Politics with Michelle Grattan: Kerrynne Liddle on seizing more opportunities with Indigenous Australians

From this Sunday, Australians will be celebrating NAIDOC Week, which marks its 50th anniversary this year.

The week highlights the achievements, history and culture of Australia’s First Peoples. It’s also a time to reflect on the huge effort needed to materially improve the lives of Indigenous communities and individuals.

On this podcast, we’re joined by Senator Kerrynne Liddle, an Arrernte woman and the first Aboriginal federal parliamentarian from South Australia. Senator Liddle is shadow minister for Indigenous Australians and shadow minister for social services on Opposition Leader Sussan Ley’s frontbench.

On the Closing the Gap targets, which shows progress being made on only four of the 19 targets, Liddle says a stronger focus is required on early intervention.

Across all of these areas we know that a very small amount of money goes into prevention and early intervention. And if I take incarceration specifically, in the prison system, we know that 60% of people that are in there actually are often return people. So recidivism is a major issue.

When you look at the reason why many people are in custody, it is because of violence. So addressing the key issue of violence – hopefully before it begins – is going to be really, really important here.

But also responding quick enough to support those victim-survivors, who need to be able to remove themselves from that situation, or remove the perpetrator from that situation. That’s going to be crucial for people to able to improve outcomes for themselves. Because if there is much disruption and dysfunction in a family, everyone is affected.

Liddle says the problems are known, but money isn’t getting to the right places fast enough.

Only two weeks ago, I was in Mutitjulu in Central Australia, at Uluru. People there were talking about how infrastructure is failing to keep up with demand. They were talking about how people struggle to navigate the service system. They talk about how children don’t have enough activities out of school and they didn’t have enough sports and recreation people.

This is not new, these are things we hear over and over again. The frustration is money flowing, in a timely manner, and actually ensuring that there is accountability that the money has flowed effectively and for the purpose that it was intended.

Liddle says her focus will remain on having those “unpleasant conversations” focused on real outcomes, rather than on symbolic causes.

I just want to say that conversations about acknowledgement of country, welcome to country, and the flags frustrate me when I know that there are children who are deaf before they actually get to school. There are children who aren’t attending school. There are children who are hungry and are finding themselves wandering the streets at night, because it’s not safe to go home.

They’re the kinds of things I want to continue to talk about, because those are the issues that affect children every single night.

Drawing on her experience before entering politics, Liddle says helping Indigenous workers integrate into the broader economy can improve personal outcomes.

These are not intractable [problems]. We can find solutions. I saw that myself, when I was working at [Indigenous tourism company] Voyages. I saw it when I was working in Santos. There were so many good stories about people that just wanted an opportunity. And when it was given to them in sufficient measure, with the right supports that they needed to be successful, they took it up every single time.

And what was really valuable for them was they were part of the general economy. They were part of the general society. They were a part of the workplace.

They weren’t relegated to a special Aboriginal employment programme that they could sit on for the rest of their life. It was about saying, ‘you know what? You belong in the economy with all of us and here’s a place for you and we’re going to help you to take that up’. As a person who’s worked in this area, it is extremely satisfying when you identify that opportunity, create that opportunity, and people do respond to that opportunity.