http://www.andrewrobb.com.au RSS feeds for Andrew Robb MP - Federal Member for Goldstein 60 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/GoldsteinMediaReleases/tabid/72/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/757/Apology-to-Australias-Indigenous-peoples.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=72&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=757 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=757&PortalID=0&TabID=72 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/GoldsteinMediaReleases/tabid/72/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/757/Apology-to-Australias-Indigenous-peoples.aspx Mr ROBB (Goldstein) (6.27 p.m.)—I rise in strong support of this motion to offer a formal apology to our Aboriginal people. I have had a longstanding involvement with members of Indigenous communities in various remote areas of Australia and I feel very strongly about the need to address the totally unacceptable situation which characterises the circumstances of so many of our Indigenous people. This apology is a symbolic gesture which cannot stand alone. Yet symbols are important. Symbols convey a state of mind. Symbols often convey the essence of complex situations. Symbols can soar above the preoccupations of our everyday life, and by doing so often become powerful, immutable statements. The formal apology issued to our Indigenous Australians on 13 February was a powerful symbol, a symbol for good and an immutable and broad acknowledgement of the greatest blemish on our past, namely, the treatment of our Indigenous people. For my part, the apology is a heartfelt acknowledgement not of any one act but, as my friend and colleague Scott Morrison so eloquently implied in his maiden speech last Thursday, we are acknowledging the result of ‘more than 200 years of shared ignorance, failed policies and failed communities’. In many respects government paternalism and welfare has done so much to enfeeble and marginalise our Indigenous people. I have had exposure to that again and again, and it is a situation which is of great urgency and great need. If the apology allows some closure for so many with a disadvantaged and unhappy past, if it allows them to put aside a sense of injustice, to move on, to gain confidence and resolve to improve their own lives, then this is a wonderful thing. However, a true sense of balance will only be fully achieved in Australia when we complete the unfinished business of providing Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Australia with a shared destiny. Until we effectively tackle the hopelessness, the substance abuse, the violence and welfare dependency that unfettered welfare or sit-down money has entrenched in so many of our Indigenous communities, then there can be no shared destiny. In the name of compassion and a well-placed sense of guilt we have ironically locked in disadvantage and a state of mind which works against many of our Indigenous people seeing how, or wanting, to take control of their own lives. Hopefully, the apology lays an important psychological foundation to empower and encourage individuals and communities to seek to improve their own lives. Hopefully, the apology raises the expectation and the accountability of our governments to apply a large measure of originality, common sense and resolve. I say originality, because so much of what we have done, despite good intent, has failed. The policy approaches of state and federal governments and successive governments have failed comprehensively. So we need to apply a large measure of originality, common sense and resolve in seeking to address the critical health, education, employment and housing issues confronting so many Indigenous communities. In doing so, the policies and approach of our governments must seek to empower individuals to foster a sense of self-worth, a sense of defiance, in many respects, and self-responsibility. It is only this state of mind among our Indigenous Australians that will be associated with any sustainable achievement of the quality of life and the quality of opportunity that will mark the achievement of a shared destiny with all other Australians. And for that reason, I see the apology as a very important starting point.   Andrew Robb MP Mon, 18 Feb 2008 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:757 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/GoldsteinMediaReleases/tabid/72/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/550/Indigenous-Education-Targeted-Assistance-Amendment-Bill-2005.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=72&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=550 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=550&PortalID=0&TabID=72 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/GoldsteinMediaReleases/tabid/72/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/550/Indigenous-Education-Targeted-Assistance-Amendment-Bill-2005.aspx Mr ROBB (Goldstein) (6.57 p.m.)—In her speech on the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment Bill 2005 the member for Jagajaga made another contribution of the kind which we have come to expect from her, one of endless rhetoric and abuse. She has given us a 30-minute recital of statistics, cliches and shallow assessments but no solutions, other than throwing money at endless programs. That is the only thing that the Labor Party have on their plate. It is the only answer they have. It is a further example of the policy laziness of the opposition. The Labor Party have a policy vacuum in this area and in many other areas. They have made no attempt, in this very critical area of our community, to ascertain why the Indigenous community is bedevilled with chronic societal problems which mitigate against successful education outcomes. We need to get beyond just throwing money at the problem. The Labor Party had 13 years of trying to find solutions, which involved throwing money at the problem. But that approach failed. This government is seeking to take a much wider view of the problems bedevilling Indigenous communities to see if we can come up with durable and effective solutions. Education is the foundation of freedom and personal development for Indigenous Australians, as it is for the broader Australian community. Without education the options open to people throughout life are invariably narrow and very limited. Without education, ignorance and lack of opportunity predominates. The lack of education becomes a breeding ground for low self-esteem and low self-discipline, prejudice, self-justification, antisocial behaviour, the growth of a victim mentality and the non-realisation of the potential that exists within each and every one of us. For this reason, quality primary and secondary education is fundamental to tackling the chronic disadvantage and aimless circumstance confronting so many in our Indigenous communities. To begin with, the simple discipline of attending school five days a week for six to seven hours a day, taking some lunch, doing some homework, participating constructively in the classroom, playing some sport and participating in other non-academic activities for 10 to 12 years, slowly but surely instils in individuals the life skills, routines, self-confidence and reading and writing skills to go on to further study, or to take on a trade or generally enter the work force. Sadly, many in our Indigenous communities have for a long time been denied the chance to develop these necessary life skills. While adequate resources are a necessary and very important part of dealing with this—and the coalition government over 9½ years has massively increased the money going to our Aboriginal communities—in many instances, other factors are operating to prevent young Aboriginal people from getting a strong educational grounding and experience. Serious disruption in the home and community, substance and physical abuse, a mendicant welfare mentality which fosters an environment where self-responsibility and self-discipline is leached out of a community, very few good role models and many bad ones, and a corresponding disregard for one another are not uncommon. This environment makes it extremely tough for Aboriginal students not only to persist in education but also to reach a standard at primary school that gives them a chance to fit in and keep up at secondary school. The seeds of failure are sown early in the lives of so many young Aboriginal people, long before they have any real say in it. There are no easy answers. One initiative worth watching is a trial project at the Coen State School in the middle of Cape York. The Computer Culture trial is being run by an Indigenous organisation, Noel Pearson’s Cape York Partnerships, with the support of a range of government and commercial interests, including very strong support from Westpac. This program is directed at primary-age school children using multimedia digital technology to capture stories and traditional cultures and is a core component of the curriculum. This approach has resulted in the active and regular involvement of parents and grandparents in the classroom and has prompted excitement and engagement, which is extremely powerful and constructive. In the process of capturing the rich inheritance of Aboriginal history and culture in a very interactive, creative and repeatable way this program is giving primary school students at Coen a strong sense of history and identity while educating them in literacy, numeracy and technical skills; engaging and educating their extended families; encouraging them to complete major projects and homework; and exposing them and their families to the joys and very personal achievements of learning. This can set kids up to achieve their full potential and it enables them to have a good knowledge of the history, customs and languages of their own community, while giving them the educational basis and life skills to cope within the broader Australian community and, in doing so, have the best of both worlds. Programs such as these are powerful and hold great potential, but they are not enough. Money alone is not the answer. In many cases, we are throwing good money after bad, because the causes of the social and cultural disintegration of many remote Indigenous communities are not being addressed and have failed to be addressed over decades. Restoring self-esteem and personal responsibility is the key. Participation in primary education is one of the basic means of building life skills and restoring a sense of personal responsibility and obligation. For starters, regular attendance at school is a must. Parents must take responsibility for ensuring the regular participation of their children at school. Many do not, because long-term welfare dependency has fostered a state of mind which is an anathema to personal responsibility and obligation. If they do not shoulder these fundamental parental responsibilities there need to be consequences through either denial of or restrictions on financial or other entitlements. The incentives must change if these parents are to shoulder these critical obligations to their children. These are the sorts of deep societal problems that have driven the focus of this government’s approach to Aboriginal affairs. The problems are much too broad just to throw money at them. We have to engage with the Aboriginal community and try to deal with these underlying problems, the passive dependency that has grown out of many decades of welfare without obligation. The coalition government has embarked on a wide range of reforms, including the shared responsibility agreements, in close operation with the Aboriginal community to seek to deal with the chronic attitudinal problems induced by passive welfare over three decades. The bill before the House is focused on the Indigenous children from remote communities who have had parental support and the opportunity to get through primary school and have reached a standard where they can hope to fit in at year 8 in a secondary boarding school. There are many primary kids who are still struggling to reach that standard. This bill is focused on those who have had the support and opportunity to get through primary school to reach a year 8 standard and who are well equipped to go on to secondary boarding school. At the moment, only 38 per cent of Indigenous students who commence secondary school continue to year 12, compared to 76 per cent of non-Indigenous students. That percentage could be expected to be much lower for Indigenous students from remote communities. In the past, boarding schools have played a prominent role in the successful secondary education of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students from remote areas of Australia. This has been the case because the financial and practical reality is that quality secondary education is extremely difficult in nearly all cases, if not possible, in remote communities. As the primary school issue is progressively addressed by both state and Commonwealth governments with the communities themselves and the leadership of the Aboriginal community—who are very clearly coming to understand the importance of addressing the passive welfare problem, the gross dependence and the impact that this has on the lives, attitudes, motivations, self-confidence and self-esteem of individuals within these communities—policy will focus more and more on providing scholarships for Indigenous students from remote areas to attend quality secondary schooling in non-remote areas. In this way, students will have the teachers, the facilities and the exposure to the broader Australian community which will give them the chance to meet their full potential and to make the most of their lives by equipping them with the skills and education to move more freely and comfortably between their own communities and the broader Australian community and contribute effectively to both. This bill seeks to assist this policy direction by funding tutorial support for an estimated 2,400 Indigenous students in their first year of boarding school. The aim is to help these students cope with their studies and ensure they reach a standard where they can fit in comfortably with others in the class who may have had a better basis of education in their primary school years. It is an important piece of legislation to complement the raft of other initiatives that this government is taking and the efforts that are being made in close cooperation with the Aboriginal community. We are not just throwing money at problems. This has been the narrow focus and the way in which governments in the past have sought to shift responsibility back to others, to unload responsibility and not take responsibility for solving these problems. There are no easy answers in this area. This government has sought to do the hard things and work with the community to find the fundamental problems and causes of the real difficulties we have with ensuring our Aboriginal children have the same educational opportunities and make the most of education in the same way as the rest of the community. I commend the bill to the house.   Andrew Robb MP Tue, 31 May 2005 14:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:550 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/GoldsteinMediaReleases/tabid/72/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/533/Aboriginal-and-Torres-Strait-Islander-Commission-Amendment-Bill-2005--March-16th-2005.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=72&ModuleID=389&ArticleID=533 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=533&PortalID=0&TabID=72 http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/Media/GoldsteinMediaReleases/tabid/72/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/533/Aboriginal-and-Torres-Strait-Islander-Commission-Amendment-Bill-2005--March-16th-2005.aspx Mr ROBB (Goldstein) (10.17 a.m.)—The debate on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Amendment Bill 2005 is very important. A review was conducted into ATSIC over a 10-month period from December 2002 until October 2003. This was the first comprehensive review into the activities and the effectiveness of ATSIC since its creation 15 years ago. During the review, there were two major rounds of consultation. One round involved a panel which met with stakeholders from across the nation, including the 35 ATSIC regional councils, and which reviewed some 156 written submissions. This was a serious and comprehensive review. These consultations revealed widespread disillusionment and dissatisfaction on the part of Indigenous Australians with ATSIC. Overwhelmingly, Indigenous Australians noted that they did not feel represented by ATSIC. There was a significant lack of goodwill and support from the broader community for what ATSIC was doing to help and support the community—or, more to the point, what ATSIC was not doing to help and support the community. In this regard, last year Mark Latham spoke a simple truth: ATSIC was a failure. So for our opponents in this House to say over the last day or two that the disbanding of ATSIC removes the means by which the views of Indigenous Australians can be effectively put before the government is quite baffling. ATSIC as a representative body has given no effective voice to Indigenous people. That as few as one in five eligible voters turned out for the ATSIC election should reveal the lack of resonance that ATSIC has had within the Indigenous community. ATSIC has not given effective voice in dealing with the crises of continuing poor health, domestic and sexual violence and substance abuse in the Aboriginal community that have accompanied ATSIC’s 15-year life. These are the criteria which ATSIC should be measured against, not some ideological approach to the existence of ATSIC and not some blind political stunt to try and oppose everything the government is seeking to do to address these very serious problems. ATSIC needs to be measured against these criteria. The symbol driven, rights based approach for Aboriginal people has been a dismal failure. ATSIC has reflected this approach. Labor cling to this agenda, which has failed Aboriginal people so dismally, and they have no alternative but to pour more money into the ATSIC black hole. A culture of blame and victimhood, combined with a second-rate service delivery, has not produced satisfactory improvements for our Indigenous Australians. Despite a substantial increase in government expenditure and some important improvements, many of the problems have been intractable. Reading the contributions of those on the other side of the chamber and listening to them this morning, both here and in the Senate, you see no acceptance and no acknowledgment of this dismal failure—no acceptance and no acknowledgment that it is time for a fundamental change to seek to address the huge issues at stake. There is no acceptance and no acknowledgment by those Labor and minor party members or senators that the Aboriginal community itself has accepted and acknowledged that ATSIC has failed and that fundamentally different approaches must be tried. The comments by those opposite demonstrate an ideological commitment to a second-rate system that has failed Indigenous Australians and has disappointed all Australians for decades. The comments by those opposite offer no alternative way forward to reduce the indisputable level of disadvantage faced by many Indigenous Australians. All they seem to want to do is tinker, tinker and tinker. They prattle on about blame, encourage Aboriginals to see themselves as victims and as having no responsibility. They suggest that we simply pour more and more money into a lost ATSIC cause. More sit-down money, more resources and more facilities delivered in a way which carries no responsibility for individual Aboriginals is no answer. It is a recipe for compounding the crisis. It is a recipe for further stripping our Aboriginal community of self-esteem, self-respect and personal responsibility. The Aboriginal community understands this; our opponents appear not to. Labor talks on and on about starting to build a future for our Indigenous community based on mutual respect and understanding. I do not disagree with this. However, I disagree profoundly with the way the Labor Party suggests this will come about. Labor’s approach works directly against this objective, focusing endlessly on a process of acknowledgment and redressing of past wrongs. Attributing blame and building a culture of victims not only is not productive but it is counterproductive. Mutual respect and understanding will be built very quickly as the Aboriginal community is given the opportunity to take responsibility for its own actions. This is the direction of changes being pursued by the government; this is the direction being requested by the Aboriginal community itself, and the winding up of ATSIC is necessarily part of this because ATSIC do not share this vision of empowering their own people. Their record stands testament to that. The government have introduced sweeping reforms to Indigenous affairs that have dramatically increased the focus on Indigenous issues. The reforms seek to place responsibility back into the mainstream of government activities, but importantly involves sharing responsibility directly with Indigenous Australians, on the ground, to help them create their own solution and improve coordination of efforts across key federal, state and local agencies. The abolition of ATSIC marks a change in the government’s evaluation of and approach to Indigenous programs, Indigenous policy and Indigenous expenditure. No longer will the amount of money being spent be the measure of us doing our best for Indigenous communities. The true measure is outcomes: what are the outcomes of these programs and have they improved the lives of Indigenous Australians—that is how we must be measured in the future, not on the quantity of money that is spent on and delivered into programs and to various communities. At the heart of these changes, which critically includes the scrapping of ATSIC, is the principle of shared responsibility, which assumes that government alone cannot fix Indigenous problems. Both government and Indigenous people have rights and obligations, and all must share responsibility. It is commonsense; it is not ideology as our opponents glibly suggest. More critically, this approach reflects the demands and the realisations of the Indigenous community. Again we hear from our opponents on the other side of the House that this approach of mutual obligation—shared responsibility—should deal with peripheral issues, none of these central services, central facilities or essential resources. The Aboriginal communities dispute this. They understand that mutual responsibility, shared responsibility and Aboriginals taking some responsibility for their own destiny are at the heart of their future—and this relates to all of the services and all of the resources which are at their disposal. All of the opportunities that they take on must involve some notion of responsibility for their own destiny. They understand that; others in this House do not. More critically, this approach reflects the demands and the realisations of the community. It reinforces, once again, that cultural change cannot be imposed; it must reflect the will of the people. We see examples all over Australia of Aboriginal people deciding to do something for themselves. One such example is the residents of Wadeye, a tribal Aboriginal Catholic community of 2½ thousand Aborigines situated at the western edge of the Daly River reserve in the Northern Territory. Wadeye has faced all the problems of other remote Aboriginal communities—grog, drugs, paint, illiteracy and aimlessness. The community built a much-needed swimming pool last year. At that time, the Wadeye elders agreed to impose a ‘no school, no pool’ rule. Theodora Narndu, a 63-year-old community elder who has six children and 24 grandchildren, says: “I feel confident our kids will (now) have a future away from the grog, the drugs and everything else.” … … … “It got to the point that things were so bad, where there appeared to be no hope for the children, that the community just decided, that’s enough, we have to do something for ourselves.” The Wadeye elders agreed to impose a “no school, no pool” rule. When the pool was complete last year, more children started arriving at the Catholic-run school, many of them sent by parents who had no education. But when classes opened recently, teachers were stunned when scores more children than expected arrived, including 15 young mothers for year 12 and teenage boys who had been running amok in the town. Five hundred and eighty-two of the town’s about 700 children had enrolled, a 50 per cent increase on last year. This is a wonderful example of the move afoot out there in many Aboriginal communities. The changes being introduced by the government which seek to work with local communities directly, aim to foster this frame of mind in Aboriginal communities. ATSIC has not accepted the significance of the Aboriginal community taking responsibility for their own destiny. ATSIC has failed in this regard. It is not representative; it has not been representative; it cannot be representative; it does not understand this cultural change. ATSIC is part of the problem, not part of the solution. This bill is part of striking out in a new and encouraging direction for our Indigenous community. This is not an end to a place at the table; it is the start of an opportunity for every local Aboriginal community to have a place at the table as they share responsibility for their own destiny through agreed programs relevant to each local community. Media contact: Kathryn Hodges 0409 132 567   Andrew Robb MP Tue, 15 Mar 2005 13:00:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:533