Subjects: Closing the Gap.
MINISTER FOR INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS, MALARNDIRRI McCARTHY: Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us this afternoon as I stand here with the Coalition of Peaks, my co-chair for the Joint Council as well Pat Turner, and Scott Wilson, and I also acknowledge the Coalition of Peaks membership from around the country who are watching very closely and excitedly, hopefully, in terms of where we're going. I'd just like to say, from the outset, it is a real honour to be able to stand before the Parliament and speak about what our plans are in terms of 2025 and moving forward to improve the lives for First Nations people. We understand that through the Productivity Commission's report last year that we know we have a way to go. But today's report to the Parliament in both the House of Reps and in the Senate is actually about what our policy is to improve those targets. And when the Productivity Commission delivers its next set of targets, which it does in the next couple of months and then again in June-July, to have the complete picture, I would like to think there will be some changes in those reports and in that data. But what we are talking about today is what we are doing currently and moving forward. And the most important part of this is a reminder to all states and territory parliaments that they have signed up to a National Agreement in 2020 with the then Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt, along with Pat Turner and the Coalition of Peaks across the country. And when I came into the role six months ago, I had heard the calls by the Coalition of Peaks for the Federal Government to step in, and that's what I've done, taking on this role to work much closer with the Coalition of Peaks, and also with state and territory ministers and working with Indigenous Affairs Ministers, but also urging them to call on their Cabinets to work with us on Closing the Gap. It is not just the role of Indigenous Affairs Ministers across the country, it is the role collectively of all Cabinets across the country. And so, I am very proud to stand here today with our plan going forward, which highlights areas of food security, of nutrition, of remote jobs and certainly housing, and the Northern Territory Remote Area Investment plan, which I'm happy to talk about in a moment, but I'll hand over to Pat Turner.
LEAD CONVENOR OF THE COALITION OF PEAKS, PAT TURNER AM: Thank you, Minister, and thank you for your ongoing support and your commitment since you've been the Minister. We really appreciate that and we do appreciate the Commonwealth's leadership that is swinging into gear, and especially under Minister McCarthy's stewardship, on Closing the Gap, and the Prime Minister, of course, is very familiar with this area and we welcome his commitments this morning. With me is Scott Wilson, one of the Deputy Lead Convenors of the Coalition of Peaks, and Scott runs Alcohol and Drug Services and resides in Adelaide. And so, the food security is particularly welcome in those 76 remote communities. 30 essential items will be the same price as they are in cities, and you know, that's crucially important and our people feel it even worse in these tough economic times when every household across the country is struggling, and we acknowledge that. We accept our responsibility in terms of contributions to Closing the Gap. And we're now at the five-year mark, so we're over the laying the foundations and getting the processes in place. Now's the time for the rubber to hit the road and for all governments to invest the money at the community level to see the programs hastened. Housing is the number one priority. We have got inter-governmental agreements signed off, and we're very pleased with those, reflecting the four national Priority Reforms. Housing and homelessness, the National Skills Agreement, and we've also got the education funding. So, we and our peaks have worked very closely with those agencies that are responsible for the updating of those inter-governmental agreements. The National Skills Agreement, I'm very pleased to say that the Commonwealth has clearly earmarked money and there's money earmarked at the state level. Our peaks at the state level aren't so happy with the performance of the TAFEs or the sector, vocational training sector, at the state level and territory level, because they only focus on the TAFEs, they don't focus on our registered training organisations. We get a 70 plus graduation result as TAFE gets 32 per cent. So, that's a big difference, and we need a lot more of our people coming through with the skills ready to take on the jobs. We've created a lot of new jobs in our community-controlled sector, especially in the health sector, and Prime Minister referred to a number of those and so did Minister McCarthy, in the Connected Beginnings and the support that we give for suicide prevention and the community outreach that our organisations do. There's been significant funding increases for domestic violence and for our kids. But no one can walk away from the fact that the leader of the Opposition said that the Stolen Gens stopped in 1970. Well, it didn't. It's still going on today, and we've got far too many children in out-of-home care and most of the children in detention are on remand. They are on remand. They have not been charged with an offence yet. So, I think it's over 80 per cent of the children who are in juvenile detention, and we see a significant correlation between children in out-of-home care and children who then progress into the juvenile justice system. I wouldn't say justice, but into the juvenile detention centres. Anyway, they're just some of the things that I wanted to highlight. So, there's good news and there's bad news. So, you know, incarceration is going up. The Minister and I, you might want to say what we've done on that recently, Minister.
MALARNDIRRI McCARTHY: Yeah, sure, Pat. We've met with the Indigenous Affairs Ministers in Perth in November and raised that, along with the Coalition of Peaks at the Joint Council, and we've tasked each Minister to go back to their Cabinets and look at remand and what kind of options we can provide for our young people, who, as Pat has identified, are just largely represented on remand. So, we are going to be following up with that and I certainly will be in my next meeting with the Indigenous Affairs Ministers.
Any questions?
JOURNALIST: Minister and Pat Turner, you both reflected on this. Minister, you said when you came into the role six months ago, you heard the calls from the Coalition of Peaks for the Federal Government to step in, and that's what you've done. Pat Turner, you've also talked about, you know, how good it's been since the Minister has come in. Can I just confirm what exactly has changed in that way? You're talking about the Federal Government stepping in. What was it beforehand? What is it now? Does that make sense?
MALARNDIRRI McCARTHY: Well, certainly from my perspective, I saw that there was still recovery, if you like, in terms of Indigenous people across the country coming out from the referendum defeat, and I knew that some of the language that had been used within the parliamentary debate and externally on social media was really tearing up our country. And one of the reasons I thought was really important to reach across was to highlight that we have to do this in a bipartisan manner. We all signed up to Closing the Gap in 2020. It is a National Agreement. There should be no question of that bipartisanship. And I thought it was the right thing to do to reach out across the Parliament and have regular meetings with the Opposition, all in one group, along with Pat Turner with me. The Teals have come, One Nation has come, Independents have come and the Opposition has come.
JOURNALIST: You spoke about the importance of working with states and territories. And then, Ms Turner, you spoke about remand being a major issue. In recent sort of the year, we've seen NSW, Victoria and Queensland tighten their child bail laws, and we know that sort of disproportionately affects Indigenous people. In terms of direction, you’d give to the state and territories, would you like to see an unwinding of these laws? Which can be quite a blunt --
MALARNDIRRI McCARTHY: No. It's an important question and I'm conscious that Question Time’s coming. But can I just say that we came to office wanting to look at the issues with youth. Through Amanda Rishworth, we've been able to appoint a First Nations Children's Commissioner whose role is to actually work with the states and territories and also the Children's Commissioner across each jurisdiction, because we are concerned about the high rates of out of home care and detention.
JOURNALIST: You guys have often pushed back on implementing anything on the states, saying that it's a state issue when it comes to justice. We were listening to Tony McAvoy last Monday. He said the Commonwealth could legislate, the Commonwealth could develop policy, the Commonwealth could direct funding towards activities which promote and facilitate observations of Australia's international human rights obligations. Just asking seems to be not really doing anything. We've seen states actually tighten their youth bail laws and make it more and more stringent, and it's gone up consistently. Beyond just asking, what actually can the government do and what will it do?
MALARNDIRRI McCARTHY: Well, I'm conscious that in some of those jurisdictions we've seen a change of government, which many of them have come in on that basis. In terms of youth, we can keep being vigilant about what we can do at this level, and by putting in place a First Nations Children's Commissioner, I think is a critical step for us. But that's not to say that's the end of it. And I do certainly respect the words of Tony McAvoy, and I'm conscious there is an inquiry underway and there's always more that we could possibly do, and I look forward to the recommendations of that.
JOURNALIST: Minister, to your food security strategy. How did you choose the 30 items? How did you choose the 76 stores? And what is the cost to the Federal Government for this?
MALARNDIRRI McCARTHY: Well, I've been working with the Food Security Working Group in my role as Assistant Minister, and I've carried that on into this role, and that Working Group is made up of representatives across state and territories, including departments, but also, you know, the Arnhem Land Progress Association, we've got CEQ, we've got Outback Stores. So, that group has been really critical to identifying the 30 essential items, and in terms of the 76 remote communities across Australia, obviously, we will work in collaboration with that Food Security Working Group as well as others to identify closely those communities that are at risk in terms of the access for the food supply.
JOURNALIST: Ms Turner, you've spoken about accountability, and obviously, due to intergenerational disadvantaged trauma, these issues don't get turned around like that.
PAT TURNER: No.
JOURNALIST: Noting that not many of the targets are actually on track to be met, what does accountability look like to you and what would you like to see happen if we're continuously failing or if we don't meet the targets?
PAT TURNER: Well, we're accountable to our constituencies in terms of the Aboriginal communities that we serve, and so we've got 80 peaks across the country, and under those 80 peaks, there's some 800 organisations that do service delivery at the local level and they feed back the information through their peaks and the peaks bring it to us and we, you know, consolidate that. So, we're accountable to those people and we try to make sure that we explain what we're doing, how we're doing it. And, you know, we have newsletters, we have social media, we do all of that. And whenever we travel, we also try to speak to as many organisations as possible. So, we are first and foremost accountable to our own people and we can be held accountable for the quality and the type of services that we deliver. But we believe, for example, in my area, because I'm also the CEO of NACCHO, the health organisation, we do an outstanding job in terms of the provision of comprehensive primary health care to our people. I believe that in Scott's area, in alcohol and drug, well, Scott can talk to that. But in the children's area, SNAICC, the National Voice for Our Children, have really come up strong. We're in the process of formulating a domestic violence committee -
MALARNDIRRI McCARTHY: Excuse me Pat.
PAT TURNER: No, I know you have to go.
MALARNDIRRI McCARTHY: But I'll leave you both.
PAT TURNER: Okay. Thank you very much, Minister. Happy to answer your questions.
JOURNALIST: I also wanted to ask, crime has come up as a big, it looks like it's going to be quite a big election issue.
PAT TURNER: I know.
JOURNALIST: Yeah, and so, because particularly --
PAT TURNER: It's an easy target.
JOURNALIST: -- and Indigenous Australians are overrepresented in --
PAT TURNER: Across the board.
JOURNALIST: Exactly. I wanted to ask if that concerns you at all, given how big it's going to be. And also, this is a little bit separate, but, you know, Labor has looked at mandatory sentencing for terror, which is different to, of course, anything else. But does that start to worry that Labor principles, which were always against --
PAT TURNER: Yes. Well, I think it was Carmen Lawrence who first introduced mandatory sentencing, wasn't it, under a Labor Government in WA? That says my memory.
JOURNALIST: I could probably learn something from that. But do those two things, sorry, that the prevalence of crime as a political issue, the ebbing away of, you know, the mandatory minimum sentencing, you know, issue. Do those things concern you? It's going to start getting pretty heated in an election and for the Indigenous community. Are you worried about those things becoming -
PAT TURNER: Very worried. But you know, why is there so much crime happening in a time that’s really tough? I think drugs and alcohol have a lot to do with it, and fuel it, and a lot of the crime is family violence and far too many women dying at the hands of their partners across the country, and we have to remember that. And I think that with all the family violence that police have to attend to, means resources are being diverted from what they would normally do in terms of doing a street run, or having a presence around the place. And the other thing is the lack of mental health services that causes extraordinarily difficult situations either at emergency departments or for families trying to cope with people who have severe mental health issues that are not being treated consistently and properly. Did you want to say anything about –
SCOTT WILSON, DEPUTY LEAD CONVENOR OF THE COALITION OF PEAKS: Yeah, look, I heard the Opposition in the Senate talking about one way of addressing some of those sorts of issues is to reintroduce Cashless Welfare Card. And we'll hear more and more about that as we move on, and we've been hearing about it for quite some time now. Cashless Welfare Card was brought in quite a few years ago by the previous Liberal National Government as a trial. That trial stayed on until they lost government, by the way, and they just kept rolling it over. Millions of dollars, in my opinion, because the services we run are in those trial zones, and it basically did nothing. There was no impact whatsoever from the Cashless Welfare Card. And that's just not me saying that, that was three to four independent evaluation reports that the Coalition at time - the government at the time - commissioned. And when we kept speaking out about it publicly, what happened to our organisation is that they cut our funding, and so that was to try and silence us. But I can tell you now, the Cashless Welfare Card is not the panacea that the Opposition is trying, and the media is picking up on. We went from, in the area that we run services, we used to have about 800 clients. Once Cashless Welfare Card came in, our clients should have been decreasing, right? Because they were drug and alcohol affected people. We actually now have over 1,200 clients. So, basically it didn't work, and it won't work in the future. What would work is if people voluntarily were able to go on to sort of schemes like that when it's mandatory, which comes back to the whole thing about mandatory sentencing, then people will push back.
Thanks everyone.