Former prime minister Tony Abbott is playing down criticism that his visit to remote South Australian Aboriginal communities is ill-timed and offensive.
Mr Abbott arrived in Ceduna on Tuesday and was in Yalata on Tuesday evening.
He’ll tour a number of remote communities in outback South Australia over the next three days with a specific focus on improving Indigenous attendance rates.
“I don’t claim to be the world’s greatest expert on this. But I have had many, many years of interest in and time spent in remote communities,” Mr Abbott told reporters in Ceduna.
“We can just accept that this is going to be a feature of our life, that Indigenous people will never get the education others take for granted. Or, we can keep making more and better efforts to try and deal with it.”
Mr Abbott controversially labelled himself the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs when he won the 2013 election.
During his prime ministership, he spent a week a year in remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory and Torres Strait.
A traditional smoking ceremony held for Tony Abbott in Cape York in 2015. He has accepted a role as special envoy on Indigenous affairs. Source: AAP
Of his trip as the recently-appointed envoy on Indigenous affairs, Mr Abbott said there would “always be critics”.
“There’s never enough time to get on top of these issues,” he said.
“[But], with goodwill and hard work, we can do better than we’re doing at the moment.”
Indigenous school attendance rates were about 83 per cent last year, compared to 93 per cent for non-Indigenous students, according to the Australian government.
The Indigenous attendance rate hasn’t changed much since 2014 and, at current rates, the government will not meet its target to close the education gap by the end of the year.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott says he'll focus on remote education in his new role of Indigenous envoy. Source: AAP
“It really does have to change if we’re going to make a lasting difference to the Indigenous people of Australia,” Mr Abbott said.
The government created the Remote School Attendance Strategy in 2014.
Mr Abbott is expected to visit Coober Pedy, Umuwa, Pukatja and Adelaide and make recommendations to Prime Minister Scott Morrison by the end of the year.
