Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

I first met Malcolm Fraser in 1977 when I went to see him in search of funding for women's refuges in Australia. I was working as a volunteer on the night roster at a refuge here in Canberra. Going to see him on that occasion was a difficult task because, for many activists of my generation, I still harboured a great deal of anger because of the dismissal of the Whitlam government, and his actions to dismantle Medibank had only reinforced my view of him. But he was prepared to see me, to listen and, most importantly, to respond to the needs of women who had been the victims of violence.

This was my introduction to the compassionate man that many Australians came to know. Alongside his role in those tumultuous events of 1975 his compassion will be a lasting memory for many Australians. It was 30 years later before I would personally see him again. By this time I was the minister for indigenous affairs and we were going through the details of the apology to the stolen generations with Lowitja O'Donoghue, in January 2008. He was very kind and engaged. He and Lowitja were the patrons of the Stolen Generations Alliance.

Looking back to the apology, it may seem that it was always going to be a unifying moment for our country, as the vast majority of Australians came together to acknowledge the wrongs of the past. But it had not come easily. Malcolm Fraser had shown great leadership on the need for the apology when many in his party vehemently opposed it. In 2003, in the Great Hall of Parliament House, Malcolm Fraser delivered one of his finest speeches on Australia's journey towards reconciliation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. He said:

Reconciliation requires changes of heart and spirit, as well as social and economic change. It requires symbolic as well as practical action.

In these short sentences Fraser had dispelled the prevailing yet false notion that reconciliation required a choice between practical and symbolic reconciliation. As Prime Minister, Fraser's achievements in Indigenous affairs were impressive. The most significant of these was the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976, which had been drafted by the previous Labor government and enacted by Fraser. Because of this act, land rights were returned to Northern Territory Aboriginal people, a great achievement for our nation.

Fraser had succeeded against strong opposition from the Country Liberal Party in the Northern Territory. He had taken on many in his party to achieve an extraordinary change for Indigenous people. Fraser's work on Indigenous issues continued well into his postparliamentary life. He was of course responsible for establishing the Human Rights Commission and then, in 1997, its successor organisation, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, published the Bringing them home report, an investigation into the practice of forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families. Fraser became a strong advocate for an apology and for those who had been stolen. He was a fierce opponent of those who claimed that either children had not been taken or it had all been for their own good.

In 2000, Fraser delivered the Vincent Lingiari Memorial lecture. In his speech Fraser dispelled the myth that righting past wrongs to Indigenous Australians was somehow not the responsibility of contemporary Australia. He said:

We can’t say it happened beyond the memory of today’s Australians. We cannot say it happened in a past age. These events were continued after we and many other states had accepted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

On Sorry Day that same year he walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge alongside 250,000 Australians, calling on the Howard government to make an apology to the stolen generations. Never one for mincing words, Fraser said:

Australia must not become an international pariah because of one person's blinkered vision.

When Prime Minister Rudd delivered the national apology in this parliament in 2008, Malcolm Fraser sat over here in this chamber with Gough Whitlam and many members of the Stolen Generations as they witnessed the apology that he had campaigned for for more than a decade.

Above all Fraser remained a man with great hopes for Australia's future—hope that our journey towards reconciliation was one within our collective reach. In his memoir, in the chapter 'The difficulties of freedom', Fraser wrote that 'these remaining roadblocks are largely due to a failure to come to terms with history'. Some people accept that the history of white settlement was brutal and bloody. Some people accept that there was dispossession and that generations of children were taken from their families. Others either deny the history or refuse to accept it. Non-Indigenous Australians need to do much more to come to grips with what happened and to understand that it creates obligations. Few Australians have done more to help us come to terms with this history and the obligations that it creates, and for this all Australians owe Malcolm Fraser a deep and lasting gratitude.

We are again at a time when we need to find consensus in Indigenous affairs, particularly on resolving the question of constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Aboriginal people continue to struggle for understanding of their connection to their traditional country. This time we will have to find this consensus without Malcolm Fraser. We will need new champions for the cause of reconciliation. But, like Fraser, I am optimistic that we can get it done and continue on the path towards a more reconciled nation of the type that Malcolm Fraser himself would be proud.

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