Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition (Sunset Extension) Bill 2015 is very important for the nation of Australia and I have no doubt it has bipartisanship support. It comes about because in 2013 the parliament passed the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Act and for the first time the continent and the islands now known as Australia were deemed to have been first occupied by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples—in other words, we recognised through that parliamentary act that Indigenous Australians existed. I have always had trouble with the word 'occupied'. My family's farm has been in the family for six generations, and we never refer to that land having been occupied by the family. We say we owned it. I do not know why we have this incredible difficulty in Australia in using the word 'owned' when it comes to Indigenous Australians and this continent. Let me say, for the sake of the record, that we should recognise that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples owned their tribal areas, their countries or their nations whether as island states in the Torres Strait or on mainland Australia, when ownership of the country was divided up into some 200 or so separate nations on the mainland.

The issue now is that Australia's Indigenous ownership of the country needs to be recognised in the Constitution. The act in 2013 gave us a two-year sunset period for the referendum to be put forward and ideally supported so that we could have the Constitution changed. That would then give us this recognition that we all in this place believe is deserved—it is a no-brainer. The difficulty for us is that on 27 March 2014 a review panel was set up in accordance with the act and the review panel reported back, on 19 September 2014, that in its view we needed to extend the sunset period by a year to make it three years before the vote so that there was less likelihood of the referendum being not supported by the majority of Australian people. It is a fairly complex matter and we have to make sure that the final proposal is understood by Indigenous Australians, parliaments and the people. We have to make sure that it is not contentious in any way, that recognition is just understood as being the right thing for Australians to be doing, so that we have a result similar to the one we achieved for the referendum on 27 May 1967.

At that referendum we had 5,700,000 Australians vote yes, which was 91 per cent favourable for the proposal that Indigenous Australians could now have laws made for them in the federal sphere—in this parliament—and it also talked about ensuring that Australian Indigenous people were counted in the census.

That was an overwhelmingly supported referendum. We want to have the same result for this referendum, and that is why it would be a shame, we all agree, if we went to the people too soon, before all of the work has been done. That is why I very strongly support this amendment. Let's extend this time frame—that is why this is called a 'sunset extension bill'—to a third year so that we can properly acknowledge our shared history and the incredible value we place on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their heritage. I would hope that we will acknowledge their ownership of the country before colonisation and the continued ownership of parts of it by Indigenous Australians.

I want to put a little history into this debate, because I think it is always important to know where we have come from and how we have evolved in our thinking about Indigenous Australians. Some people do not understand that we do not in fact at this point in time have a very—how shall I put it?—'commendable' history in relation to recognising the rights of Indigenous Australians in modern Australia.

I want to quote from the statutes of Western Australia 1944, from the Native Citizenship Rights Act. This is where they decided in Western Australia to grant a certificate of citizenship to Aboriginal people on certain conditions—and it could also be withdrawn upon certain conditions. Let me read to you from section 4(1):

… any adult person who is a native within the meaning of the Native Administration Act, 1905-1941, may make application for a Certificate of Citizenship to a resident or stipendiary magistrate or Government Resident in the magisterial district in which he resides.

It goes on to say that by the date of the application the person making the application has to show that:

… he has dissolved tribal and native association except with respect to lineal descendants or native relations of the first degree, …

In other words, you can continue to talk to your mum and dad and perhaps your children, but anyone beyond that degree of relationship should be disassociated from forthwith.

The person may also have served in the Navy, Air Force or Army—at least that acknowledged that more than 1,000 Indigenous Australians were in the First World War, fighting for their country bravely and courageously beside the non-Indigenous Australians. And we are talking about 1944, so they were also at that time again looking to defend Australia. So if you had served in the navy, air force or army you could be entitled to citizenship as long as you received an honourable discharge. You also had to show that you were a proper and fit person to get this certificate.

What did that mean? The act said:

(a) for the two years immediately prior the magistrate shall be satisfied that applicant has adopted the manner and habits of civilised life ;

(b) the full rights of citizenship are desirable for and likely to be conducive to the welfare of the applicant ;

(c) the applicant is able to speak and understand the English language ;

(d) the applicant is not suffering from active leprosy, syphilis, granuloma or yaws ;

(e) the applicant is of industrious habits and is of good behaviour and reputation ; …

It is interesting that we still do not require a lot of our new citizens to be able to speak English but in 1944 the Western Australian Indigenous person had to demonstrate that.

This certificate of citizenship could, of course, be withdrawn in the following way:

Upon complaint of the Commissioner of Native Affairs or any other person, a magistrate may suspend or cancel a Certificate of Citizenship if he is satisfied that the holder-

(a) is not adopting the manner and habits of civilised life; or

(b) has been twice convicted of any offence under the Native Administration Act, 1905-1941, or is of habitual drunkenness; or

(c) has contracted leprosy, syphilis, granuloma or yaws.

I find this extraordinary as we today debate, very carefully, the morality of withdrawing citizenship, from someone who has dual citizenship, on the basis of a terrorist act. And yet in 1944, it would seem given this legislation that we were quite comfortable withdrawing citizenship from an Indigenous Australian on the basis that they had contracted a disease, had been drunken, or had in any other way been seen not to be living a civilised life. I am making this point to demonstrate how far we have evolved in the 70 or so years since Indigenous Australians were not considered to be Australians in any sense of the word.

We have come a very long way—even though the Closing the gap report of last week demonstrates that we still have a huge distance to cover, in terms of the capacity of an Indigenous Australian to lead a life that is in any way comparable in terms of health, employment, safety, freedom from discrimination, or even having similar levels of incarceration to non-Indigenous Australians. We have so far to go. But I want to make the point that it was only in 1944 that we thought it was quite appropriate to require an Aboriginal Australian to deny their Aboriginality in order to get a piece of paper which allowed them to vote or to drink. Another condition was that they no longer associated with their family, unless they were immediate family—mother, father, son or daughter. This Citizenship Act was also promulgated in like-minded states at about the same time. And we had some very famous cases. We had the very sad case of our very famous painter, Albert Namatjira, who was first given citizenship, and then had his citizenship checked, because he chose to share alcohol with some of his relatives at the time.

I am strongly supporting this bill, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition (Sunset Extension) Bill 2015 so that we extend the time for Australians to be educated about the need for the referendum to be passed absolutely unanimously—if that is humanly possible in Australia with a referendum!—and for us to embrace a constitutional amendment which would recognise the unique status of Australia's Indigenous peoples. We must acknowledge our shared history. We must acknowledge the bad parts of our history so that we do not continue to blame the victim, as we often do in Australia today. We have to acknowledge that, for Indigenous Australians, the first 100 years—at least—since 1788 were made desperate by warfare between them and the native police, some frontier settlers and pastoralists. In the case of Indigenous Australians, they were trying to defend their country and their own peoples, and in the case of the pastoralists and the new settlers, they were trying to defend their lives too, and their flocks and their possessions. We have to acknowledge that warfare. We have to acknowledge the fact that Indigenous Australians were pushed off their land to places where they did not belong, or onto country that they did not own themselves, which caused further distress between competing Indigenous nations, which led to more warfare, and more bloodshed. We have to acknowledge the poverty, the degradation, the lack of employment, and the disease, that typifies a lot of that early contact history. At the same time, we have to acknowledge that there were triumphant parts. There were the times, again for about a century, when Australian Aboriginal and Indigenous peoples were indispensable in the white settlement of remote Australia, and in the pastoral industry; they were the stockmen, they were the managers of very remote places; and they were great managers of livestock, husbanding livestock in difficult circumstances. We have to acknowledge the Indigenous women, who were pioneers in every sense with the white Australians at the time in the work they did—domestic work and often also as stockwomen—and who were at the same time surviving and raising their families in extremely difficult conditions.

We have to acknowledge the terrible period when we thought that it was wise to take away children of mixed descent because we thought that their 'white blood' gave them the right—which is how we explained it at the time—to be raised as whites, or because we felt that they would be contaminated and further degraded, discriminated against or neglected if they stayed with their Indigenous mother, who was often living in impoverished and dire circumstances in remote places or even in cities.

We have to acknowledge all of that so that we can understand why today a lot of Torres Strait Islanders and Aboriginal people are drinking at high-risk levels, are using drugs of dependence and are in despair, as evidenced by their rates of suicide, gender based violence and incarceration. If we understand our history, we can then put into greater context why Indigenous Australians today are very often in great distress. I chair a committee inquiring into the high-risk use of alcohol in Indigenous communities. Speaker after speaker conveys to us in evidence the distress of these Indigenous communities, most recently in Cairns just last week.

We have to do better. Part of our need is to recognise Indigenous Australians, their rights, their responsibilities and their unique status in our society as owners of this country before we arrived. Giving another year to make sure that Australians understand that so that the referendum is a resounding success is what this new bill will allow us to do.

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