Page 3581 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 12 October 1994
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Madam Speaker, most of the recommendations suggesting amendments to instructions or procedures have been fully implemented. If Mr Kaine had read the report he would know that. Other recommendations suggesting substantial changes, such as legislative amendments, have been taken on board and procedures have been commenced to implement them. These procedures, Madam Speaker, do involve extensive consultation with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, and I think this is the root of a great deal of Mr Kaine's problem. Clearly, Mr Kaine would not wish us to undertake that consultation. It is a slow process. It is an intensive process. I am afraid that I would decline to insist upon a pace of consultation and decision making that our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities clearly would not be comfortable with. Mr Kaine is impatient about that. I acknowledge that sometimes progress is slower than you would like, but that consultation is essential. The whole issue of the Aboriginal deaths in custody report is empowerment of those people themselves. I am not going to go out there and bawl them out, the way Mr Kaine regularly does the other Assembly members, insisting that they rush in and give us their views and their decisions on 339 different recommendations to suit his timetable.
Madam Speaker, there are significant initiatives in the implementation report, and some of them include the implementation of a substantial number of legislative reforms which are in accordance with the recommendations of the royal commission. We have brought the majority of Australian Federal Police ACT Region instructions and procedures into line with the royal commission's recommendations. ACT schools at all levels now actively reflect Australia's Aboriginal history. An Aboriginal viewpoint is conveyed both in specific curriculum areas and as a perspective dealt with across all curriculum areas, and the establishment of cultural awareness training programs for providers of government services to increase sensitivity to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues and cultures, and to raise public awareness of Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders, is well under way. Mr Kaine made one valid point, Madam Speaker, which was that perhaps more of the training, more of the cultural awareness programs, could be delivered by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I will certainly take up that point - it is one that is worth checking - and ensure that we do the maximum that we can.
The main theme of the royal commission's report, as I said, was the elimination of disadvantage and the empowerment of Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders. The report highlights the priority that, as a government, we have given to empowering Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders through the establishment of a number of consultative mechanisms to encourage active participation by members of those communities in the decision making process. It is very important that, along with the Commonwealth, State and Territory governments, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities themselves are also able to monitor and to comment on the implementation of the commission's recommendations. In line with that, the ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Council will be holding discussions with all ACT Ministers regarding progress in the ACT on implementing the recommendations. Following that series of meetings, the council will be providing me with the report.
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