Housing pledge must be kept
REMEMBER six months back when election promises were being thrown up quicker than a schoolie’s breakfast?
It turns out one of the Federal Government’s assurances were not quite so ironclad as it claimed – and now children forced to sleep on the floor in remote indigenous communities are paying the price.
On May 8 of this year, departing indigenous affairs minister Nigel Scullion and Leichhardt MP Warren Entsch issued a joint statement smattered with the kind of fire and brimstone to be expected around election time.
“The Morrison Government will deliver a historic $105 million investment directly to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander councils to fund remote indigenous housing,” it declared.
The statement noted the $105 million figure was half of the amount needed to address current overcrowding issues, but made no mention of the State Government having to chip in the other 50 per cent before the Commonwealth pulled out its wallet. Quite the opposite.
This was a reaction to the State Government being only “interested in playing politics” and using indigenous communities as “political pawns”.
“The Queensland Labor Government rebuffed numerous Commonwealth offers on a genuine housing partnership, so we will now deal directly with the councils to deliver housing,” Mr Entsch said.
The statement further labelled Cook MP Cynthia Lui a “disgrace to the people and the communities she claims to represent” who had “constantly sold them out” and had “become nothing more than a puppet to her metropolitan masters”.
With words that harsh, this promise better be rock-bloody-solid.
Six months down the track and not only has the Federal Government failed to spend a cent on remote indigenous housing in Queensland – it will not even say when the funding might finally start.
Pormpuraaw Aboriginal Shire Council Mayor Ralph Kendall backed the direct-funding election pitch back in May, eager to finally see an end to the stubborn stalemate between the Morrison and Palaszczuk governments.
Like just about everyone else in the Cape and Torres Strait, now he just wants them to pull their fingers out.
“The NPARIH (National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing) was around for 10 years, but everyone waited until it was about to run out before the government came out and said something had to happen,” Cr Kendall told me yesterday.
“They could have started these negotiations with the State Government and had them sorted out five years before that.”
The Queensland Government has dished out $40 million, and some houses are being built, but that funding will not go far.
Pormpuraaw got roughly a $2.2 million share – realistically, enough to build three or four homes.
It has 32 homes on the waiting list, and Pormpuraaw is in a much better position than a lot of remote council areas.
“It’s always been a waiting game,” Cr Kendall said. “We’re one of the smallest ones up in Cape York but overcrowding is still a big issue for us up here.
“It’s not just housing – once overcrowding starts, then that leads to health problems, education issues, things like that.”
Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt’s office told the Cairns Post it was working to ensure the investment was “delivered in a coordinated way”, but would not say when any money would actually be spent.
The problem is that the money does not exist. Never did.
Otherwise it would have been in the budget.
There are ways around that – creative accounting, shuffling one departmental kitty from here to there – but it looks increasingly unlikely that a single cent will be spent in 2019-20.
The situation makes Warren Entsch, who probably genuinely believed his party when they committed to the project, look like a bit of a drongo.
He must be furious.
Whether you support indigenous housing funding has no bearing here.
A promise was made, so a promise must be kept.