APY LANDS, FOOD SECURITY

The Hon. T.J. STEPHENS (15:09): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion representing the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs questions about the Watarru community.

Leave granted.

The Hon. T.J. STEPHENS: In August of last year, former minister for Aboriginal affairs, the now newly promoted Minister for Education and Child Development, announced a garden project at Watarru to give people in the APY lands food security. Government expenditure for this and another garden was reported to be $800,000. A few weeks later, it was shown that a similar project some years ago at Amata had failed and was a wasteland with no-one in the community looking after it.

It was widely reported in September that children on the lands were going hungry, and the minister admitted that whilst trumpeting the gardens and the government's APY food security plan as a solution to the problem. This is a policy that respected Indigenous leaders like Noel Pearson have come out against and said will not work.

The community store at Watarru closed on 5 December and since then 83 percent of the population has left, leaving only 13 people in the community. The Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation Division of the Department of the Premier and Cabinet have dispatched officers to feed the community's dogs and presumably look after the garden. My questions to the minister are:

1. Does the exodus of 83 percent of the community's population and the dispatch of government officers confirm the failure of the garden project at Watarru?

2. Does this affair, coupled with the failure of the Amata project, highlight the wider failure of the community garden project and the government's APY food security plan?

3. Can the minister rule out the rebuilding of any new gardens and the wasting of more taxpayer dollars on this failed scheme?

4. Will the minister now divert the necessary funds from the failed implementation of the APY food security plan to a much-needed transport subsidy to deliver fresh food to the lands as per the wishes of the community and the Mai Wiru food group?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion, Minister for Social Housing, Minister for Disabilities, Minister for Youth, Minister for Volunteers) (15:11): I thank the honourable member for his important questions about the Watarru community. I will take those four questions to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation in another place and bring back a response.