Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land we are gathered on and thanking them for their continuing stewardship. I am pleased to speak in support of the motion of apology to Australia’s Indigenous people.

The then Prime Minister, Paul Keating, made the following comment in his famous Redfern speech on 10 December 1992—on the eve of the International Year of the World’s Indigenous People. Think of that—it was 10 December 1992 and the Prime Minister had only recently taken office. It was not long after the Mabo decision of that year. He said:

It will be a year of great significance for Australia.

It comes at a time when we have committed ourselves to succeeding in the test which so far we have always failed.

Because, in truth, we cannot confidently say that we have succeeded as we would like to have succeeded if we have not managed to extend opportunity and care, dignity and hope to the indigenous people of Australia—the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people.

Paul Keating made that famous speech at Redfern on 10 December 1992 only six months after Chief Justice Brennan of the High Court had handed down the Mabo decision. Cast your mind back to the atmosphere of that time, of 1992 after the Mabo decision. There were headlines saying that our backyards were going to be taken by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The farmers were up in arms saying that all their land was going to be taken. There was fear being cultivated by a lot of people out in the community about how Australia was going to change. Yet, six short months later, Paul Keating, the newly appointed Prime Minister, stood up and made that Redfern speech. He was a new Prime Minister and that is what he said. He wanted to move the Australian people to a greater understanding.

How adventurous and brave was the Prime Minister to make that speech? What sort of vision was that for a new Prime Minister in the light of the atmosphere of fear and misunderstanding in the community? In that demonstration of true leadership Prime Minister Keating then commissioned the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families. This inquiry handed down the Bringing them home report to the Howard government in April 1997. Think of that flow of events and the significant players in those events—Paul Keating and then the new Prime Minister, John Howard.

In 10 years of having that report, the coalition government did nothing. If you think back to the coalition governments before then, Malcolm Fraser brought in the Racial Discrimination Act. He was a great man of vision in reaching out to the Aboriginal people. Obviously, Malcolm Fraser’s experience in dealing with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people was quite different. Maybe it was because Malcolm Fraser had a different attitude. My understanding is that he had an Aboriginal nanny who helped raise and educate him about the significant beliefs of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Flick back from Malcolm Fraser, that Liberal Prime Minister, to the next Liberal Prime Minister, his former Treasurer, and look at how he responded to the Bringing them home report handed to him in April 1997. Prime Minister Howard had all those years—10 years—to do something to respond to that report, to make a gesture, to make even a symbolic gesture, but he stands condemned as someone who did nothing.

Last Wednesday, my first Wednesday in this House, there was quite a lot of emotion in the House. On the floor, I saw tears in the eyes of many people. Indigenous elders from the stolen generation were here; there were tears from Anglo-Saxons; there were tears from everyone in terms of the emotion that was in that House as the nation gathered to hear that historic apology. Not that we saw it in the chamber, obviously, but apparently some people turned their backs on the Leader of the Opposition. I can understand that kind of emotion because the coalition government had turned their backs on the stolen generations for more than 10 years. So I can understand that people might act in a way that I would consider to be poor manners. The feelings that people had ran high and had festered for 10 years—festered for the 70 years, some might say, from when these policies were first carried out. Feelings festered to the extent that people felt compelled to turn their backs. As I said, my good manners would prevent me from so doing, but I can understand how people might feel compelled to do something.

In my dealings as a union organiser, I organised in independent schools. People might think that independent schools are only grammar schools and the like, but a lot of Aboriginal schools are independent. I had the pleasure of being a union organiser out at Wadja Wadja High School, west of Rockhampton. I was also fortunate enough to have a school with a high Aboriginal population in the middle of Moreton, at Sunnybank, and right on the border in Oxley I had the Murri School, an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander school. I think there is even an Aboriginal kindergarten in the Prime Minister’s electorate, just a couple of blocks down from my electorate. In my visits to those schools as a union organiser and in meetings in the lead-up to the elections over the last couple of years, so many times Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have said: ‘How come we can’t even get a sorry—one word? How come we can’t get a sorry out of the coalition government? How come Prime Minister Howard uses his weasel words to avoid saying a simple word like sorry? Shameful, shameful, shameful.’

I would like to return once more to Prime Minister Keating’s Redfern speech. It is significant that he chose Redfern to make one of his most significant speeches—a fine piece of oratory, a fine piece of poetry treasured by many people throughout Australia. He chose Redfern rather than an Aboriginal settlement in the Northern Territory or North Queensland, I guess, because it is symbolic of the urban reality for so many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and because of the socioeconomic challenges that are often exhibited in this community. He also chose Redfern because it was a speech about hope. I will return to his speech and quote further. He said, and remember that this is on 10 December 1992:

There is one thing today we cannot imagine. We cannot imagine that the descendants of people whose genius and resilience maintained a culture here through 50 000 years or more, through cataclysmic changes to the climate and environment, and who then survived two centuries of dispossession and abuse, will be denied their place in the modern Australian nation.

We cannot imagine that.

We cannot imagine that we will fail.

And with the spirit that is here today I am confident that we won’t.

I am confident that we will succeed in this decade.

Then, on 2 March 1996, that advancement towards reconciliation and a greater hope for Australia came to a screaming halt, when John Howard and the Howard government ensured that nothing else happened. We did not go forward as a nation in the late nineties. Instead, things stopped.

I certainly commend all the representatives in the House of Representatives last Wednesday who took part in that apology and were heartfelt in their apology. But, unfortunately, obviously not everyone from the other side of the chamber was prepared to participate in that apology. From my recollection, there were at least seven or eight people who either walked out or were missing and were not prepared to stay committed to what I assume was a collective coalition decision to participate in the apology. Maybe people were absent for other reasons. Maybe they had meetings planned—I am not sure. But I think it is shameful that people did not stay united and speak from the chamber as one in saying sorry to the stolen generations and to the representatives who were there in the chamber.

It is interesting. There was the sorry last Wednesday, a great day in this nation’s history, and then we move forward to Four Corners on Monday night, where the new coalition members were trying to rewrite history. Apparently it was John Howard who called the shots on everything. No-one was able to speak up with such a voice to actually move him in any way. Any bad decision that was made was all John Howard’s. No voice at that cabinet table was able to pass comment on Work Choices and obviously no voice at that table was able to speak on behalf of the stolen generations or the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people generally. It is almost as though the current opposition are trying to rewrite history. It is not really a ‘black armband’ view of history, which was John Howard’s favourite phrase for condemning the Labor Party for trying to present the facts; I guess you could call it a ‘slack armband’ version of history: ‘It wasn’t me—no, it was all John Howard. John Howard did everything bad.’

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a country town where about one-quarter of the population, or a bit more than that probably, were Murris, were Aborigines. I do not go out to St George all that often—I am going out at Easter for a school reunion—but it is amazing the number of Murri friends who have phoned me up to comment on the apology and what it meant to them. These are not children of the stolen generation at all; these are people who did not have that experience. But it is amazing the number of them who have phoned up to say how great that was, how much it meant to them. It has really changed their view of government and what it can do.

By refusing to say sorry, by refusing to take the Bringing them home report recommendations and do something with them, the Howard government betrayed the real roots of Australia. It was almost like it was trying to erase the Mabo decision and say: ‘No, no—terra nullius really did exist. There were no people here before Captain Cook and the First Fleet came to Australia.’ That is what the Howard government was saying.

So many of my friends in St George and other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have made comment about how wonderful that gesture was from the Prime Minister and Jenny Macklin. That is why I am very proud, after my first speech, to be affirming the apology.

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