Rachel Siewert, Senator for Western Australia
First Speech - 11/08/2005
Senator SIEWERT (Western Australia)
(5.45 pm)—I would like to start by acknowledging
the traditional owners of this land, the
Ngunnawal people, and by showing my respect
for the first peoples of this land. It always
was and always will be Aboriginal
land, and it is incumbent on those of us who
have chosen to represent this nation that we
take responsibility for past wrongs and seek
to address these current injustices. I am not
afraid to say sorry to our Indigenous peoples,
and I look forward to the day when we will
acknowledge their voices and do them justice
by enabling their true representation in
the governance of this nation. It is to our
shame that we are the only developed nation
which has failed to achieve this and that the
plight of our Indigenous peoples continues to
worsen.
I stand here as the fourth in a line of determined
Green women from the West to
take on the Senate and progress the Green
vision. It is my great pleasure to acknowledge
the presence of Dee Margetts in the
public gallery. Thanks for your support, Dee.
At the heart of our Green values is a vision
of community—a community that extends
beyond the borders of our neighbourhood,
suburb or state; a community in which people
care about each other and the future of
our planet and act carefully and responsibly
to ensure its ongoing success; and a community
that embraces diversity and understands
that people living creative, fulfilling lives are
more innovative and productive and will
make a greater contribution to society.
I am deeply concerned about the direction
this nation is heading in. The nation’s current
policies are based on a naive and outdated
belief that the market will deliver, and embody
greed and selfishness and an attitude of
everybody for themselves. This has led to an increasing influence of the business sector on
government, at the expense of the wider
community. It has become abundantly clear
that the pervading culture of greed and selfishness
is not delivering, as even the ‘successful’
individuals are finding that wealth
accumulation alone does not bring happiness.
Recent surveys of public wellbeing show
that our improved standards of living in Australia
have not made us any happier. Despite
most of us having more than we have ever
had before, we are less happy and more
stressed. We are learning that having more
stuff does not lead to being more happy. The
current approach is unjust and unfair. It degrades
our environment and it leads to unhappy,
fearful, unhealthy communities. It
weakens democracy in this country and puts
key elements of civil society at risk.
Participation in political processes and
policy development is a key part of a healthy
democracy, and in Australia we have a large
number and wide variety of community
groups and non-government organisations
who make an invaluable contribution to this
process. Having worked for a community
organisation for many years, I know the important
role the sector plays in advocacy and
community development in providing information
to government, the opposition, minor
parties, business and the broader community
and in providing access to community members
who find it difficult to engage in the
political process and have their say. Community
organisations commit hundreds of thousands
of hours of voluntary time each year to
making our nation a stronger and fairer
place. In many cases they are the institutional
memory of government and they hold
government accountable. Consistently their
involvement improves policy and leads to
better outcomes. They do not have vested
interests other than the good of the community
they represent and the issue they are
working on.
I am deeply concerned by the manner in
which over the last decade non-profit organisations,
such as community advocates, have
had their advocacy undermined and attacked.
Their funding has been reduced or taken
away completely, as evidenced in the recent
slashing or, in many cases, the complete removal
of funding from the conservation
councils around Australia. We have recently
seen attempts to use tied funding in an effort
to restrict groups from speaking out and we
have seen a failed attempt to remove tax deductibility
status from groups involved in
advocacy or political lobbying. This is a blatant
attack on advocacy. In my eyes this type
of action undermines the consultative process
and weakens the effectiveness and legitimacy
of our governance.
Ironically, at the same time the legitimacy
of these not-for-profit organisations has been
under attack, we have seen a rise of the influence
of the corporate sector on government.
Community organisations are accused
of failing to be representative enough, ignoring
the fact that they are voluntary organisations
accountable to a broad voting membership
who are there at their own volition and
can opt out at any time. The same criticisms
are not levelled at big business lobbyists,
who are accountable only to the interests of
their shareholders and the market.
At the same time that government has
been undermining community organisations,
it has been increasing the demands on the
community sector by cutting government
services and outsourcing welfare organisations,
and expecting volunteers to pick up the
slack. So on the one hand it is okay for the
community sector to care for the disadvantaged
and the environment but it is not acceptable
for them to try to actually improve
their circumstances. A healthy democracy requires open communication channels between
government and both the community
and corporate sectors, and it is crucial that
there are mechanisms in place to maintain
this balance. Otherwise those concerned,
caring people who work hard behind the
scenes looking out for the disadvantaged,
caring for the poor and sick and preserving
our environment and our way of life will lose
the capacity or volition to help, and we will
all be worse off. As Greens we want to see a
healthy business sector that plays a valuable
role in our community and we call for the
development of policies that encourage corporate
responsibility as a basis for sustainable
growth.
Now workers rights and conditions are
under attack again. The so-called industrial
relations reform agenda—some would rather
call it the deform agenda—seeks to undermine
the award system, reduce workers’
wages, strip away workers’ conditions and
attack the right to collective bargaining. It
clearly aims to break unions and sell out
working families. These actions will not contribute
to the nation’s collective wellbeing.
Instead, they will further concentrate this
nation’s wealth in the hands of a few. These
deforms are ideologically driven and are an
attack on the human rights of Australians.
The changes will hit hardest those least
advantaged in our society: young people,
women, those in low paid work, casuals and
temporary workers. This is neither fair nor
just. Taken with the new welfare to work
provisions—such as those that are pushing
single mothers back into the workplace—
they are a recipe for injustice. For example,
working mothers are more likely to be taking
part-time or casual positions where leave
loading will no longer be guaranteed. They
are also more likely to need the sick and
family leave provisions that will be stripped
away. They will not be in position to bargain
and both they and their children will ultimately
lose out.
The Greens believe that workplace laws
should be fair, protect all workers from unjust
treatment, promote industrial harmony
and enable us to organise collectively to negotiate
fair pay and conditions. The proposed
IR changes are not in the interest of working
Australians, families or small businesses.
They will not strengthen our economy or
improve our way of life. In fact, they will
undermine it by lowering wages and stripping
away awards, rights and conditions—
conditions that we have all fought so hard for
over the last century. They are a none-toosubtle
effort to destroy the union movement
and make the already powerful in our society
more powerful.
For further injustice, we need look no further
than the plight of the first peoples of this
nation. Just last month that well-known left
wing think tank the Productivity Commission
found in its Overcoming Indigenous
disadvantage report that a large gulf remains
between Aboriginal and other Australians,
and that on most of their key indicators
things are clearly not getting any better. To
quote its chair, Gary Banks:
It is distressingly apparent that many years of
policy effort have not delivered desired outcomes;
indeed in some important respects the circumstances
of Indigenous people appear to have deteriorated
or regressed. Worse than that, outcomes
in the strategic areas identified as critical to overcoming
disadvantage in the long term remain well
short of what is needed.
Rather than addressing the causes of this
disadvantage and seeking to empower Aboriginal
Australians to improve their living
conditions, our government has taken away
any form of Indigenous elected representation
or control and it has blamed them for the
failure of mainstream services to deliver outcomes
to remote and urban Indigenous
communities.
The proposed solution to these problems,
the further mainstreaming of services to Indigenous
communities, ignores the wealth of
data and evidence that shows clearly the difficulties
that mainstream agencies encounter
in reaching out to their Indigenous clients
and in providing appropriate and accessible
services. It ignores the fact that two of the
main areas of disadvantage are health and
education—areas where services were always
provided by mainstream departments,
not by the much maligned ATSIC.
It also ignores the requirement for healing.
The Greens believe that true reconciliation is
the first fundamental step to this healing. We
will not be able to make real progress in addressing
Indigenous disadvantage until we
say sorry, until we overturn the myth of terra
nullius and acknowledge the original owners
of this land, until we deliver the treaty demanded
by the British crown all those years
ago and until we return to them the means to
sustain their communities through their relationship
with their mother land.
I met with representatives of the Aboriginal
tent embassy earlier this week. They
came to me to express their concern that
moves are afoot to redevelop the embassy
site. They have been excluded from the socalled
community consultation process and
are now fearful that they will soon face eviction.
This morning, the Senate was given notice
of a motion by my Green colleague Senator
Bob Brown dealing with the scourge of petrol
sniffing in Indigenous communities. I
would urge you all to support the introduction
of a comprehensive roll-out of the nonsniffable
Opal fuel throughout the Central
Desert regions of Australia. It is a small step
to make in addressing the disadvantage faced
by Aboriginal Australians, but this relatively
small amount of money could make a great
deal of difference in the lives of those affected.
As Greens, we support the vision of our
Indigenous leaders and argue that the answer
lies in strong communities with active cultures
that support safe and healthy family
environments. We recognise that the economic
sustainability of Indigenous families
and communities is fundamental to their
wellbeing. Indigenous health and child development
must be national priorities. We
need a national Indigenous health plan that
delivers: primary health care on the basis of
need through Indigenous community controlled
health services; comprehensive prevention
and early intervention programs; a
significant increase in the health work force,
including more places for Aboriginal health
workers; significant improvements in the
delivery of basic services to Indigenous
communities, and recognition that the health
of Indigenous families cannot be separated
from the health of their communities and
organisations.
Aboriginal Australians learned the lesson
of this harsh land and its ancient soils and
variable climate. Their message for us is this:
by looking after the land, our mother, we
look after ourselves. It is a family relationship
in which we look after each other and
are taken care of through our own caring,
getting back all the more in our giving. To
put this in terms of the triple bottom line,
ecological sustainability is the foundation on
which a sustainable society rests, and a
healthy economy is merely a means to this
end.
Throughout my adult life I have had a
commitment to the sustainable use of natural
resources, and have been working closely
with concerned farmers to address the sustainability
of farming in the wheat belt of
Western Australia. This commitment comes
from my experience in studying agricultural science at university, working as a research
officer in salinity and soil conservation in a
small town called Jerramungup in Western
Australia, and two decades working with the
natural resource management community of
Western Australia. As a result I am determined
to ensure our rural communities can
continue to survive and in fact thrive.
Unfortunately, Australia’s prosperity has
come at enormous expense to the environment.
We have severely degraded our natural
resources—our rivers, soils, biodiversity,
wetlands, estuaries and coastal waters. They
are all suffering. For example, in Western
Australia alone nearly two million hectares
of agricultural land have been lost to salinity,
with predictions that up to six million hectares
will be affected. This represents onethird
of our agricultural land. In addition,
450 endemic plant species and over 900 regionally
significant species are also at risk of
extinction due to rising salinity.
European settlers did not understand the
complexity and fragility of the Australian
environment and landscape and with the best
of intentions they put in place an unsustainable
European farming system that ultimately
degraded the landscape. Government
policies aimed at developing rural industries
and exports strongly encouraged land clearing
and advocated ill-suited farming systems.
The result is landscape fragmentation, loss of
biodiversity, environmental weeds, salinity,
and degraded rivers and wetlands.
Australia now faces a complex environmental
crisis to which there are no easy answers.
But we no longer have the excuse of
ignorance. We must take action. The necessary,
integrated, long-term solutions require
government, agribusiness, land managers,
farmers, conservationists and the community
to work cooperatively at landscape repair, to
develop and implement new agricultural industries
that can be profitable and sustainable
in the long term.
As Greens we share the concerns of farmers
and rural communities for the sustainability
of their communities and their lands. We
have a vision for a uniquely Australian agricultural
landscape—filled with deep-rooted
perennials, harmonious and teeming with
life—in which a profitable and sustainable
agriculture supports vibrant rural communities
by mimicking the natural ecosystems we
have displaced.
The Greens approach to all we do is based
on our key four principles: social justice,
peace and nonviolence, participatory democracy
and ecological and economic sustainability.
We have a vision for a society where
we have peaceful and healthy communities
with a respect for one another, where all
community members have access to basic
services such as health and education, where
your right to participate in civil society is
unquestioned and your ability to do so is
equal, where we have respect and responsibility
not only for ourselves but also for one
another, where our opportunity to achieve
fulfilment is met and where we have systems
and laws that protect our rights and our environment.
We need to remember that we live in a
community, not an economy, that our economy
is one means of sustaining that community—
an important part, definitely, but only
one. It is one we need to get right, but it is
not the be-all and end-all. Ultimately, what
we all want is the opportunity to lead meaningful
and fulfilling lives. If instead of striving
to be richer we could strive to be more
equal, everyone’s wellbeing would improve
and we would have healthier communities
based on compassion, honesty, fairness, justice,
respect and equality.
I have had great privilege in my career to
work with the most amazing people. In closing, I would like to say thank you to all my
friends and family, my colleagues Senators
Brown, Nettle and Milne and my team members—
Fluff, Scottie, Nic, Bec and Bridgett—
with whom it is such a pleasure to work.
Thank you for your tireless support. I would
particularly like to thank my family and my
parents, Jack and Paddy, who are in the gallery
bursting with pride. Without their love
and support I would not be here today. Finally,
I would like to acknowledge that I
come from the great state of Western Australia.
I am committed to representing and progressing
the interests of all West Australians
and will strive to work effectively on their
behalf.
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