Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Berowra for his contribution. I am not sure that I agree with all of his sentiments, but I do think he presents a cogent argument as to how we might mature in this place at some point in the future. My observations about the former Prime Minister come from my personal interactions with him and my admiration for much of what was achieved under his stewardship.

We are all flawed in one way or another, and the previous Prime Minister had flaws, just like you and I. It is not my intention to examine his flaws or even comment on them, because this is neither the time nor the place. I do want to concentrate our minds on the legacy that will be left as a result of his prime ministership and the partnership he had at that point with his deputy Julia Gillard and with his ministry, of which I was a proud member.

We have heard a lot of words in this place, and last week some very moving tributes. I accord with the sentiments of those tributes. From my personal point of view there are a couple of things that I need to make clear. The first of these is that the single most important moment for me in the 24½ years I have been in this place was the apology to the stolen generation. Bear in mind that my electorate, which was all of the Northern Territory at one point, is now Lingiari, which is 1.34 million square kilometres. It is all of the Northern Territory except Darwin, which is the seat of Solomon, which has 330,000 square kilometres. The bulk of the Aboriginal people who live in the Northern Territory live in my electorate. Around 40 per cent of my constituents are Aboriginal people. A significant number of them were members of the stolen generation. Indeed, last Friday I had cause to go to the funeral of a very dear old friend, David 'Weewak' Ross in Katherine. There were 1,000 people there. A significant number of those thousand people were members of the stolen generation or descendants of members of the stolen generation. I know what that apology meant for them. Knowing that the Prime Minister was going to do it, being able to offer to provide assistance with words and make a contribution to the speech if that was thought necessary to him, I was absolutely flummoxed by the breadth of this understanding, the depth of his knowledge and his commitment, and the courage which exhibited in making that apology. The words were his. To be in the parliament, to see him go to Mrs Fejo, a senior Aboriginal woman and a member of the stolen generation from Northern Territory; to see the people in the parliament itself respond in such a way; to see the emotional outpouring across the country; and to see the international recognition that it brought to us was something that none of us will ever forget, I am certain. I do not think we really understand yet the implications for us. I want to make it very clear that this single most important event in my time in this parliament was that apology.

Not only was the apology important, but also Prime Minister Rudd took a great interest in issues to do with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. He was a principal architect of the government's commitment to closing the gap in employment, health measures and education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. We have made a significant contribution as a result of the investments made because of his policy commitment. Significant efforts have been made and improvements have been brought about directly as a result of his leadership. Again, in the future people will look back and see how significant that move was. And it was done in partnership with people in the broader community—with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people right across the country. So I want to say thank you to him for that commitment and for the changes which have been brought about as a direct result of that commitment.

I also want to make some comments about the work he did in the global financial crisis and the leadership shown by him, by the then Treasurer, Wayne Swan, and by the then Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. I know that the then opposition opposed much of the effort made and many of the things that were done at the time, and said that they were a waste of money. They ran around the country talking about the waste of money on school halls and the like. Well, in my own case, I can tell you that every dollar spent was a dollar well spent and a dollar well spent that would not have been spent had it not been for that government and the leadership shown by the Prime Minister to bring us through that global financial crisis. As I travelled around the Northern Territory and open new classrooms, assembly halls or libraries, in communities which had never seen a new single dollar, let alone hundreds of thousands of dollars, or millions of dollars in some cases, for improvements in capital works, it was indeed astounding. And there is not one community that I can think of that I visited that was anything but ecstatic about receiving that investment as a direct result of the decisions taken by that government.

I know we hear a lot, have heard a lot and will continue to hear a lot from the current government about the so-called fiscal delinquency of that government investing in this way, but Australians all know that it was the right thing to do and the right time to do it. Not only was it the right time to do it but it will be seen in the future as a great legacy for this country, for the educational opportunities of people living in the most remote communities and, indeed, in communities with the poorest educational outcomes in this nation in my electorate—all of whom benefited directly from the investments made as a result of the strategies adopted by the then Labor government under the leadership of Kevin Rudd and over the global financial crisis. Despite the cynicism from those opposite, we should be forever grateful. I know I will be and I know that the people of the Northern Territory who receive the benefits of those investments will, too, be forever grateful.

I think there is a lot more to be said about the legacy of Kevin Rudd to this great nation of ours, and I think people are a bit too quick to be critical and do not really appreciate the significance of what was achieved under his very dynamic leadership. Yes, as I said at the outset, he had flaws—but so do we all, and I think that if we all had a bit of time for self-criticism and self-examination we would acknowledge our own flaws. But this is not a time to examine flaws; this is a time to examine his contribution to this nation of ours and say: 'Thank you, Kevin, for your leadership, your hard work, your courage and your commitment.'

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