STATEMENTS BY SENATORS
Senator O'SULLIVAN (Western Australia—Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (12:35): Deputy President, you know me well, and you know that I never set out, when I left school, to be a senator. It wasn't something I considered I'd actually do. I started out as a tradie.
In my spare time, though, my wife—who was then my girlfriend—and I volunteered in youth programs, mentoring young people and supporting families facing disadvantage. Those experiences, in many ways, shaped the commitment to young people and families that I've carried throughout my life. Since then, whether by design or circumstance, my work has kept bringing me back in contact with vulnerable children and families, and, over and over, I've seen how much the earliest years of a child's life really matter.
The first 1,000 days of a child's life are a period of extraordinary development. In the first few years, more than 1,000,000 new neural connections are formed in a child's brain every single second. Those connections are shaped by a child's experience—by whether they are safe, nourished and loved and by the response, care and secure relationships around them.
Those years lay foundations for a child's health and for their learning and relationships throughout life. In Australia, the 2024 Australian Early Development Census found that 23.5 per cent of children started school developmentally vulnerable in at least one area. That is nearly one in four Australian children.
It's been great, although a sobering honour, to serve as the shadow minister for child protection and the prevention of family violence as well as the shadow minister for choice in child care and early learning. Both these portfolios are about giving children the very best start at life, supporting them through care and learning and protecting them when the support that surrounds them fails.
Every day, I hear harrowing stories of children, women and families experiencing abuse and neglect and sometimes missed or forgotten by governments. I also hear from families who cannot find child care and about centres closing while parents are left asking where they can turn. The common thread is whether governments understand what people actually need and take responsibility for those needs.
That requires proximity. You cannot fully understand a situation from a distance. You have to be among the people experiencing it, listen to them and see what is happening on the ground.
Evidence helps us understand the scale and the causes of a problem; the people living with it show us its impact and what support could make a difference in their lives. Good policy needs both. It starts with understanding where the need is, who is affected and what they say would help.
Those making decisions must be willing to go and listen for themselves. Public spending matters when it leads to tangible outcomes. To achieve them, governments must first understand the people and the communities that they are serving.
Listening only matters, though, if the government is prepared to act, yet, too often, state and federal Labor governments distance themselves from responsibility. The Prime Minister says that it's a matter for the state, the state points to everywhere else, and families and vulnerable children are left waiting for help. Leadership means being honest about what is happening and owning your part in it.
When the Prime Minister stumbled off a stage during the election campaign, it was an obvious accident, albeit a slightly embarrassing one. But he later went on to say, 'I didn't fall off the stage,' despite the footage. The issue then became whether we had a prime minister who would acknowledge what people could see for themselves.
The Treasurer has pointed to the war in the Middle East to explain the insane rise in inflation under this government. Of course the conflict has affected prices, but inflation was soaring well before the war started. The government must answer for its own spending choices and their impact on demand and inflation.
The same question of responsibility applies to South Hedland. Yes, protecting children in care is primarily a state responsibility, but the problems facing families there do not stop at the boundary of a state portfolio. Welfare policy, employment policy, Commonwealth funded services and, of course, our shared commitment to closing the gap involve the Commonwealth.
When the Prime Minister called the crisis in Western Australia 'a Western Australian issue' and referred questions to the Minister for Indigenous Australians, he was wrong to suggest that the Commonwealth had no part to play. He is the Prime Minister for all Australians. He should have gone to South Hedland to listen to the families and the elders.
Well, Prime Minister, it's not too late. The coalition insisted, and it's great to see that Minister McCarthy went to South Hedland. She said that she went to hear about the Indigenous children's experiences, and then she singled out food security, an issue in her portfolio, as the No. 1 thing that she could look into.
Was food security really what the community most urgently wanted her to hear about or was it simply the issue that she was ready to hear about? I ask because, just a week earlier, I was in South Hedland with Julian Leeser, the shadow minister for Indigenous Australians, and our WA colleagues Nick Goiran MLC and Neil Thomson MLC. The people we met there were desperate to talk about the risks for their children, the harm that they were seeing and the help that they had not yet seen arrive.
Those concerns took me to Frisby Court. I went there twice, once at night and then once again during the day. The house was empty, the family had been moved and out the front was an abandoned car.
Along the road, there was shattered glass, and, across the pathways, there were shopping trolleys and rubbish. The house had been cleaned up. But that does not tell us where those 15 children are and whether they are safe.
This is not a home that was hidden away. It's an easy walk from the main shopping centre, right in the centre of town. The community had raised concerns.
In fact, one of the elders told us that they could think of another 15 homes just like it. I first worked in this region nearly 20 years ago, and going back and hearing the same concerns was confronting. Twenty years is long enough for a child to grow up and to have children of their own, yet the cycle remains: warnings raised, action delayed, families left waiting.
We cannot accept another generation growing up in this way. We must act, and acting means being prepared to look at what has worked. Before entering parliament, I spent 10 years working in the Indigenous employment space, and during that time I had the opportunity to see the cashless debit card established.
I saw it make a tangible, real difference. I saw the change that it made within the community. It put food on the table and it helped households meet their needs while reducing the money that was being lost on alcohol, drugs and gambling.
It was in place in Ceduna, the Goldfields and East Kimberley, and I saw the tangible difference that it made in those communities. After it was removed, many of the problems that it had helped were restored. The government could have examined what was working, they could have looked at what could be fixed and fixed it, and then they could have kept the policy available for communities.
Instead, one of its first priorities was to legislate the card out of existence. In fact, I believe it was the first legislation that came through this place after this government won the election. Some Port Hedland leaders had called for the cashless debit card to be put into their town.
But, because of the government's action in removing that, it was not a viable option. The government's very own internal reporting, released through FOI just last week, records community members saying they wanted the CDC and valued the support that was being provided. The CDC was working for communities that needed it.
The government should have listened, and it should listen now. The CDC needs to come back and be put back on the table, and we need to have a look at whether this could help vulnerable communities and vulnerable Australians right across the country. In South Hedland and communities like it, the test of any government response is whether children are safer, whether families are supported and whether there are tangible outcomes.
Dollars allocated, programs announced and policies abolished mean little if the same problems keep returning.