Labor Will Move Ahead with Reconciliation and Closing the Gap for our First Nations People

09 August 2021

CANBERRA - 9 August 2021

More than a year after the new Closing the Gap agreement was signed, the delayed report brings us grim news.

 

First Nations people are still far more likely to be jailed, die by suicide, and have their children removed than non-Indigenous Australians.
 
Out of the 17 targets that have been set, only three are on track to be reached.

 

In the Northern Territory, we live proudly side by side with more than 60,000 years of culture, heritage, and connection to country.

 

We celebrate our First Nations cultures and stories.

 

But we also have a front-row seat to our country’s failure to progress on Closing the Gap.

 

I welcome the Government’s announcement of a new $378 million redress scheme for people forcibly removed from their families as children.

 

This is good news for my electorate, where Stolen Generations members have been fighting for compensation for decades.

 

I’m thinking particularly of those who were abused at the Retta Dixon Home in Darwin, who weren’t part of a class action and didn’t get compensated by AIM, the organisation that ran the home.

 

The Government wouldn’t let it participate in the national redress scheme due to its lack of funds for payouts.

 

But there have been so many thousands across the NT who have suffered in many different institutions, who’ve been fighting for so long to be recognised.

I’d like to pay tribute to survivor Eileen Cummings from the Stolen Generations Aboriginal Corporation.

 

In 1948, when she was just four, she was taken off the Arnhem Land cattle station she lived on, where her mother was a domestic servant.

 

She didn’t see her mother again for almost a decade.

 

Shamefully, her story is all too common.

 

Nationally, it’s estimated that as many as one in three Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families under government policies from 1910 to 1970.

 

Eileen said she was overjoyed to learn of the compensation scheme for survivors who were under 18 when they were taken.

 

Eileen said today:

 

“We’ve been fighting for such a long time.

 

“You keep asking us for reconciliation – how can we reconcile when the history of this country is denying these stolen children?

 

“If you want us to reconcile, you have to take ownership of that injustice.”

 

Eileen says of the compensation amount:

 

“Some say the money is not enough, but I don’t care if it’s not enough, it’s something. To me, it’s taking responsibility and saying that something happened to us, and that’s what I wanted all along.”

 

Eileen was planning to retire from the Stolen Generations Aboriginal Corporation committee in November, but says she’ll keep going until the money is paid out.

 

She’s worried that payments won’t begin until March next year, and that more survivors, like countless before them, might die before they and their families are compensated.

 

She said:

“I’m fighting for the deceased and their children. They’ve waited so long – why do they have to wait even longer?”

 

The rates of Indigenous incarceration and deaths in custody are appalling.

 

In the NT, almost 90 per cent of the adult prison population are First Nations people; that’s about 100 per cent in juvenile detention.

 

The NT Government has just today signed a groundbreaking Aboriginal Justice Agreement with Aboriginal and community sector leaders.

The first of its kind in the NT, the seven-year agreement aims to:

  • Reduce reoffending and imprisonment rates of Aboriginal Territorians to reduce crime;
  • Engage and support Aboriginal leadership; and
  • Improve justice responses and services for Aboriginal Territorians

 

Federally, Labor has a plan to turn this sad tide, building on successful Justice Reinvestment programs by:

 

  • tackling the root causes of crime and re-offending including rehabilitation services
  • improving family and domestic violence support
  • offering support for the homeless
  • developing school retention initiatives

 

We’ll make sure that coronial inquests into deaths in custody are properly resourced and include the voices of family members and First Nations communities.

 

We’ll improve funding for legal services, and we’ll ensure deaths in custody are nationally reported in real time.

 

Labor will close the Gap on employment in part by doubling the number of Indigenous Rangers by 2030, to 3,800 people.

 

We’ve seen the tangible success of the Indigenous Rangers Program.

 

It provides valuable employment for Indigenous people in regional and rural communities, all across the Territory.

It maintains crucial connection to country, it grows local economies, and it protects and restores the environment.

 

In my electorate of Solomon we have the Larrakia Rangers doing terrific work in our city coastal reserve, protecting nesting turtles and migratory birds.

 

But there are also groups all over the Top End, caring for country in a variety of ways.

 

For example, the Warddeken Rangers, using traditional fire management in Arnhem Land, and the Dhimurru Rangers out near Yirrkala protecting coastal country and fighting sea pollution washing up on our beaches from South-East Asia.

And, Deputy Speaker, when it comes to reconciliation, it was Labor that made the historic Apology, and it is Labor which remains the only party to support the Uluru Statement from the heart in full: voice, treaty, and truth.

 

And there’s other things a Labor Government will do:

 

  • We’ll establish a Makarrata commission
  • We’ll set a public sector employment target of 5%
  • We’ll protect First Nations intellectual property rights, by setting up a Productivity Commission inquiry into fake art and fraud
  • We’ll support the growth of Indigenous-owned businesses and affirm their rights in future free trade agreements
  • And we’ll boost support for Indigenous protected areas

 

Only Labor will make this happen.

 

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ENDS