From Sworts Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am. When the latest report on Closing the Gap was released. The results were grim. Only five of the nineteen targets are on track and Indigenous incarceration rates are rising. But it's the policy itself part of the problem. Critics like Senator Lydia Thorpe say Closing the Gap hasn't delivered change
and should be scrapped. Meanwhile, Minister for Indigenous Australians Mellendarie McCarthy has announced hundreds of millions in new spending, including major investments in remote communities and cheaper grocery prices in the Northern Territory. Today, Minister Melandary McCarthy on whether Closing the Gap is still working. It's Tuesday, February twenty five. Minister, welcome to seven am.
Hello Daniel, lovely to be here and hello to all your listeners.
You took on the Indigenous Affairs portfolio in July last year when your predecessor, Linda Bernie stepped down, and this was of course not long after the country voted resemblingly against a Voice to Parliament. What was it like for you to step into that role at that particular moment.
Well, it was certainly an absolute honor to be able to step into the role Daniel, especially when I'd worked so closely with Linda Bernie. It's of course was difficult with the outcome of the referendum, that I was fairly realistic in the sense that the Australian people have voted and their decision was no as disappointing as that might be.
We accept the decision and my role was to actually move us on and forward and to keep reaching out to our communities and our First Nations families and remind ourselves so we're resilient people. We've had many disappointments over many centuries and we're still here and we're still very strong.
And the first thing I wanted to do when I became Minister was to reach out to my opponents, especially those who were vehemently against the Yes vote, to invite them to rise above using Indigenous affairs as a political football. And that was a real focus for me and continues to be.
Of you when you're supposed to hear about how Australia is closing the gap between the experiences and livelihoods of Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians. But you're here today that only five closing the Gap targets are on track.
One target is to reduce the rate of Indigenous Australians held in incarceration by fifteen percent. Instead, that number is growing and experts say there needs to be greater focus on alternative justice.
Minister, most of the closed the Gap targets are not on track. The rate of suicide amongst Indigenous Australians is increasing, the rate of children and out of home care is increasing. More Indigenous people are being sent to prison, and Indigenous Australians don't well before our time. You've been a member of Parliament in the territory, you've been a senator since twenty sixteen. You spent time in these communities where these
facts and figures are played out in real life. Why aren't we seeing change?
We are seeing change, Daniel, We're just not seeing it at the pace that we'd like to see it at. And I do commend the Aboriginal community organizations across the country who are working with me to implement that change. In particular, the Aboriginal community medical services across the country have led the way in terms of local empowerment self determination to try and improve the lives of First Nations families.
So we've got through the closing the gap. We have eighty members of the Coalition of Peaks who represent eight hundred Aboriginal and trrostrate or organizations across the country. That's a phenomenal number. They want the governments of each state and territory and the Commonwealth to move more quickly on assisting with the areas that they have already identified. The problems exactly what you've mentioned with the high rates of suicide.
So our plan for twenty twenty five is to see more psychologists, Aboriginal trained psychologists in that area to be able to assist in subsidizing that. We've been able to put out five hundred Aboriginal health workers across the country and offer that in traineeships. There are over three hundred
who've accepted that. We've been able to look at the First Nation's Children's Commissional role and establish that and that person is going to be very responsible for interacting with state and territories about the high rates of removal of our kids. It's just not good enough.
What's it like to dedicate your life to this work and see some of these outcomes actually go backwards.
I'm a very passionate person in terms of wanting to see the improvement for people whose lives are in poverty, and it largely happens to be First Nations families, but I'm mindful that there are ordinary strayans who are in exactly that same sense of poverty and wanting to rise above the despair. What I've found, Daniel, is a lot of this is working with the people where there are pockets of such goodness and hope and energy and enthusiasm.
And I am determined to work with people where I can see we have got the runs on the board. I find often as I travel across the country that those people who are achieving, they are not recognized for the work they're doing. And if we can get behind the people who do have the answers, and they are largely our Aboriginal community organizations, largely our Aboriginal elders, they know the answers and the solutions to a lot of
these problems and we must get behind them. And that is the approach I take in wanting to improve the lives for First Nations families across Australia.
Is the disadvantage that original people are facing across the country. Is that a class issue as much as it is a race issue.
Well, it's a poverty issue, isn't it. Really If you look at the issues that people ask for. They want good homes, they want houses to live in. They want to be able to have a job that they can get up and go to and feel respected, that there's dignity in the work that they do, and that they're paid at a rate that they can afford to look after their families, that they have long service leave, superannuation,
holiday pay. This is important to me and I have been trying to roll out a thousand jobs in the ranger space, seven hundred and seventy identify positions for First Nations women. But I want to see through the remote jobs program Daniel, the rolling out of three thousand jobs. I've been talking to workers in Kunnanarah, the is Kimberly
and then in Central Australia around the town camps. They have been really really pleased with the rise in their pay and the fact that they have dignity in the workspace and the fact that they can look after their families.
After the break. Why the Minister is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on more police.
So this is about doing better. This funding will deliver essential services for remote communities, including policing, women's safety, children's health, education and alcohol harm reduction.
Minsty you just announced a big package for remote communities eight hundred and forty two million dollars, but two hundred and five million of that is ear marked for policing in remote Northern Territory communities. The territory already has more police per capita than anywhere else in the Why do those communities need more police?
I would look at that statistic in terms of more policing per capita. What I would say is this, Daniel, that when we have the largest case of family and domestic violence, largely here in the Northern Territory, the one thing I do get when I travel our communities is where are the police? Where is the support for our women and families? So I beg to differ there in terms of those statistics. And I know that there's been
a large injection of police to Alice Springs. We've also had people from the police force in South Australia come up under the call of the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory. So I would say that the safety of women and children is paramount. But at the same time, the Commissioner of Police who at Gama last year apologized to First Nations families for the history of the police
force relationship with Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory. Now I trust that that is a beginning, a new beginning under the Police Commissioner in terms of wanting to see more Aberiginal tristraight on the people in the police force to have a better understanding in terms of the many languages we have. It's an imperfect system and often a system that disappoints, but we cannot give up and we must not give up on wanting to ensure the safety of our families in the Northern Territory.
What do you think is a good outcome from that investment and what do you think it's a good idea well.
Community policing is something that I think has always been talked about when you do it at the local level, and there are many good examples across the country, not just here in the Northern Territory. When you do have community policing at the local level, where you have Aboriginal community, police officers involved, Aboriginal elders involved, working in a constructive way, then they make big differences in our community.
I guess the concerned Minister is sort of in a recent Productivity Commission report and closing the gap is that there is a rise in the number of Indigenous children being jailed around the country. Are you concerned that more policing will lead to more children being locked up?
I'm certainly concerned that we are seeing more youth going into correction centers across the country. I visited banks here in Western Australia in Perth to listen to the kids themselves and talk to me. You know, I've requested to go into the corrections here in the Northern Territory. It's important to me to work within our justice system and the Attorney General on how week of traveling with the Justice Reinvestment Section Daniel, I don't want to see the
high incarceration rates keep rising. But when you have pieces of legislation in different jurisdictions, especially like here in the Northern Territory, that only have the outcome of prison, it is it's an incredibly, incredibly deeply worrying position. Yes, I am worried about that.
You mentioned the Coalition of Peaks earlier on, which represents aboriginal organizations around the country, some eight hundred. They've stated that they're concerned that states and territories aren't taking closing the games seriously. Do you agree with that assessment.
I had my first meeting with all the Indigenous Affairs ministers plus the Coalition of Peaks Daniel and we met in Perth in November. But I did raise, along with Pat Turner in Perth, that we had to look at the issue of remand and I task the Indigenous Affairs ministers to go back to their cabinets and look at the issue of remand in their jurisdictions. There were too many and still too many First Nations families individuals use in our remand, let alone in the corrections centers themselves.
So that was one thing. And I would say that I've heard, to answer your question, heard what the Coalition of Peaks have said about the state and territory governments, which is why I've now begun my work closely with them.
So since that meeting, though some states have passed more regressive policy when it comes to youth justice and holding more children in remand I mean, is that an alarming thing for you to hear? As Minister for Indigenous Australians.
I'm very aware of the fact that each state and territory parliament makes their laws. What I can do in the purview that I have as Indigenous Affairs Minister is continually remind Indigenous Affairs ministers of their roles and responsibilities, but at the same time talk to my cabinet colleagues because Indigenous Affairs and the issue of closing the gap
isn't just on Indigenous ministers. This has to be a collective responsibility of every single cabinet in every single Parliament of Australia, and I am very determined to make sure that every single cabinet in this country knows that.
We recently had Senator Lydia Thorpe on the podcast and she argued that closing the gap targets should be scrapped altogether, that there are distraction and that nothing ever changes. What's your response to that.
As I said, when I first came in as Minister, I invited across the Parliament as senators and members to join me to work on closing the gap. Senator Thorpe's been invited on those three occasions that we've held those meetings and has not attended. So it's disappointing that when there's an opportunity to actually be involved, to work collectively to put the pressure collectively on others, that that has
not occurred. I still encourage Senator Thorpe to do that, but I certainly don't agree with dismissing eight hundred at least aboriginal organizations across this country and their request for us to get this right.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you, Daniel.
Also in the news today, Opposition leader Peter Dunnan says the coalition will match Labour's pledge of an eight point five billion dollar boost to Medicare should they win the election, and revealed where he intends on getting the funds. A depressed conference in Brisbane yesterday, Dunton said he would cut thirty six thousand jobs from the public service and use
the savings to boost medicare. The opposition leader expressed skepticism as to whether the plan would improve bulk billing rates, and the messaging app Telegram has been hit with a fine of nearly one million dollars from Australia's E Safety Commissioner. The platform failed to answer questions about how it is addressing child abuse and violent. Extremist material shared on the ecrypted messaging app Telegram was singled out by ASIO and the AFP for its use by young people looking to
access extremist content. This has been seven a m. Thanks for listening.