Senator JOHNSTON (3:47 PM) —In rising to speak to Senator Ridgeway's motion, I commend the honourable senator for presenting this matter to the Senate. It is a matter of great importance and of urgency. In the brief time that I have available to me, I propose firstly to set out the tenor and meaning of the convention insofar as it is applicable to Indigenous children in Australia and then to set out what has been, and continues to be, done by way of government response.

I agree with Senator Collins that, given the long and troubled history of the rights of Indigenous children in our great country, there can never be a point when we say the job has been done. The Convention on the Rights of the Child applies to all children equally. The convention does, however, recognise indigenous children as specific rights holders as set out in articles 17, 29 and 30. These articles identify the rights of indigenous children with respect to such matters as culture, religion, language, education and information.

The committee overseeing the convention has a special focus upon the various forms of violence and abuse which confront indigenous children right around the world, both in their homes and in their communities. In Australia there are numerous issues confronting Aboriginal children which are often endemic and peculiar to the communities in which they live. My personal experience tells me that the main problems arise and relate to the following subject headings: domestic violence between parents, between siblings and between families; substance abuse such as petrol and solvent sniffing, drug abuse and alcohol abuse; and predominantly health issues such as diabetes, glaucoma and obesity on the one hand for some suburban dwelling children, or malnutrition for children in the more remote communities around our country. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, approximately 3,000 Indigenous children are found to have been abused or neglected each year, with Aboriginal children six times more likely to be removed from their families by welfare authorities for neglect or abuse than non-Indigenous children. That is a very sorry, sad and appalling statistic.

I pause to bring to the Senate my first-hand experience of the product of petrol sniffing, particularly in the central desert regions of Western Australia. This is not a subject that many people know about, and I am sad to say it is not a subject that many people really want to know about. When I first commenced work in Kalgoorlie in 1979, I instantly became aware of the problem when five Aboriginal boys died from drinking duplicating fluid at a settlement some long distance east of Laverton in Western Australia. I have seen the end result of chronic, endemic petrol sniffing and the addictive and destructive practice that it is. Unfortunately, it irreversibly rendered the practitioners of this very sorry, sad and damaging pastime permanently brain damaged, as you would expect with the long-term ingestion of lead that is contained in most petrol, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s in Australia. These children are to be seen in the hospitals, courtrooms and community facilities around Western Australia, particularly, as I say, in the central reserve.

There is no quick fix solution to this problem. However, I am pleased to say that education within the communities has created a level of understanding which has enabled tribal and semitribal Aboriginal people to enact by-laws and educational programs for children—and when I say children I mean very young children, as young as two and three years of age. I have actually seen them sipping petrol as they walk around their communities. It is a most tragic, sad and sorry situation.

I drew the Senate's attention to the Gordon report from Western Australia, which is a significant signpost, a landmark decision that put forward some 197 recommendations, conclusions and findings. The state government of Western Australia has begun to respond to it, but I must say, without wishing to bring politics into it, that the response has been very slow. The inertia has been great. We are a year down the track and I must confess to not being able to see many things happening which have been recommended through the very good work of Sue Gordon and her landmark report.

What has the Howard government done with regard to these various issues? The last budget allocated $2.7 billion to Aboriginal affairs, with a specific emphasis on young Indigenous Australians. That amount is one-third more, in real terms, than what was delivered in 1996. The total cost of new initiatives for this financial year is $110 million, payable over four years. This expenditure will yield 1,000 new CDEP employment places in remote communities. Of course, that is where the problem really lies. A package that provided assistance to universities and other higher education institutions in targeting services to Indigenous youth, called Backing Australia's Future, was announced by the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Dr Nelson. It provided $10 million to the Indigenous Support Fund and inaugurated a scholarship scheme to financially assist Indigenous students to undertake higher and other types of education in their formative years.

More importantly, a longitudinal study has been funded. This study will track 4,000 Aboriginal children living in remote locations around Australia over the coming nine years, with the object of being able to benchmark where the problems lie and how we should begin to tackle them so we can more accurately target policies and programs with an expectation of more significant outcomes. I believe that study will be a significant first step in moving towards making good, sound, hands-on, roll up the sleeves policy decisions that will yield tangible results in terms of addressing Aboriginal domestic violence and child abuse.

Minister Ruddock announced that $6 million will be provided for a flexible funding pool to support COAG governments in a whole of government approach to assist 10 Indigenous communities in the central reserve regions of Australia. The government has allocated a further $19.7 million each year, commencing this year, to the Primary Health Care Access Program to improve individual health care systems in Aboriginal communities throughout Australia. That, of course, is a very significant amount of money and will go a significant way towards assisting the health and wellbeing of young people.

Senator JOHNSTON —That is just this year. I am talking about the most recent initiatives. These initiatives have been going on since 1996. For Senator Crossin, who was not here, I said we have increased the funding to $2.7 billion this year, which is one-third in real terms more than we spent in 1996.

In June this year, the minister launched a practical resource kit designed to help Indigenous families and communities deal with family violence and child abuse, entitled Through young black eyes. This resource kit gives Aboriginal communities and governing councils within those communities good and practical tools for working towards preventing child abuse before it starts and showing people how to respond correctly when it does occur. Last month Senator Ruddock launched ATSIC's family violence strategy, which is a strong and determined partnership between government and ATSIC to show leadership in this battle. The strategy includes a well thought out and feasible long-term plan to arrest family violence. The plan is entitled the Family Violence Action Plan.

I must confess that it is crucial that Aboriginal people undertake these strategies themselves. It is not adequate to simply prescribe for them the way things should be. It must be hands-on from their point of view and the understanding must flow with it if we are going to be successful. Senator Crossin seems to have a number of simplistic solutions and wants to turn this into a political football. I am very saddened by that because I think this issue is well and truly beyond any political carping and point scoring.

In closing, the Prime Minister has undertaken directly, in a hands-on way, to approach this issue and to understand it. I am very happy to say that I am very confident that the government is on the right track in addressing what is a long-term, difficult problem. We are initiating a whole host of programs and accurately targeted, focused expenditures which, I am very pleased to say, I believe will yield a much better outcome than what has been achieved over the last 20 or 25 years. (Time expired)