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

I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land we are gathered on and thank them for their continuing stewardship. While I do so, I am going to make a political statement, and that is to condemn the Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu for deciding to make it an option for his ministers to give that traditional acknowledgement when they speak at public events. Has so big a man ever been so small? I think that is such a small-minded gesture. To balance out that condemnation of the Liberal Premier of Victoria I would like to commend the member for Hasluck for his contribution on the Sorry Day motion and generally for the contribution he has made to harmony and the entire spirit of reconciliation since he came to the parliament. I commend him for that contribution. I just want to give a little bit of background information before I touch on the event that we acknowledged in the parliament last week—I would not say celebrated, but in a way we do celebrate it. I am going to go back to 10 December 1992, and to an inner suburb of Sydney called Redfern, where the new Prime Minister of Australia, Paul Keating, made the following comment in his now famous Redfern speech. It was on the eve of the International Year for the World's Indigenous People, which was the context of the speech. I do not know what went on in former Prime Minister Keating's head at the time, but he made the speech not in the Northern Territory, or North Queensland, or Western Australia, or the Kimberley or somewhere like that, where he could have had Uluru or Kakadu or something like that in the background. He did not go there to make a speech on the eve of the International Year for the World's Indigenous People, instead he went to Redfern—an inner-city location that was a much more significant choice in a way, because that is the reality for so many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. They are not in Kakadu or the Kimberley, they are actually in an urban environment and coping with different sorts of challenges. This does not diminish the challenges that come with living in a remote community where, as the member for Hasluck says, there is not a Budget hire car and some of the things that we associate with urban environments.

It was also in the context of the Mabo decision having been made on 3 June 1992; this was 10 December 1992, not that long after. And whilst we now accept native title as a fact of life, back then it was a major challenge to be accepted by the hierarchy, I guess you could say—the accepted history and judicial fabrication that this land was developed on. But to the words of Paul Keating:

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.

That speech in 1992 was a great framing process for what happened afterwards. You can go on YouTube and see the speech. You can see different versions of the speech: there is one where it is set to music. It is a great piece of oratory and I think it does work as a bit of poetry as well as oratory. But when you actually see the raw footage, a fair swag of people were heckling him; there was a lot of tension and a lot of people were ignoring him. It was typical of a politician at an event in the park: most people were down the back just having fun with the kids and doing what you do in Australia. You are not really interested in politicians, whoever they are, even if they are a brand-new politician with a vision.

Nevertheless, the words certainly live on and, as I said, they framed an approach to a number of things. There had been a lot of work going on in the few years surrounding that. Prime Minister Keating then commissioned the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families. I think the Attorney-General was a Queenslander at the time, Michael Lavarch, and he established it on 11 May 1995. I would also specially mention the then Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Robert Tickner, now the head of the Red Cross, who also was a significant player in that process. So we think of that flow of events, from the Redfern speech through to commissioning the national inquiry, and they are quite significant. That inquiry was primarily conducted by Sir Ronald Wilson, the then President of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, and Mick Dodson, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner. But I am also going to take this opportunity to mention the co-commissioners: Annette Peardon, Marjorie Thorpe, Dr Maryanne Bin Salik, Sadie Canning, Olive Knight, Kathy Mills, Anne Louis, Laurel Williams, Jackie Huggins—a great Queenslander and one of my constituents—Josephine Ptero-David and Professor Marcia Langton. The inquiry also benefited from the appointment of an Indigenous advisory council, and there are some names in here that people would recognise: Annette Peardon, Brian Butler, Yami Lester, Irene Stainton, Floyd Chermside, Barabara Cummings, Grant Dradge, Carol Kendall, Lola McNaughton, Isabel Coe, Peter Rotimah, Nigel d'Souza, Maureen Abbott, Margaret Ah Kee, Bill Lowah, Matilda House and Jim Wright—and I will come back to Matilda House later. Seven hundred and seventy-seven submissions were received, and hearings took place in all of the territories. Basically, the commissioners and the co-commissioners went all over Australia to receive evidence.

From there, we flowed to the report actually being presented to the Howard government, as it then was, on 26 May. Since then, we have held National Sorry Day every year on the anniversary of the tabling of the Bringing them home report in parliament. In between times, some other great things have occurred. We have the Stolen Generations Testimonies Foundation, with its 40 oral history testimonies from members of the stolen generations. Apparently, that will be available online from July. We have the National Library of Australia's Bringing Them Home oral history project, an online collection of 191 oral history interviews with people who were involved in or affected by the removal of Indigenous children from their families.

But one of the most significant things to occur was on 13 February 2008. I said earlier that I would return to Matilda House, one of the Indigenous Council Advisory members. I will start with her on 13 February 2008, which was my first day on the job in this House, and the member for Deakin's as well. Before we actually started, we had a welcome to country, performed by Matilda House. I remember it was raining and Parliament House was leaking, in all sorts of ways, and she made a very good joke about that. From there, we moved into the House of Representatives chamber, where then Prime Minister Rudd began the very first order of business of the 42nd Parliament, reading out his own handwritten apology to the forgotten Australians. I want to quote from that apology on 13 February 2008, at 9 am Eastern Standard Time, when Mr Rudd tabled the apology as the first order of business on the opening of Australia's 42nd Parliament. I will not read the entire apology, because it is well known to most of us and also respected as a great piece of literature and oratory at the time—famous throughout the world, in fact—but just some parts:

We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.

For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.

A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.

That was certainly very well received by both sides of the parliament—I would almost say unanimously. It was supported unanimously. There might have been a few hiccups in the chamber in the process, but in the spirit of the goodwill of this day I would say it was passed unanimously, which was a significant thing. I note that in his response to Prime Minister's National Sorry Day statement, the Hon. Tony Abbott, the Leader of the Opposition, said:

I should also acknowledge former Prime Minister Rudd for having the vision to say sorry on behalf of our nation. That was an historic day and we all pay tribute to him for that act of statesmanship.

Those are fine words indeed. I do not say that very often about the Hon. Tony Abbott, but on this occasion I can say that. On that note, I recognise that there is work yet to be done and that, until we actually close the gap, apologies and fine words are only part of the job. There is still a lot to be done before we actually have a nation that is truly reconciled with the strange circumstances that formed it. With that, I commend the statement on Sorry Day to the House.

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