Page 1409 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 6 May 2008
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I have heard it said that the concerns of the larger numbers of ATSI residents who are not “from around here” can sometimes be forgotten—hidden by those more organised and with the ear of government. There are well-founded concerns that this body could, without care and good process, simply go the way of other attempts by the ACT government to work with similar advisory bodies and that it could be overtaken by one or another specific interest. I hope that there are provisions to ensure that the body remains open to all Indigenous people in the ACT.
I have been advised that the secretariat and associated expenses will be funded from allocations made to the Department of Disability, Housing and Community Services and I commend the government for this commitment. The ACT currently has a strong mix of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations that all work very hard to benefit the ATSI population and Canberra as a whole. I will name a very small number of these—Gugan Gulwan, Winnunga Nimmityjah, Billabong Aboriginal Corporation—which, among many others, contribute daily to making the lives of Indigenous people better and to improving relationships between Indigenous peoples and the broader community, to increase that understanding, to overcome disadvantage.
It has been suggested that, rather than fund an elected body which may or may not be able to make a difference to government policy, it would be better to give that money to these already existing organisations who are already making a difference, to allow them to help more people at the front line and to develop the kind of grassroots change that Indigenous people so need. I hope that this new body will be advising these organisations and ensuring that they receive the much-needed funds to address the huge problems that they deal with. I do not see that as a reason not to support the bill; I see it as a way of strengthening the work that the advisory group does. So I do support the bill; I just note that there are concerns.
The establishment of appropriate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representative bodies elected by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is an Australian Greens policy. The Greens have a long history of advocating for Indigenous rights and we see this bill as being a step in the right direction towards achieving improved outcomes for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander residents of the ACT.
When the former federal government abolished ATSIC, Howard replaced it with an appointed body which made recommendations to him and which seemed, from the outside at least, to have very little decision-making power. It is a pity that Mr Seselja used the bulk of his speech to address our Chief Minister’s comments about that rather than to talk about the scope of the bill before us. It is reasonable to expect that elected representatives will be less inclined to simply rubber-stamp government decisions and more likely to advocate for the wishes and the requests of their constituents on the matters discussed.
Government-funded, elected bodies have had their critics. Professor Lowitja O’Donoghue has stated that she does not support a democratically elected body. By the way, I must say I strongly respect the work of Lowitja O’Donoghue; I do not always agree with her, however. She says that she does not “support a democratically elected body. It didn’t work for ATSIC and it’s basically because
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