Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (NT, Country Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in this place for the first time in 2024. I would like to begin by acknowledging the incredible amount of nonsense, gymnastics and shallow political stunts the Albanese government decided to entertain the country with over the Christmas and new year break, beginning with the Prime Minister's pathetic attempt to distance himself from his divisive and failed referendum, his impressive tightrope walking to avoid taking a position on Australia Day and his impressive backflipping over the stage 3 tax cuts. They have come full circle. He and his government are now trying to quietly run as fast as they can away from their commitment to the divisive Uluru Statement from the Heart. Mr Albanese was very keen to make sure everyone knew he wasn't taking a holiday—no, he was hard at work doing his best to make the lives of Australians much, much harder. No doubt he will continue that hard work over the next 11 months.

Luckily, the coalition is just as committed to fighting for common sense as the Albanese government is to fighting for their ideology—the same ideology that led this government to waste 18 months on a divisive referendum when they should have been pursuing real and practical solutions to address the real problems being faced by our most marginalised Australians. While they should have been focusing on need, the Labor Party was focusing on race. Of course, they wouldn't need to be trying to turn Australians against each other or divide us by race if they had any sort of plan to address Indigenous disadvantage. They wouldn't need to look for a silver bullet fix, desperately trying to sell Australians on half-baked, detail-less proposals like the Voice if they had any decent policy ideas. They wouldn't need to constantly try to shift responsibility for this issue to other organisations if they were willing to accept that simply throwing money at a problem isn't the best way to fix it.

A Peter Dutton led coalition government will focus on need, not race. We won't waste time on ideologically driven silver bullet approaches to addressing disadvantage. We will find where a need exists and work with communities to address that need. We will do the work to understand where government money and resources can better be used, to look at where government efforts are producing positive outcomes and to stop funnelling it into places where it is not producing those outcomes. That is why, last year, while Mr Albanese sought to divide Australians, my colleagues and I repeatedly called for this government to take the first steps in that process.

We moved multiple motions for Senate inquiries into Aboriginal Land Councils and similar organisations. These calls were repeatedly denied by Labor, the Greens and ACT Senator David Pocock. My colleagues and I called for a royal commission into child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities and an audit of spending on Indigenous programs. This too was denied. When Mr Dutton joined me in the Northern Territory last year and heard directly from Territorians about their experiences and the issues they faced, we were both accused of politicising the issue, simply for trying to bring attention to it. In response to our calls we have been told that we don't need any audits and we don't need investigations or royal commissions. This is plainly wrong.

Last year the Western Australian government had to scramble to undo its disastrous Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act. The act proved to be a nightmare for Australians to navigate and simultaneously appeared to open the door for some groups to take advantage, including one Indigenous organisation that tried to claim $2.5 million to approve a tree-planting activity. Last week the coalition firmly resolved to defund the Environmental Defenders Office after it was caught exploiting—fancy that—Indigenous individuals and organisations, with some in the EDO found to be effectively coaching Indigenous witnesses to help make their case.

Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people know only too well that this is not the first time Indigenous Australians have been exploited for the benefit of others. It's not the first time money intended to help some of the most marginalised Australians has been used in ways that actually hurt them—hurting investment opportunities and depriving Indigenous Australians of economic opportunity and independence. Indeed, with the Environmental Defenders Office, we now find ourselves in the incredible situation where the Albanese government is actually funding organisations that are pursuing the deprivation of Indigenous economic participation while simultaneously wasting hundreds of millions of dollars trying to implement ill-conceived silver-bullet policy solutions to Indigenous disadvantage.

Earlier this week Darren Perry, an Aboriginal man who has been a long-term advocate for Indigenous peoples—even helping draft cultural heritage laws for the Victorian government—spoke about his calls for a parliamentary inquiry to investigate the loopholes in laws and governance issues in Aboriginal corporations. Hah! He claimed that he believes these laws are being hijacked to funnel money into some Aboriginal corporations and accused some organisations of extorting developers, farmers and even the government, with consequences felt by all Australians. He said the legislation must protect Aboriginal land rights but should not be used as a 'gravy train' to line individuals' pockets. He said:

The Act was not meant to extort money out of developers. This is extortion. I know what standover tactics are, and that's what's going on.

In the Northern Territory, the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency, which receives more than $14 million of taxpayer money, has been plagued by crisis and scandal and allegations of criminal behaviour and wrongdoing. Earlier this year the staff of NAAJA wrote a letter calling for urgent intervention by both the Territory and the federal governments, demanding the removal of the executive team. Barrister John Lawrence says the crisis engulfing NAAJA is 'crippling the NT's justice system and contributing to the record number of Indigenous people in prison'.

We need an audit so we can understand where government money and resources can be better used. We have to look at where government efforts are producing positive outcomes and stop funnelling money into places where it is not producing these outcomes. We have to do this if we want to see real change and if we want to see an improvement in the lives of those marginalised Indigenous Australians. But, unfortunately, we won't get this from the Albanese government. We won't get it from an Indigenous Australians minister who does not have a plan. We won't get it from a Labor Party who allows ideology to trample common sense. We need a plan and we need common sense. The only way we will get that is from a Peter Dutton led coalition government.