Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to acknowledge the presence in the chamber of the member for Hasluck. We were together on Saturday in Emerton in the electorate of Chifley as a part of the Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, which the member for Hasluck chairs. The member for Hasluck would remember, as I do, the welcome to country that we were given by Uncle Greg, who is an elder of the Dharug tribe. We were very honoured to be welcomed to country in language. Uncle Greg said as part of his evidence to the committee in blunt but fairly resonant words: 'What youse people have gotta know, youse people who are writing the Constitution, that we fellas have been here for thousands of years. That's a fact.' I thought that those words were a very prescient preface to the debate we are having in the House and the evidence we have been hearing before the joint select committee.

This bill, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition (Sunset Extension) Bill 2015, extends the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Act 2013 to extend the sunset date by three years to 28 March 2018. The recognition act was passed unanimously by the previous government—quite an achievement, given the fractious nature of the 43rd Parliament. This is an issue on which there was unanimity across all of the parties and all of the members of the 43rd Parliament.

We again find ourselves in a bipartisan debate in the 44th Parliament, jointly recognising the need to extend the recognition act. A sunset date of 28 March 2015 was included in the extant act to give parliament and the public a date on which we could focus a time line if you like—a deadline if you like—so that we could focus our minds on the task of constitutional recognition of the first Australians. The current Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, has indicated that a referendum is most likely to be held in 2017. If we were not to extend the act, we would find ourselves in a deplorable situation where there would be no formal act of recognition because the extant act would have elapsed, and between now and the period when the people of Australia vote on a constitutional amendment, there would be no formal act of recognition of this parliament, unlike acts that have been passed by many of our sister parliaments throughout the federated states of Australia.

In its view, the review panel, which is commissioned by this piece of legislation, comprised of the Hon. John Anderson, known to all members in this place, Tanya Hosch, who is joint CEO of the Recognise campaign, and Richard Eccles, recommended the extension of this legislation. They formed the view that we were not yet ready to take a proposition to the Australian people. The joint select committee on which I serve made a recommendation consistent with the review panel's report, and that recommendation was tabled on 27 October last year, following our national consultations. As our parliamentary spokesperson, our shadow minister, Shayne Neumann, the member for Blair, has said, Labor is committed to pursuing substantive and meaningful changes in the Constitution—a point echoed, underscored and made very clear by the Leader of the Opposition when he addressed the Garma Festival in East Arnhem Land last year, where he made it very, very clear that Labor believes in recognition and has very strong views about the form in which that constitutional recognition should occur. It should be meaningful and it should be substantive and it should deal with the issue of systemic and longstanding discrimination against the first peoples of Australia.

Australia prides itself on being a place of fairness and equity, a place where Jack or Jill is as good as their master. However, our nation's founding document is itself actually silent on the special place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I see the member for Griffith in the chamber at the moment. I am probably a little bit older than her. When I studied law as a student at university in New South Wales, I was taught that the doctrine of terra nullius was a part of the common law of Australia—that is to say, Australia was a vacant place when the white fellas got of a boat at Port Phillip in 1788. To the extent that it was inhabited, the first Australians were considered nothing more than part of the flora and fauna of the landscape. Of course, all of that changed with the landmark decision in Mabo and the Commonwealth on 3 June 1992, after a case brought by the plaintiff, Eddie Mabo, succeeded in overturning that doctrine. We were then able to hold our heads as Australians and say that the common law of this land was brought into line with what every historian and what common sense was telling us to be the case, that the first people of this country, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, have been here for no less than 40,000 years and enjoy an enduring connection to country. Indeed, something that all Australians can be proud of is that we now share in and are a part of the oldest and most continuous culture anywhere on the planet—something that I am very pleased to say we now acknowledge at every civic ceremony around the country.

We have taken great steps since 1992. And of course, the action did not start from then. We had the 1967 referendum, which most speakers in this debate have acknowledged. I have mentioned the historic 1992 Mabo judgement. We have had the historic Northern Territory land rights legislation; the actions by former Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam; the landmark speech of former Prime Minister, Paul Keating, at Redfern; and the acknowledgement of and apology for some of the worst wrongs, by former Prime Minister Rudd—a moment which my generation of parliamentarians and, indeed, my generation of Australians has marked down as one of those Kennedy or Lennon moments—we all know where we were in Australia when Prime Minister stood in this place and gave that landmark speech. We now have bipartisan agreement to the annual Closing the gap report on how we are addressing inequality between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians, and there is the importance of having—as we did two weeks ago—that annual tabling of the report, together with a debate in this place about how we are going against those targets.

We have come a long way. I strongly commend this bill, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition (Sunset Extension) Bill 2015, to the parliament. But I cannot stand here in all honesty and not express some disappointment about the necessity to move an amendment to this act in order to extend it by some three years. It would have been my preference that we already be in a position to have a consensus position within this place, between both houses and all parties, a proposition that we could put before the Australian people; and, if the Australian people had not yet voted on it, that we would know what the proposition was and that we would know a date certain upon when the Australian people would get to exercise judgement upon the proposition. It will happen, I am certain, and it will be a great and unifying moment in our nation's history.

I pay tribute to the work that is being done by the committee on which I serve. It is a great honour. I believe that, whenever I leave this place—hopefully by choice of mine and not of others—I will mark my service on this committee as one of the great privileges that I have been able to hold as a member of this place. But I must say this: I am disappointed that we have not yet reached a bipartisan proposition. In making that observation, I make no reflection on my fellow members of that committee. The review panel makes the point that Australians are not yet ready to focus on this issue. I simply make the observation that it is unrealistic of us as parliamentarians to expect Australians to focus on a proposition when the parliament has not yet focused on the proposition.

That is why there is bipartisan support for the recommendation that both houses of parliament convene for a full two days, and that we debate the proposition of constitutional recognition, allowing every member and every senator to express their views; the views that they represent on behalf of their constituents, on behalf of their parties, and on behalf of their own consciences, as members of this place. So that the people of Australia, seeing this great spectacle of every member and every senator in this place expressing their views, know exactly what the issues are—creating the momentum that is necessary. creating the education that is necessary, and creating the focus that is necessary, for this parliament to get on with the job of fixing upon a proposition which removes the racist provisions within the Constitution. These are provisions that most Australians, I warrant, would not know were there, and would be horrified to know were part of the founding document of this nation. If you were to tell most Australians that our Constitution contemplates the rights of states to exclude people from their electoral rolls on no other basis than the basis of their race, I would guarantee that most Australians would be horrified—horrified that our Constitution contemplates a type of racism and discrimination that the laws of our state and federal parliaments prohibit. They would be astounded that our Constitution contemplates such discrimination and would support the proposition to remove it.

I am sure that most Australians seized of the momentum created by the High Court's first and second Mabo decisions, the eradication of the doctrine of terra nullius from the common law of this land and the fact that they now enjoy a more balanced education than they did when I was in school would say it makes common sense that we recognise the first Australians within our birth certificate, as the Prime Minister has quite pithily described it—our Constitution. They would say, 'This is the right thing to do.' I think most Australians would also support the proposition that parliaments should not be able to discriminate against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, certainly not to their detriment, on the basis of their race.

I think it is a simple proposition and we should be able to fix on a form of words which enable the Australian people to adjudicate on those three propositions to alter our Constitution. It will be an historic moment of unification, healing and celebration so that we can do as Uncle Greg implored us to do in his welcome to country and his address to the recognition committee in Emerton last Saturday and do as one of the witnesses to that committee said in very powerful and passionate language—'Australia does not have a white history. Australia does not have a black history. Australia has a history. Our Constitution should recognise that, and our children should be taught that in our schools.' I commend the bill to the House.

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