Mr McCORMACK (Riverina) (16:30): Gerard Neesham is a celebrated Australian football player and coach in Australia. He played in five West Australian Football League premiership teams and is a member of the West Australian Football Hall of Fame. He’s a former coach of Fremantle. He played for the Sydney Swans as well as other clubs throughout his celebrated career. But the best thing that he perhaps will be remembered for is the fact that he established Clontarf. He steps down from his position as chief executive officer of that organisation this year.
I’ll give you a few statistics about Clontarf, which gives hope to young Aboriginal people. It supports 12½ thousand students at 161 academies, including 1,100 year 12 students, final year students who but for Clontarf would not, perhaps, be sitting for those final exams and who would not, perhaps, have the opportunities that will be afforded them because they’ve stayed the course at school. And that is in no small measure due to the work of Gerard Neesham. I thank him for the role he has played to enable young Aboriginal boys, in particular, to be the best versions of themselves.
In his remarks on retiring from the position he acknowledged some key people he has worked with in his 26 years of service to Clontarf: Ross Kelly, the founding chair; and Craig Brierty, who has stood alongside him for most of the journey. He said that he appreciates the role that government and corporate partners have played, and the dedicated staff, past and present. He also said this:
I would like to acknowledge
… … …
… most importantly, the thousands of young men who have been Clontarf members. Your stories of success, resilience and contribution to your communities are the true measure of Clontarf’s legacy.
It’s organisations such as this and people such as Gerard Neesham OAM who, I think, hold the key.
I appreciate that the government is pushing for a national commissioner. This bill, the National Commission for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People Bill 2026, and the related bill transition the national commission from its current status as an executive agency to an independent statutory agency. The legislation defines the commissioner’s objectives as promoting, improving and supporting the rights, safety and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children while driving greater accountability for policies impacting this group. That’s what the legislation says. But will it? That’s the question.
We all want what is best for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. We all need to work towards the common goal of ensuring that they are not overrepresented in incarceration rates, that they have a future—the sort of future that Clontarf would lay out for them,
The Commissioner will be—I will say ‘will be’ because we know that this legislation will pass this House, given the Labor government’s huge majority of 50-plus seats. It may be amended in the Senate, but who would know? The bill has a financial impact of $33½ million. Whilst that might sound like a reasonably large figure in the scheme of the money that goes towards Indigenous issues, it’s not. That money would be well spent if the commission was not building yet another bureaucracy, duplicating much of the work of existing Commonwealth, state and territory bodies. That’s where I think the issue for this particular legislation and this particular initiative lies. It does duplicate the work already being done by existing bodies such as the National Children’s Commissioner and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner with the Australian Human Rights Commission. We want to see the best for people who, as members quite correctly point out, are the oldest continuous culture on Earth. We want to see their youth in particular being given the same opportunities as anybody else in this country. But does this bill do this? I’m not so certain.
The new position is essentially about consultation, providing advice to government and undertaking research and advocacy responsibilities that already exist within roles across government. I do wonder, not just with this bill but with others besides, that we are seeing a constant decay and erosion of responsibilities that once lay firmly and squarely and fairly with a minister. Under the Westminster system, ministers carry a lot of responsibility, as they should, and ministers are elected and then appointed by prime ministers through the cabinet process. They wear that responsibility not just as a badge of honour but as a duty to improving the outcomes and the futures of Australians. If we as a parliament keep watering down that level of responsibility by people who are ministers of the Crown, then what we’re doing is just giving rubber stamp value to the role that they play.
We can’t have the bureaucrats down the hill running the whole show. I have every faith and trust in the public servants, who serve us very, very well. They do. I saw the best of public servants during COVID-19, when this country was very much facing the prospect of losing tens of thousands of people. Public servants such as Steven Kennedy, Simon Atkinson and others did a mighty and amazing job—and also, no doubt, in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander space. What we saw during that time was vaccines going out to remote Aboriginal communities at the same time, or at almost the same time, as in metropolitan Australia. That was right, and that was just, and that was overseen by public servants.
Public servants aren’t elected by the people of Australia, but ministers are elected by a process. We all go to an election, we put our name on a ballot paper, and the Australian people vote accordingly. We can’t keep watering down and eroding the value and the responsibility of a minister. This is what I believe this legislation and other bills that the Labor government is bringing before this House and the Senate are doing. That’s what’s happening. We must protect our ministers’ responsibility. People say that ministers will have too much power. No, they won’t. If they err—I see the minister at the table, the member for Sydney, smiling.
Ms Plibersek: You’re worried I’m going to have too much power?
Mr McCORMACK: Well, Minister, you would know. You’re an experienced minister, and I do have a lot of faith and trust in you. I do, and you know that.
Ms Plibersek: I appreciate it.
Mr McCORMACK: I hear you say you appreciate it, and I genuinely mean that. But if Minister Plibersek or I when I was the minister did the wrong thing, let me tell you, we were hauled before the court of public opinion for doing so. That great old pub test. The media will soon catch you out. Besides, when you’re a minister you’ve got a lot of responsibilities to do the right thing. I know that ministers in the Labor, Liberal and National parties take those responsibilities very seriously and earnestly, as they should.
There are already Indigenous-specific children’s commissioners in the Australian Capital Territory, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria. Do we need more? Do we need another layer and level of bureaucracy? I doubt it. The Department of Social Services is also already required to consult children and young people, and we know that children and young people are our future irrespective of race, creed or whatever else. But the focus should be on ensuring existing bodies do their jobs, not on creating new bodies and then almost abrogating the responsibility that should lie with existing agencies and the minister.
In his book The Gulf Country: The Story of People and Place in Outback Queensland from 2019, Richard J. Martin writes, ‘Aboriginal people on the stations were most commonly involved in stockwork, where their understanding of country and skill with animals were highly valued by the pastoralists.’ I use this reference for this particular bill not because I’m straying off the topic—I’m not—but because what we saw in the outback country of the gulf land in Queensland, in the Northern Territory and in other parts was an opportunity taken away from young Aboriginal people when a previous Labor government on 7 June 2011 stopped the live cattle trade to Indonesia.
Mr Martin writes: ‘The contributions of Aboriginal women were commonly around the homestead, where they worked as domestics or in the garden. Both men and women helped to look after children.’ In this book—and it is a good book and I recommend it—he praises the work and role done by Indigenous communities, and Indigenous people moreover, particularly in agricultural work, to the point where he said they were the best at it of those in Australia employed and engaged in the practice of stockwork. Many of those Aboriginal people lost the opportunity to continue that work when, in a knee-jerk reaction, Labor stopped the live cattle trade. It was a shameful decision that was subsequently overturned. It didn’t help the young Aboriginal stockmen who stopped doing it and were never re-engaged in the process. And I say that because many of them were young. Many of them were either just school leavers or getting into the trade as teenage boys.
We need to give Aboriginal youths every hope and prospect of being able to be their best selves. I’m not so certain that this legislation does that. We don’t need another onerous layer of legislation. Some might say ‘costly’. I would argue against that point. I would say that the $33 million or so would be far better spent in going to the nub of some of the real Aboriginal youth issues. You won’t find them in Canberra. You won’t find them generally in the eastern states. But anybody who’s ever been to Alice or Katherine or Arnhem Land or anywhere else in the Northern Territory—and I know the member for Lingiari would back me up here—will see where money needs to be spent in the Indigenous space.
I know how hard I fought, with the member for Solomon and the former member for Lingiari Warren Snowdon, to ensure that the Northern Territory had two seats. I did that against the best wishes, let’s say, of our coalition partners at the time—not that I want to open up old wounds or even current ones! Why is it right that people in Katherine would have to travel hundreds upon hundreds of kilometres to see their local federal member who would be in Darwin? I don’t always think people in Canberra get that. I don’t always think people in Canberra understand that.
For the best outcomes for our Aboriginal youth, we need to make sure that money is being spent where it best meets the needs, wants, hopes and expectations of people in those remote Indigenous communities. I don’t think this legislation does that, and I think we would be far better off going back to the drawing board and thinking this through again.