Mr WINDSOR (11:06 AM) —I would like to briefly speak to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Amendment Bill 2004. Even though it is a fait accompli that ATSIC as we currently know it will be abolished, I would like to place on record my thanks to some of the people in my region who have been involved with ATSIC over many years, particularly those based at the Tamworth regional office. I think that the regional manager, Bob Faulkner, has done an exceptional job not only in the management of ATSIC within that regional component but also on reconciliation in our area generally. I would also like to thank his assistant, Joe Craigie, and many others in the ATSIC office.

Even though there is probably consensus that there have been some difficulties in the national leadership of ATSIC, at a regional level many positive changes have been made and many issues addressed—they have not the subject of major articles in the national press—that have seen significant gains for particular communities, individuals and families. That has not happened because the government has imposed certain rules and regulations; it has happened because people within a structure have determined that within their area they are prepared to and intend to make some degree of difference. I happen to live near the community of Caroona, which has an Aboriginal community called Walhollow, and that community particularly demonstrates to me that where you have strong local leadership and assistance from the bureaucracy you can achieve quite outstanding results in assisting a community to move forward.

I can remember as a child, going to school at the public school at Werris Creek, going out and playing football against the kids at Caroona. Caroona was an Aboriginal mission in those days. It is now the Walhollow Aboriginal community—an excellent community by any measure and one that, in my view, should be used as a model for a lot of other communities that want to improve themselves. I remember going out there as a kid to play football. Many of the Aboriginal children that were there at the time are adults of my age now, and we are still friends. The Werris Creek school did not have football guernseys at the time, so we dressed in wheat bags with three holes cut in them to play the children of Caroona who did not have any football boots. But they had the capacity to run on khaki burr and other burrs and black soil which comprised the football field. Obviously, the kids from Werris Creek were much softer in their environment and were unable to compete at the same level. I do not think we ever won a game of football at Caroona.

Various community groups have many pluses and I would not like to see us flush everything down the sink because we are abolishing the national program in relation to ATSIC. We must make sure that the positives that have occurred over recent years, particularly for the younger people in ATSIC—those who are in their 20s and 30s now—who have displayed leadership within their communities and have been coming to grips with an understanding of government and how to use the appropriate processes of lobbying government and who have done a lot in Indigenous health issues—are not left out. It would be a great shame if those people were left out of the agenda.

One of the things that the government really does need to have a very close look at in the proposed legislation is that the appointment of an advisory body may not be acceptable to the great majority of Aboriginal people—not necessarily the Aboriginal political players but the Aboriginal people. In recent years there have been some great gains. A lot of people on the ground in the communities have felt that reconciliation has been starting to work. They have felt they are part of the broader community because they are being engaged in that community process. If we leave those people out in the future, we run the risk of severe slippage in the Indigenous agenda. I urge the government, in putting in place this so-called advisory body, to actually reconsider whether that is the best way to go about this particular process and to consult with as many people as they possibly can—I suggest maybe over a weekend or a week where Aboriginal people can come together and talk in a positive sense about their future rather than in a protesting sense. The government should allow a coming together of a whole range of individuals to sit down and try and make this thing work better than it has in the past. That could be done. There are some excellent people out there that are striving to make life better not only for Indigenous Australians but for all Australians.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of running into an old parliamentary colleague of mine who has since retired—Colin Markham, from the Wollongong area of New South Wales, who has done a tremendous amount for the Indigenous community and was very helpful in my electorate when I was a state member of parliament in the establishment of the Coledale Community Centre, which essentially services all people but Aboriginal people in the majority in the area of Coledale. It has been an outstanding success. There again it is on a local level, but they were assisted by very caring people such as Col Markham. Bob Carr, the Premier of New South Wales, was with Col Markham on the weekend at the community in Bingara which is in my constituency. He actually overnighted in Bingara then went on to the site of the Myall Creek massacre memorial the next day. There again, at a local level there has been a very positive coming together of cultures in recognition of what did actually happen those many years ago at Myall Creek. There has been local leadership and people willing to provide support at a whole range of levels, and I would hope that by just appointing an advisory body we do not fence a lot of those people out of the agenda.

One of the concerns I have that I would like to relay to the House is that, even though the Aboriginal people in Australia make up only about two per cent of the population, they do include something like five per cent of the younger people in our population. If we do not embrace and give younger Aboriginal Australians a glimpse of a future that involves them being part of the broader Australian agenda, we run the risk of having an angry group of young people in our midst. I do not think we can just turn away and say, `We'll deal with that when it comes.' If we leave a number of people out of the broader agenda, we run the risk of those young people becoming an angry group. Those people have a tremendous amount of potential, and we really should be trying to embrace them.

Regarding the subject I have just spoken about—and younger people particularly—on a local level there have been some initiatives that have made some real progress, and there is need for government assistance there. If the government are going down this mainstreaming road, there are examples at the local level where they could help. The first example I will talk about is Youth Insearch, which applies not only to Aboriginal people but also to all young people who in their early teenage years or mid teenage years may be experiencing difficulty because of family background, economic circumstance or life generally—they may just have got in with the wrong crowd.

I would like to pay a compliment to Youth Insearch. Mr Ron Barr is the chief executive of Youth Insearch. He was in the parliament yesterday, and I have had a bit to do with him for a number of years now. Youth Insearch, for those who do not know, is essentially a voluntary program where young people volunteer to go to various camps in different parts of New South Wales—and also in Queensland and other parts of Australia—and spend time together trying to come to grips with some of the problems that they may have. These problems may be linked to their family background or to drug and alcohol addiction or to physical and sexual abuse—there is a whole range of problems like that. Youth Insearch has an amazing record of helping young people.

I was very pleased to see Ron Barr again yesterday, and he told me that there was a camp at Kurrajong Heights in Sydney only last week where 65 young Australians came together—people on the verge of going one way or the other in their lives; people who may be appearing in the courts. These people are not at the top of the tree in terms of the gratuities et cetera and family backgrounds that some luckier kids have. We can change the direction of the lives of these kids if we help them at the appropriate stage.

Out of all the programs that I have seen in my time as a member of parliament, Youth Insearch is by far the most productive in terms of results. It is not only productive because the people who drive and organise the program are very caring and well-meaning people; it is productive because the young people are mixing with people who have had problems themselves, and they help themselves through their various problems. I am aware that Mr Ron Barr and Mr Paul Simpson, who were in the parliament, yesterday have put a submission to Minister Larry Anthony in relation to funding for some part-time assistance in relation to their camps. I encourage the government to look very closely at that application. Anybody who has had anything to do with Youth Insearch in the past will recognise that its results are quite phenomenal.

I was delighted that Mr Ron Barr said that, of the 65 kids at Kurrajong Heights last week, 16 were from Tamworth in my electorate—it is where my electorate office is—and eight of them were Indigenous young people from Coledale. I referred to Coledale a moment ago. It is where former Premier John Fahey, a previous member of this House, assisted in the setting up of a community centre that, after the Carr government came into power in New South Wales, Col Markham was instrumental in assisting in many ways too. Mr Barr said that eight of those kids were exceptional and really gained from the Youth Insearch program. He dropped into my office to let me know that and to compliment the children from the Coledale area that had come to Youth Insearch only last week. At that time, I rang the magistrate at the Tamworth district court, Mal McPherson, who in a voluntary sense is helping Youth Insearch. He said to me on the phone, `I'm trying to help the kids before I see them appearing in front of me in the court.' I congratulate Mal McPherson and Evelyn Parkinson from his office for the work that they are doing for not only Aboriginal children but all children who need that little bit of help. I hope that, in the establishment of this advisory body and the various other things that the legislation will allow, the government remembers that there are groups on the ground that we really need to get behind.

There are two other things I want to raise with reference to my electorate. Both have achieved outstanding results in terms of delivery of services to Indigenous people. Firstly, in Armidale in my electorate, the Minimbah preschool and primary school was set up some years ago by a very well-recognised Aboriginal woman called Diane Roberts. She has subsequently been awarded the OAM for her contribution to the education of Aboriginal people. The school is an independent school that recognises the particular needs of Aboriginal people, although it is not only for Aboriginal people—other cultures are free to attend. But the school does have some unique features in terms of its status as an independent school. Those features relate in some way to the differences between Aboriginal people and others—white people particularly.

One of the problems that Minimbah primary school is experiencing is that its enrolment rate varies because some of the Aboriginal families only live in Armidale for part of the year; they may go back to the coast for part of the year, as they have done for thousands of years. Consequently, enrolment is not the same as at other independent schools. Minimbah primary school is asking for a hearing from Minister Amanda Vanstone in relation to its particular problems—and for some administrative assistance, if at all possible. The school has recognised that education is not only about reading, writing and arithmetic but also about the broader educational experience within the community—family life and all those sorts of things. The school has produced some outstanding results and is run by some very caring people, and so I hope the government will look favourably at that sort of example when providing assistance in the future.

The final thing I want to raise in relation to the broader debate is the Aboriginal Employment Strategy, another successful program that has been developed not at a national level but at a local level. Most of the successful things that we see in life are driven from the bottom up, rather than being imposed from the top down, and again I think that there could be real problems with the appointment by the government of the day of some advisory panel to tell people what they are going to do. If we fence people out, we run the risk of having some very real problems in the future. The Aboriginal Employment Strategy is based on a model that was developed by Dick Estens. Some of you might have heard Dick's name before. I was fairly critical of an inquiry into Telstra that was chaired by Dick Estens, but he has done an outstanding job in relation to the Aboriginal Employment Strategy.

The Aboriginal Employment Strategy started at Moree, with the participation of the cotton industry, and it has subsequently opened an office in Tamworth. It is a model that the government should have a very close look at, with a view to developing it, because—like Youth Insearch and like Minimbah—there are measurable results on the ground in terms of jobs. I was at a television studio only about a month ago and, while talking to the manager, I was delighted to recognise the girl who was on the front desk: she was an Aboriginal girl from my home town of Werris Creek. I asked her about how long she had been there, and she told me she had found employment through the Aboriginal Employment Strategy based in Tamworth. The manager told me that one of their other people was moving on to another job somewhere else in the network and, because they had been so pleased with the relationship they had developed with the Aboriginal Employment Strategy people, he was going to go back to them to get a replacement. He also said that the girl who was behind the desk was being promoted through the system. There are countless examples at a local level of interaction between business and the community, and I want to put on the public record the fact that I do congratulate Dick Estens on the work he has done in terms of Aboriginal employment. (Time expired)