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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-11-14 Daily Xml
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Port Augusta Declared Public Precinct

Mr TEAGUE (Heysen) (14:58): My question is to the Deputy Premier. Does the Deputy Premier agree with Adnyamathanha elder Uncle Charles Jackson. With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Point of order, sir. How can a question be in order without the explanation? Because the house must give leave to make the question in any way intelligible, so surely it can't be in order.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I am asking the question.

The SPEAKER: Are you saying you don't want leave for a personal explanation?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Without the house granting a member leave, the question is not understandable.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: On the point of order, sir.

The SPEAKER: Yes, deputy leader.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: It is entirely orthodox to frame questions in such a way otherwise we wouldn't need explanations.

The SPEAKER: The government can say no to—

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: We won't refuse leave.

The SPEAKER: We might see where the explanation goes and see if it pads out the context of the question, the substance of the question, because I agree there was no reference to a particular quote.

Mr TEAGUE: South Australia's Senior Australian of the Year and Adnyamathanha elder, Uncle Charles Jackson, says the government's declared public precinct in Port Augusta disproportionately impacts First Nations people. In the ABC news report this morning he says:

It's not targeted to every individual in Port Augusta, it's directed at the First Nations people, and in particular people coming from remote communities into Port Augusta...but they're not dealing with the core problem of it.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water, Minister for Workforce and Population Strategy) (15:00): A number of people have advice to give on this one and so we have all been eager to answer, but the question was directed to me. I listened with great interest to what the South Australian Senior Australian of the Year had to say, and I completely understand why anyone, and an Aboriginal elder in particular of such distinguished record, would be concerned about any disproportionate impact on one community.

A disproportionate impact is not the same thing, though, as a law or a regime only applying to one group of people. Aboriginal people are, sadly, disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system, for example. It is a mark of disadvantage and of the circumstances in which too many Aboriginal people find themselves.

I thought that the response that was given by the Hon. Kyam Maher, the Attorney-General from the other place, this morning on radio was a very thoughtful one in terms of appreciating why one might express and feel that way, but nonetheless acknowledging that the policy is not specifically targeted at any one group of people. Indeed, there are a number of programs that are being established specifically for Aboriginal people, such as return to country to be able to go back to the lands, to facilitate that for where people are seeking that assistance. That will help alleviate the conditions in which some people find themselves, which then becomes caught up in the social dislocation that we are seeing in that town.

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