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Labor national conference, day two – politics live Labor conference: CDP to be abolished as part of reconciliation plan – live
(35 minutes later)
First up at Labor conference is its Reconciliation Action Plan - we’ll hear from Labor senators Malarndirri McCarthy and Pat Dodson. The official statement on the Reconciliation Action Plan has been released:
I understand Dodson will announce Labor will abolish the community development program - a form of the work for the dole program which disproportionately affects Indigenous Australians. It’s been labelled racist, blatantly discriminatory and compared to modern day slavery. A Shorten Labor Government will become the first political party to put in place a Reconciliation Action Plan – committing our party to practical measures to give First Australians a voice in our party, in our parliament, and in our society.
There are about 35,000 CDP participants in Australia and 83% are Indigenous. As a condition of income support, remote area participants must engage in up to 25 hours of work for the dole, five days a week.I can’t bring you more detail on what Labor will replace the CDP with yet, but we’ll hear from Dodson shortly. For Labor, reconciliation and recognition is about ensuring that First Nations people have the same rights, opportunities and outcomes as every other Australian.
Table One of the Myefo document has the fun line “decisions taken not yet announced” which has about $3bn allocated to it. Labor’s Reconciliation Action Plan includes strategies to work to better understand how to improve the current involvement of, and relationships with, First Nations People.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet your election campaign income tax cuts (I assume). Labor recognizes its role in building a more equitable relationship - one in which the rights and obligations flow both ways. This includes a commitment to establishing a Voice and enshrining it in the Constitution. It is our first priority for Constitutional change.
The bells have begun ringing for the Labor conference, where From Little Things Big Things Grow is being pumped through the speakers. Labor’s Reconciliation Action Plan is a practical plan with measurable timeframes – ensuring that at every level of our party we are constantly building our understanding of the issues that affect First Nations People’s equality and aspirations, and developing practical ideas for achieving sustainable change.
You can read the whole Myefo statement here. These goals have eluded us as a nation for more than two centuries. It is time for that to change – and Labor wants to lead this change.
You won’t get the glory of a Josh Frydenberg address (complete with slides!) but you’ll get the general idea. The government has money and it’s not afraid to spend it. Reconciliation and recognition is about acknowledging – and celebrating – the unique place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the first people and custodians of Australia and recognising the need for change through real partnerships.
Josh Frydenberg: In doing this Labor can continue to lead the way on our nation’s path to Recognition, Reconciliation and Justice.
There is more to be done, but this update shows that our plan is working. The underlying cash balance in 2018-19 is forecast to improve to a $5.2bn deficit – about two-thirds lower than the budget estimate of $14.5bn in May. A fair go for Australia also means a fair go for First Nations People.
The 2018-19 deficit is now 0.3% of GDP – one-tenth of the deficit of 3% of GDP that we inherited from Labor in 2013-14. More information on Labor’s Reconciliation Action Plan can be found here.
The underlying cash balance for 2019-20 is now expected to reach a surplus of $4.1bn – almost doubling the surplus estimated for that year in the May budget. The conference is going to go straight into asylum seeker policy (further debating what will be the final amendment resolutions) after the reconciliation announcement.
This will be the first budget surplus since the last year of the Howard government. The surplus will increase to $12.5bn in 2021 and $19bn from 2021-22. Meanwhile, in Canberra
The cumulative surpluses over the next four years will be $30.3bn – around double what was announced in the May budget. Josh Frydenberg & Mathias Cormann MYEFO presser in the blue room of parliament house Canberra this morning. @AmyRemeikis @murpharoo #PoliticsLive https://t.co/vzTH6iRseq pic.twitter.com/I1E7AgRMtz
The combination of a growing economy with a record number of people in work is helping both sides of the ledger increasing our revenues, while also decreasing our expenditure. Bill Shorten said sometimes closing the gap can be seen as giving advantage to first nation people – but that ignores that indigenous Australians are so often starting from behind.
Previous decisions taken by the government to ensure payments are better targeted as well as steps taken to ensure the integrity of the tax system are also continuing to benefit the budget. He says to those critics:
Consistent with a strong and growing economy, the tax share of GDP is expected to be 23.8% of GDP in 21-22, and the Coalition’s tax speed limit equal to 23.9% of GDP is reached and then held from 25-26. Why are you so scared by providing an equal go to people who don’t have an equal go to start with?”
The cap ensures that the government lives within its means by not imposing an increasing of tax as a burden on Australians over time which would adversely affect growth, cost jobs and investment. And he reiterates that first nation people need to be at the forefront of any policy.
The government has also successfully controlled expenditure in its efforts to return the budget to surplus. Unions and welfare groups that have campaigned against the community development program have welcomed the announcement Labor will abolish it.
Compared with the 2018-19 budget, payments are lower in each year of the forward estimates with the payments to GDP ratio expected to be 24.9% in 18-19, falling to 24.6% in 2020-21. Australian Council of Trade Unions president Michele O’Neil:
Average annual real growth in payments over the five years from 2017-18 is expected to be 1.9%. “The announcement that an ALP government would abolish the CDP is a huge win for 30,000 workers who have been racially discriminated against through this scheme for the last 3 years, and for workers’ rights in this country.
This is the lowest level for any government in 50 years. I want to repeat that – with spending growth down to 1.9%, this is the lowest level for any government in 50 years. “This program discriminated against people on the basis of the colour of their skin and the place they chose to live...
This is even after taking into account new spending commitments in Myefo to support schools, hospitals, drought-stricken communities and a newer and fairer model for distributing the GST. “This scheme is an appalling example of state-sanctioned racial discrimination and worker exploitation and Australia will be a better place without it.”
The embargo on the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook has lifted and Josh Frydenberg is doing his best to make it interesting. “The Australian union movement will continue to campaign to ensure that workers in remote communities are not exploited, are given access to paid job opportunities and that remote communities are given back the financial autonomy which was taken from them by the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison Government.”
#MYEFO Budget aggregates #auspol pic.twitter.com/AtLCc3dEV2 Australian Council of Social Services chief executive, Cassandra Goldie:
#MYEFO Updated economic outlook #auspol pic.twitter.com/F8BNc964PQ “We applaud the opposition for listening to First Nations peoples and announcing its intention to abolish the CDP. First Nations organisations have repeatedly stood up against CDP and put forward their own solutions. Today is a great day when the alternative Government has committed to self determination for First Nations peoples.”
We’re expecting Bill Shorten to make an announcement on refugees this morning. Bill Shorten said it has taken Labor 120 years to have three first nation members of its caucus “but we’re here now”.
The cross-factional working group disagreed about how to handle asylum seekers who were rejected under the Coalition’s “fast-track” assessment process, so I don’t expect Labor Left’s demand for a second-chance review to be included in the announcement. You can follow along with Bill Shorten’s speech here:
Sources involved in those negotiations said the party’s commitment to take 27,000 refugees will be lifted to 32,000 by creating 5,000 community-sponsored places. LIVE from Adelaide - I'm launching @AustralianLabor’s Reconciliation Action Plan. Because Reconciliation is Australia’s unfinished business, and it’s everyone’s business. #LabConf18 https://t.co/BJBh3CK5Ih
The other planks of the policy already agreed include improved regional arrangements to bring refugees to Australia and an asylum seeker safety net, providing welfare and support services in Australia. Pat Dodson has just labelled the community development program “discriminatory punitive and ineffective”, confirming that a Shorten Labor government will abolish and replace it.
Just so you can plan your dayLooking ahead to today’s events, Bill Shorten will use the opportunity of the conference to launch his reconciliation action plan. This is a special agenda item requiring a suspension of the standing orders. Dodson said Shorten was “ready willing and able to step up in partnership with First Nations people, to deliver justice and equality, deliver a voice [to parliament] and constitutional recognition”.
After that, we are likely to learn the outcome of the discussions under way in the left and right caucuses about the party’s refugee policy. Shorten will give delegates an outline of where that has landed about 10am Adelaide time. He spoke about what was needed to make the reconciliation action plan “a lived reality” – suggesting the first steps were to get the Shorten Labor team elected to government, and to improve Indigenous enrolment so First Nations people can vote in a referendum on constitutional recognition.
Then we are into the policy debates of the day: education, infrastructure, Newstart, and immigration. Bill Shorten is delivering his second speech, following the announcement of Labor’s reconciliation plan.
Right now, we can confirm there will be a resolution condemning the government’s management of offshore detention. The rest we’ll keep an eye on. Labor’s reconciliation action plan motion looks like this:
Welcome to day two of Labor’s three-day federal conference, where the asylum seeker policy and whether or not to raise Newstart are the big issues of the day. The Australian Labor party acknowledges that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the first peoples of Australia, and have sustained spiritual beliefs, cultural and ceremonial practices on their traditional estates. In the true spirit of reconciliation, the Australian Labor party affirms its equal partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for the ongoing custodianship and maintenance of land and “sea country” throughout this nation.
There is also the Uluru statement, education and migration. National conference commits Labor to the 2018-2020 reconciliation action plan.
As we learnt yesterday, a lot of these policies are being worked out in the individual committee groups away from the conference floor, only hitting the vote once a deal has been decided. For Labor, reconciliation and recognition is about ensuring that First Nations people have the same rights, opportunities and outcomes as every other Australian.
Will today follow that same pattern? Everyone, so far, seems to be on the same page of wanting it to, but these are big issues, which go to the heart and soul of the party, so we’ll see. These goals have eluded us as a nation for more than two centuries. It is time for that to change – and Labor wants to lead this change.
The government is also announcing its mid-year economic and fiscal outlook statement today, which is basically a mini-budget – and what it’ll use as the budget, if forced to go to an earlier-than-anticipated election in March. Gareth Hutchens is all over that for you, and we’ll bring you the reaction as it comes. Reconciliation and recognition is about acknowledging – and celebrating – the unique place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the first inhabitants and custodians of Australia. We are home to one of the oldest surviving cultures on Earth. That is something that we can all take pride in.
Bill Shorten is already in election mode. He went for his run around Adelaide this morning, echoing a familiar sight during the 2016 campaign. As Labor peeps will tell you, the party has been in election mode all year, having set up headquarters in Parramatta and put all its campaign teams in place. Reconciliation and recognition is about acknowledging the truth of our history, the wrongs that have been committed against first peoples – and not shying away from our historical pain. Without truth, there can be no healing.
But those same Labor peeps will also tell you that the delay to the federal conference, which was caused by the “coincidental” scheduling of the super Saturday byelections for the original conference date in July, has become a “blessing in disguise”. Reconciliation is about building relationships, and about listening.
That’s because Labor has a lot more information in front of it. And it’s had a lot more time to sort out some of those more tricky policy issues. Above all, it is about taking action to tackle disadvantage and inequality. It is about introducing practical measures to close the gap in health, housing, education, employment and life expectancy.
Today some of the more contentious issues will be decided, freeing the party to concentrate on the upcoming election. Shorten will give a second speech today, which will help shape what the next few months are going to look like for Labor. And Katharine Murphy, Paul Karp and I will be following along for you all day. To achieve these outcomes and create a truly reconciled nation, First Nations people must have a say in all of the decisions that affect their lives.
I hope you’ve had your coffee. I’m on number two, and the coffee line at the conference centre is an insight to what living in a Mad Max world must be like, so I don’t like my chances for the necessary third. But still. We persist. Labor is committed to ensuring that First Nations people have a voice – entrenched in our constitution.
Ready? Let’s get into it. The reconciliation action plan sets out practical measures to give First Australians a voice in our party, in our parliament, and in our society.
It outlines Labor’s commitment to come together with First Nations’ people and work towards equality, and a reconciled and just nation.
The reconciliation action plan outlines a comprehensive strategy for ensuring First Nations people are actively supported to participate in our party, our parliament, and our nation.
The reconciliation action plan focuses on building relationships, respect and opportunities.
It identifies a range of practical measures that Labor will adopt to ensure that First Nations people have more opportunities to be involved in our party, at every level.
By implementing the reconciliation action plan, Labor will ensure we are constantly building our understanding of the issues that affect First Nations people’s equality and aspirations, and developing practical ideas for achieving change.
As outlined in the reconciliation action plan, the ALP’s national executive will have responsibility for the oversight and reporting of the Rap.