricket, far away from his summer break; he had to be shamed—shamed by the senators I am proud to stand with.

I acknowledge both of the strong female voices here from Central Australia—Senator Nampijinpa Price, a former deputy mayor of Alice Springs, and Senator Kerrynne Liddle, whose country and family roots go back to Central Australia and Alice Springs in particular—telling their lived experience and the lived experience of their families and their communities. They have been doing it from the day they both got here.

Let's count that back. It is for in excess of eight months that you've heard this and you did nothing. You knew the Stronger Futures legislation was lapsing and you knew the NT government had nothing in place, because you guys, like with your decisions on the cashless debit card, thought they were racist policies. That's why you did nothing until you were shamed into it. I think it is an absolute indictment on this Labor government, which purports to support Indigenous Australians.

I'm very proud to have been the minister responsible—one of the best things that happened in my career was to be appointed regional development minister under Malcolm Turnbull—for negotiating Barkly Regional Deal with then chief minister Gunner and the Barkly Regional Council. A two-year-old's rape in Tennant Creek made our government say: 'You know what? The record funding into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs in this country at the state, territory, federal and community levels is not working when we live in a country like ours and there are children getting raped every night.' It was one of my proudest days. There was $78.4 million across 28 separate cultural, social and economic measures.

In one of the great indictments, again it was the NT Labor government's failure. When I spoke to my department and stakeholders on the ground, what was actually going to be the game changer? Was it another skate park or this other thing? No. It was actually going to be to map the services from different levels of government, the private sector and charities going into that community and find the gaps so the kids stopped falling through those gaps. I'm standing here be the report card of the Barkly Regional Deal implementation plan. Of the 28 measures, most of them are implemented. In fact, all of them are implemented except the government investment and service system reform, where we work in partnership between federal and Territory government so we focus on the actual people. Five years later, we haven't got it together, and that lies at the feet of the Gunner government.

I call on the Labor party to support an election commitment we made in Alice at the Ypirinya School. It has a fantastic young principal in Gavin Morris, a proud Indigenous man, a great NRL guy. He teaches sport. They all love him. This school teaches in four local languages, including Walpiri and Arrernte. We promised $8.3 million to build a student accommodation facility there because these kids come in from town camps. It's a two-day one-way trip, and even back then this principal was telling us he needed to provide secure accommodation for his kids so that they can stay safe and continue to learn during learning week, if they so chose to.

The Labor Party didn't support that election commitment. We knew what was going on. You knew and you did nothing about it. You had to be shamed into making the NT government come to the table.

Question agreed to.