QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS
Senator THORPE (Victoria—Independent VIC Whip) (15:29): I move: That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Indigenous Australians (Senator McCarthy) to a question without notice I asked today relating to Indigenous housing. There is one thing this Labor government is very good at. It's good at saying it's concerned.
It's concerned about the mass incarceration of Aboriginal people across this country. It's concerned about families being made homeless, as the Minister for Indigenous Australians said time and again in her answers this afternoon. Families have been raising concerns about this provider for years.
ORIC has known about it for years too. The minister has known for at least a month that these families in Mount Isa risk homelessness. And what has her department done?
It's handed out a few fact sheets about getting a home loan or renting in the private market, which we all know is near impossible to do, especially in a place like Mount Isa. Now it's concerned? It's talking to the state government.
It's talking to the council. But what is the government actually doing? I'm hearing about caveats on these properties and also auctions that are about to happen in July.
The National Agreement on Social Housing and Homelessness says the Commonwealth partners with the states to help people who are experiencing, or at risk of, homelessness. Does this just mean the governments' handball to one another? Because that's what my people are hearing and seeing—no action, just handball, state to fed, fed to state.
Why are Aboriginal people homeless or at risk of homelessness in our own country? This is our land. We have a right, a human right, to have a roof over our heads like all the other people in this country.
So the response is inadequate. And if Aboriginal people in Mount Isa become homeless because the federal government here, the Labor government, chose not to act, chose not to intervene, then, I'm sorry, but it is on the Indigenous minister's head, and she will know about it. (Time expired) Question agreed to.