Incoming Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion has attacked the "passive racism" of public servants who hold lower expectations for Aboriginal children attending school.
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Senator Scullion, who will be sworn in on Wednesday, told Fairfax Media state and territory departments had treated indigenous children who did not attend school differently to non-indigenous children who played truant.
"In my view there is a different approach to mainstream kids and to Aboriginal kids," he said.
"I'm not sure why that is, but I am sure that isn't the best way to go about things.
"Kids need to be going to school. If you haven't got an education, then it's difficult to get a job, and if you haven't got an education and a job it's going to be very, very difficult to get the same opportunities that other Australians take for granted."
Senator Scullion said the problems in remote indigenous communities were caused by poverty rather than Aboriginality. "Having a different approach on the basis of ethnicity doesn't have the right outcome," he said.
Tony Abbott has promised "a new engagement" with the First Australians, pledging to be a "Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs," by bringing indigenous policy into his department and having Scullion in cabinet solely focused on indigenous affairs. Scullion said the coalition hoped to succeed where previous governments had failed by fundamentally changing the nature of the relationship between government and indigenous communities.
"We shouldn't be dictating all the time ... we need to move away from that," he said.
Senator Scullion said he would start by talking to indigenous people about how they wanted to address the issues facing their communities.
"We're not going to do anything immediately," he said.
He said the incoming government would move quickly to establish its promised Prime Minister's advisory council on indigenous affairs, which will be chaired by former Labor Party president Warren Mundine.
Senator Scullion could not say whether Alison Anderson – the former Labor turned Country Liberal politician who was dumped from the Northern Territory cabinet last week – would play a role on the council.
He said the advisory council was not intended to replace the elected National Congress of Australia's First Peoples, whose role he said was to advocate independent of government.
"The council will be a group that has specific tasks – it's our agenda and our agenda may not be the agenda of the Congress and rightly so," Senator Scullion said. "(Congress) have been funded to establish an independent body and I respect that."
