Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Amendment Bill 2015 streamlines a number of functions of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, or AIATSIS. This bill also amends the appointment process to the AIATSIS Council to ensure a majority of Indigenous people on that council. It is welcome and necessary.

I say quite clearly at the start that Labor support this bill, just as we have supported the work of AIATSIS for the last 50 years—work that keeps safe and celebrates the history and heritage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, the oldest living continuous cultures in the world. We note that AIATSIS Chair Professor Mick Dodson has stated that the institute will work with the minister to implement the changes in the bill.

AIATSIS is one of our nation's indispensable cultural institutions. Its international significance grows and grows. It was established back in 1964 by the Menzies government, with the support of the Labor opposition. The institute began as the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, and Labor's Kim Beazley Sr, a great champion of justice for Indigenous people, spoke in support of the institute during the parliamentary debate in 1964. He remarked:

It is … a terrible reflection … that … 63 years after the formation of the Commonwealth … for the first time we are passing legislation to establish an institute, the function of which will be to record aboriginal languages, ceremonies, customs, nomenclature and everything else associated with them as a people.

Like many on both sides of the chamber, Kim Beazley Sr recognised the pressing need for the institute. He went on to say:

If we do not take steps to preserve the knowledge of the ways of thinking and the languages of the aborigines, our own people in the future will resent this generation …

I agree with him. He served as the parliamentary representative of the institute's counsel from its inception in 1964 until 1972.

Understandably, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people demanded a greater voice and role within the institute. In 1970, those demands were answered with the appointment of the first Indigenous person to the institute's council, Mr Philip Roberts. The election of the Whitlam Labor government marked the beginning of revolutionary change and saw increased funding for the institute. In 1989, the Hawke Labor government revised and expanded the role of the institute and, in the process, renamed it the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, AIATSIS.

Fifty years on, the institute's principal function remains research, publication and collections. AIATSIS undertakes high-quality, culturally sensitive research in areas of anthropology, archaeology, human biology and linguistics. Most of this research takes place in the remotest parts of Australia, where AIATSIS has demonstrated commitment to community engagement and collaboration. AIATSIS enriches our history and tells us about the true past of this country. In 2014-15, the research work of the institute's staff appeared in 51 publications and its staff presented 107 conferences and seminars. Its other work is intertwined with collections: it collects, nurtures and shares more than tens of thousands of years of Indigenous Australian history. It maintains the world's largest collection of material related to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, including their history, culture, knowledge, language, songs and dances. The language collection, with recordings of 250 languages and almost 700 dialects, is listed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register along with other iconic cultural artefacts such as the Gutenberg Bible and the Magna Carta. Former AIATSIS council member, former co-chair of Reconciliation Australia and now co-chair of the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples, Jackie Huggins AM, said:

The AIATSIS collection has touched the lives of every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander person in this country without their even knowing it.

The collection is priceless. It includes over 100 artworks and artefacts, 130,000 books and printed materials, 13,000 manuscripts, 4,000 videos, 830 film titles and 40,000 hours of recorded sound that document Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages, ceremonies, music and oral histories—most of which is unique and unpublished. It also includes the world's most comprehensive photographic record of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, with over 600,000 photographs from the late 1880s to the present—90 per cent being unique materials. Truly, AIATSIS is a national treasure. These things are absolutely irreplaceable sources of knowledge for all the peoples of the world and utilised by local and international researchers and academics. For 50 years, AIATSIS has provided Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with a way to learn about their history, their culture and their families, so much of which has been lost over 200 years of occupation. The importance of AIATSIS hits home when you listen to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people talk about the institute, as I have done on many occasions.

On 14 May this year, I was privileged to attend the launch of the AIATSIS Foundation hosted by Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove at Government House in Canberra. The AIATSIS chair, Professor Mick Dodson, outlined that the foundation will 'develop partnerships and raise funds to support and extend AIATSIS's work in securing and sharing Australia's Indigenous culture and heritage'. That afternoon we heard from Ms Rachel Perkins, the noted Indigenous filmmaker and inaugural president of the AIATSIS Foundation. She has been working extensively in Australian filmmaking for over twenty years. Her award-winning body of work speaks for itself. She directed the biographical film Mabo, she wrote and directed the film Bran Nue Dae and she directed episodes of Redfern Now. Her production company, Blackfella Films, produced the multiple-award-winning documentary series First Australians, which aired on SBS in 2008. Her speech at the launch of the AIATSIS Foundation at Government House on that afternoon in May drove home the vital work of the institute. She talked about a personal project recording the Arrernte women's dreaming stories in the area around Alice Springs. There are about 5,000 Arrernte people living in that region, and she said they realised there are only about ten ladies currently living who hold, in their memory, the dreaming stories in song. They said that, in their culture, they use songs to transmit this knowledge. They said:

Although we recorded many of our songs, we also realised how many songs we had lost. This story is not unique, it is a story that resonates in Indigenous communities across much of Australia.

Without AIATSIS, more of these songs and stories would have been lost, to the significant detriment of all Australians. This is our land, and these are our languages.

AIATSIS is not standing still; it is evolving to meet the expectations and opportunities of the digital age. In 2014-15, the institute migrated nearly 10,000 webpages to its new website, creating more than 30 new topic pages. In that year, it published six online exhibitions in the style of the new website. Its website was viewed more than 1.1 million times in 2014-15, with almost 374,000 unique sessions. I encourage everyone listening to spend some time exploring the fascinating and informative AIATSIS website.

We support this amending legislation. When I was chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Indigenous Affairs, we established an inquiry that looked into the loss of Indigenous language and produced a report called Our land our languages. We had a bipartisan approach, and we recommended in that report, handed down in 2012, that the Commonwealth government consult with AIATSIS to determine an appropriate and sustainable funding model for it to recommence its research grants in the 2013-14 budget. The proposed legislation before the chamber today is important because it would increase the Indigenous capacities and personnel in relation to AIATSIS. It would streamline AIATSIS functions, provide that AIATSIS members will have demonstrated interests in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and heritage rather than just studies, and provide that a minimum of two of the four elected councillors be Indigenous. It would also provide that the five councillors appointed by the minister be appointed for their skills and experience and would result in a majority of Indigenous councillors. It would provide that a councillor could only be elected or appointed for two consecutive terms. It proposes to replace the term 'principal' with 'Chief Executive Officer', remove the research advisory committee from the legislation and update some definitions and terminology relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, persons, studies, culture and heritage. It also incorporates necessary transitional provisions and repeals redundant transitional provisions from the 1989 legislation.

As I said, Labor have always supported AIATSIS. We support these amendments which we believe will strengthen the governance of AIATSIS. We commend the government for introducing this legislation into the chamber. We hope this bill signals an intent from the government to re-engage with the institute and support its work in the future with a different approach to funding. We also hope that it is the start of the government resetting its approach to science, culture, heritage and language and that the government has changed its perspective from what we saw in the 2014 budget. However, given the government's abysmal treatment of publicly funded research in this country, we remain concerned. But we do commend the government and support the legislation before the chamber.

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