Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, I am not kidding, Senator McLucas. We have four people at Yirrkala who decided that they wanted to endorse the actions of former Minister Brough and Prime Minister Howard. The Senate statistics for Lingiari showed a 51.83 per cent endorsement for the Labor Party and only a 35.01 per cent return to the Country Liberal Party. I will turn to just one other, Gapuwiyak, a community in north-east Arnhem Land where we obtained 1,304 votes to only 127 votes for the former government.

So what does that prove to us, as I stand here representing my constituents from the Northern Territory? We had the former government, who failed to listen to Indigenous people, who did not consult with them at all, who never took on board their major concerns and who intervened in such a massive way in their lives. While acknowledging the need to protect children and provide better policing and health services, the Labor Party committed to reviewing the Northern Territory intervention within 12 months in areas such as the taking over of land under the compulsory five-year leases. We committed to retaining the permit system, and we have already put legislation in the House of Representatives to honour that commitment which, of course, most Indigenous communities asked for. That move was strongly supported by the Northern Territory police as a safeguard against unwelcome visitors. We committed to bringing back CDEP, and already Minister Macklin has issued a moratorium on the further dismantling of this program. We acknowledge that some changes are needed to develop more jobs in remote areas, that real jobs will always be limited and that CDEP is the best form of an alternative to provide work.

At the outset, we heard that the intervention was about backing up the Little children are sacred report and about ensuring that children were safe and protected. I personally think I should and will call publicly for us to now clarify exactly what the intervention is achieving and what we want to achieve as we come up to the 12-month review. Up until February, we knew that 6,244 child health checks had been undertaken. In about 92 teams, 250 healthcare professionals have been to 49 communities and to 12 health camps. There has been an analysis undertaken of the first group of 4,900 children. We know that the major problems are dental services, followed by ear, nose and throat and, most likely, skin diseases. But I think a really interesting statistic that people ought to know about is the evidence of abuse that is out there. There have been children who have been referred to the Northern Territory Family and Community Services. It may well have been because they were experiencing poor growth, as we heard about during the most recent estimates proceedings, or because there was difficulty in establishing appropriate care circumstances for that child.

So how many have actually been referred to Family and Community Services for one reason or another? Of the children who have already been seen, it is 0.7 per cent. So we are talking about 0.7 per cent of 6,244, which is 50. So the dramas and the charades and the attention that was sought by the previous government in relation to child sexual abuse and child neglect, I believe, were severely overstated. I am not denying they are there, but when you have only 50 out of 6,244, we really need to redefine what we are trying to achieve through this intervention and exactly what goals we are trying to achieve. I think that the National Indigenous Times summed it up quite adequately when it stated:

The fact is, Aboriginal people still want the $1.3 billion spent in their communities, plus a lot more to make up the massive gaps—

massive gaps, I might add, that were incurred under the 11 long years of the Howard government—

in health, housing and education that have grown amid decades of appalling government neglect.

But they:

... don’t see why they have to give up their basic human rights in the process ...

And I think that the resounding results at the polling booths in the Northern Territory show that. Aboriginal people clearly rejected the methods of the intervention. Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory want consultation, not confrontation, and they want assistance, not insistence, by government. They want to be consulted and their views sought, and they want to own the way forward in relation to what needs to be achieved in Indigenous communities. If you are ever in any doubt about that, you just need to look at the support the Labor Party got during the federal election, booth by booth, across the Territory. Some of the most significant booths, where former Minister Brough had spent most of his time, overwhelmingly rejected not only him personally but his proposals.

Industrial relations was also a hot topic during the election campaign due to the former government’s radical reforms, which took away workers’ rights and placed them firmly in the power of employers. The sheer lack of power experienced by employees was clearly demonstrated by the National Jet Systems pilots in Darwin, Perth and Cairns during the campaign. In their original agreements, those pilots were entitled to receive an annual CPI increase. Management withheld the increase in order to pressure the pilots into signing up to reduced conditions through an AWA. Last year pilots based in Darwin were told they had to sign reduced condition AWAs or they would be made redundant. There was also the allegation that some pilots were required to sign in order to be entitled to a promotion. New pilots hired since the beginning of 2007 were required to sign an AWA, which we saw included a 20 per cent reduction on the existing pilot salary and a pay increase of only two per cent annually, regardless of CPI movement. They were also obligated to pay, in part, for their training and, if they left the company within three years, they were required to pay for their training in full, which cost about $30,000. These pilots were already some of the lowest paid pilots in the country. It was not just a case of simply moving to another company. There are limited jobs, particularly for pilots, available in the Northern Territory, and the industry requires that these pilots lose seniority when they move to another employer. That means a significant loss of income levels lasting several years.

Even just recently, after the change of government, with a mandate given by the Australian public to change the previous coalition government’s radical industrial relations reforms, came the ordeal experienced by the now famous Triton 11. The UK based company Gardline International sacked Australian workers aboard its Customs vessel, the Triton, whilst they were out at sea, and informed the workers that they would not have a job once they docked in Darwin. The company had intended to replace them with a non-unionised workforce on lesser pay. The crew fought for their working rights and, with the support of the community and the trade unions, were reinstated with a pay rise. So the industrial relations legislation as it currently stands must be changed. Australian workplace agreements put the balance of power firmly in the hands of the employer, and the fairness test, in all its toothless glory, has done little to restore fairness in the workplace. The Rudd government will restore fairness to the workplace and ensure both the employer and the employee are equal when it comes to their terms and conditions of work.

I want to acknowledge the Your Rights at Work campaign. This was instrumental in helping to bring down the previous government’s unjust industrial relations regime and legislation. The campaign team, along with their volunteers in the Northern Territory, particularly in the seat of Solomon, were active in raising public awareness about the unfairness of the coalition’s IR system, and their incredible efforts in the year leading up to the election did not go unnoticed. I want to personally thank Rebecca Want, who was later joined by Melissa Harrison and Bryan Wilkins. Those three people, along with their army of volunteers—from trade unions to workplace delegates to workers right across the board who were just aggrieved by the thought of the unbalanced nature of the system imposed by the Howard government—worked tirelessly for months on end, seven days a week, with community organisations and trade unions, talking to the public and keeping them informed.

Of course, I dare not mention the Your Rights at Work campaign without mentioning the chicken who played a pivotal role in highlighting the fact to the community in the Northern Territory that the previous member for the seat of Solomon had boasted so proudly that his hands were all over the Howard government’s IR legislation but had failed so dismally to actually stand up and debate it publicly in the lead-up to the election campaign and during the election campaign. You can understand why the Your Rights at Work campaign went to the trouble of ensuring that a chicken appeared at every place it possibly could to reinforce the nature of how, on one hand, people were proud to have introduced this legislation but, on the other, they backed away when it came to actually debating the impact it was having on workers. The campaign’s vocal opposition to Work Choices gave many employees on unfair AWAs the courage to come out and speak about their experiences. On the whole the community response was incredibly positive, and the support was demonstrated with an election day victory.

Finally, I want to pay tribute to a longstanding life member of the Labor Party in the Northern Territory, Alfred Ernest Chittock. Alf passed away on Christmas Day last year and was in his 90s when that happened. He was around to see the election of the Rudd Labor government, and I personally know that he was incredibly proud of that day. I think the fact that I mention him in this speech on the address-in-reply shows justice and compliments his love for and commitment to the Labor Party. He first moved to the Territory in 1949, after the end of the Second World War, and was instrumental in the affairs of Tennant Creek, becoming chairman of the town management board. He became the first mayor of Tennant Creek after the local government was established and was instrumental in setting up the Local Government Association of the Northern Territory.

He was involved in the Returned and Services League, the Red Cross, the Senior Citizens Club, the Lions Club, the Sporties Club and the Memo Club in Tennant Creek. In fact, if you want to find the epitome of what the heart of the Territory is about, you would look no further than Alf Chittock. I have to say that he was a great icon who will be greatly missed in Tennant Creek. He was a great champion of the Labor Party in Tennant, which I think was incredibly hard to do through his years. But I know that, as a former life member of the party and a great member of the party, he would have been proud of the election of the Rudd Labor government, and so it is this speech that I would like to dedicate to his memory and to his family. (Time expired)