Senate Select Committee on Regional and Remote Indigenous Communities
Media release - Press statement
Senate
inquiry into Regional and Remote Indigenous Communities
The Senate Select Committee on Regional and Remote
Indigenous Communities today tabled its second report.
The report makes 11 recommendations, two of which
relate to the BasicsCard, introduced as part of the NTER income management
measures.
The committee found that some roadhouses that had
refused to sell non-sniffable Opal fuel in the Petrol Sniffing Strategy
Zone in Central Australia had been licensed as BasicsCard merchants to
sell fuel. The committee recommended that these roadhouses be prevented
from being licensed unless they agreed to sell Opal fuel.
The committee also found that some communities did
not have access to a licensed store and were therefore unfairly required
to travel long distances often at great expense to access their income
managed funds. The committee recommended that alternative arrangements be
made so that people in these communities can access their income managed
funds more easily.
The committee also found that there was no system in
place to record whether or not people were spending income managed funds
on food, and that estimates of how much was being spent could not be
verified.
Other recommendations include:
- increasing
funding to Homemakers Centres
- improving
access to drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities
- increasing
the transparency of decision making and better communications by the
Commonwealth government in relation to its decision to prioritise
funding and other services in 26 communities around Australia
- a review of
the Magistrate's Court Circuit on the APY Lands of South Australia
- increasing
access to basic literacy and numeracy training in Indigenous communities
- tackling the
extraordinarily high rates of incarceration in the Northern Territory
- a review of
the number of deaths as a result of family violence and the unmet need
to address this problem.
Members of the
committee:
Senator the Hon Nigel Scullion (Chair)
Senator Trish Crossin (Deputy Chair)
Senator Judith Adams
Senator the Hon David Johnston
Senator Claire Moore
Senator Rachel Siewert
Media contact: Committee Secretary, Toni Matulick 02
6277 3113 or 0419 292 755
For further information, contact:
Senior Clerk's Office
Department of the Senate
PO Box 6100
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Australia