After nearly three decades as the Member for Leichhardt, Liberal Warren Entsch is stepping away from federal politics but not before First Nations leaders call out long-standing failures in the region.
In a special election episode of The Point, host John Paul Janke asked Mr Entsch whether he had been surprised that so little had been heard on Indigenous policy during the election campaign.
Mr Entsch replied, “Yes and no”.
“There’s got to be something on the table first. And I think this goes back to some of the Indigenous leadership to just put something out there to say, right, this needs to be considered”.
“This is why I really encouraged TCICA (The Torres Cape Indigenous Council Alliance) to put this Mapoon Project forward. It’s one of the only ones on the table. It’s a good one, but it’s only one on the table,” said Mr Entsch.
The Mapoon Project is a remote community housing pilot which would see the construction of six one-bedroom, self-contained units in eight communities across Cape York.
This prompted a strong rebuke from Kowanyama businesswoman and former Young Australian of the Year, Tania Major.
“26 years in this seat and looking at the statistics and the state of affairs where our community sits today is a cop-out,” she said.
“Where’s Warren? Warren, you haven’t sat down amongst our mob to hear what we are doing and the innovation we are bringing to provide solutions to our problems that your government has created.
“Goodbye, Warren.”
The panellists, including Ms Major, Founder of Deadly Inspiring Youth Doing Good (DIYDG) Stacey Ketchell, and barrister Josh Creamer argued that Indigenous communities have long been proposing solutions that the government has failed to engage with.
“Yes, time for a change, new energy, and new ideas and people that are wanting to, I guess, listen to our communities, but also our young people's aspirations” said Ms Ketchell.
The Key Seat of Leichardt is Australia’s most northernmost electorate.
With a margin of just 3.4%, Leichhardt is one of the Coalition seats Labor has set its sights on overturning in this election.
With 16% of the Leichhardt electorate identifying as Indigenous, the sprawling northern Queensland seat includes the city of Cairns, the Torres Strait Islands, and some of the country’s most remote Aboriginal communities.
Key issues this Election
During the discussion on the Point, the panellists identified housing, self-determination, small business, and the cycle of children flowing from out of home care into the juvenile justice system as key issues.
Ms Major said self-determination should be at the core of policy-making.
“The discussion around self-determination is not part of the narrative," she said.
"We need to step back into ensuring that programs, policies encapsulate our voices, our experience, our evidence-based research to prove that if you work with us to solve our problem that, wait, you've created as a system, but turn around and blame us for your numbers that you're measuring.”
Housing, which is another urgent issue in the region, was also highlighted.
“It’s not just about housing, it’s about being able to build wealth through housing,” said Mr Creamer.
“Most Australians, all they do is work, buy their house, create wealth, pass that on to the rest of their family. We’ve been locked out of that opportunity now for at least six generations,”
“So there's a building housing, there's home ownership, and there's created wealth that's all tied into that issue.”
He and Ms Ketchell also criticised the child protection system.
“80 per cent of those kids are on child protection orders. That means the government have removed them from their parents, from their families, on the basis that the government will do a better job in raising them.
“We then see those kids going straight not only the child protection system, but into the criminal justice system, and being housed in our youth justice, our prisons for kids here in Queensland.
"You'll see those kids' lack of access to education, illiterate, innumerate, can't read or write, have lack of access to the psychiatric support they need.
"The government by removing those kids have failed them. We've failed these kids.”
“The government's actually set up another industry, and our children's are treated as commodity. So the care for our kids in the child safety sector is put up for tender. So you've got these big for-profit companies that bid for the care of our kids Ms Ketchell added.
An opportunity for change
“We’ve got an opportunity to change the dialogue and the narrative here," said Ms Major.
“Because whilst Aboriginal issues, whether it's Welcome to Country and whether it's youth crime, is always used as the forefront for a political agenda to politically point-score and win voters.”
“Whilst they're winning voters, we're actually losing the human connection and the empathy most Australian have”.
She also stressed that the younger generation of Indigenous people needed to have a voice.
“I think as the younger generation, it is our responsibility to get a voice in these platforms, and I'm going to keep going back, like to TikTok, like to Facebook, and share our success stories”.
“Because right now you won't see us on Sky News. You won't see black faces in the forefront unless it's somebody with some kind of mental case issues who's holding up a convenience store. But you won't see the young blackfella who's graduated as a lawyer and he's breaking grounds in an institution that's never been open for blackfellas originally”.
“I think we as Indigenous people need to start penetrating discussion boards with success stories and flooding the space with success stories.”
Catch more on The Point: stream now on SBS On Demand.
