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

I thank and acknowledge the member for Barton for her contribution just then. She and I were together at Garma, along with our leader, Senator Dodson and Senator McCarthy. It was a magnificent opportunity for us to commemorate with his family and so many others the life of a remarkable man—someone whom I have met on a number of occasions.

Today, I again want to acknowledge the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people of this country and speak about a Yankunytjatjara man whom I knew very well—Yami Lester. His family have allowed us to use his name. I went to his funeral yesterday—a state funeral. I want to thank South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill, who was at the funeral, as well as Kyam Maher, one of his ministers. I also want to acknowledge the presence at that funeral of Minister Scullion and my good friend Senator Dodson, who was also a mate of Yami's.

Yami's story is an important story for all of us. He was born at Walkinytjanu Creek, which we visited yesterday, at Wallatina. It is about 470 kilometres south of Alice. Yami, as you may know—many of you might know part of his story, if not all of it—was born in that country to Yankunytjatjara parents. At the age of 12 he experienced what people in that region experienced, and that was the impact of atomic bomb tests at Emu Field. He refers later to the rolling black mist that came across the camp. He grew up as a stockman; he wanted to be a stockman. But these tests had taken place and he was ultimately blinded by them—first one eye and then the other. His life as a stockman, living on his country, was forever finished in terms of that type of work. Of course, the official secrecy act meant that none of us knew about any of this. Later, people said, 'While these things did happen, there was no impact on Aboriginal Australians.' What nonsense that was. Yami became a victim of that testing. He lost his sight, as I said. He was taken to Adelaide for surgery. He could not speak English. He stayed in Adelaide. Ultimately, he was befriended by the church community, and it is there that we learn about this great story. He worked. He became a broomologist. You might wonder what that is. Well, he was working for the Institute for the Blind in North Adelaide making brooms. I think he spent a number of years working in that place. Through the church, he met his first love, Lucy. As a kid—and we heard this story—he was riding his stock horse across the flat to chase this truck, with this young woman sitting in the back of it. That young woman was Lucy, who a blind man later met. They married in 1966 and had three children. They are three wonderful young people: Leroy, Rose and Karina. Their life moved on.

Yami became a very well-educated man. He moved to Alice Springs to work in the community development field for the Uniting Church, with the great Australian Jim Downing, at the Institute for Aboriginal Development. I met him there in 1978 or 1979. I worked with him and we became mates. He was a funny bugger with a self-deprecating humour, making jokes of his blindness. He'd say, 'I'm going to come around and see you' or 'I'll be around to watch TV.' Just magnificent.

In 1960 while he was in Adelaide, the coach of the Norwood footy club, the Redlegs, the pride of the parade in the SANFL, happened to be football's 'hot gospeller', Alan Killigrew. Alan was given that name for his noted team addresses. Alan, a victim of tuberculosis, which affected his spine, became friends with Yami and organised for him to become a member of the Melbourne footy club. Yesterday at the state funeral on the desert flat in the middle of South Australia, with all of these people adorned in a Melbourne footy club scarf—I had to do it—my Geelong heritage shook, but this was for Yami.

But he did so much. His life ballooned. He became a great advocate for Aboriginal Australians. He was a driver behind the Pitjantjatjara Land Rights Act. He was someone who was committed to Aboriginal people, despite his blindness. He had such enormous vision. That vision became shared by so many. He was the cause, in the end, of the Maralinga royal commission. He was the person who advocated in London. Imagine a blind man in London to advance the cause of his people. He became involved in many Aboriginal organisations in and around Alice Springs. He became a driver behind the development of the Nganampa Health Council in South Australia. This was a man who knew no boundaries, despite those limitations which affected him as a result of the stupidity of the country within which he was born, who did not recognise at that point his rights as a traditional Australian. Nevertheless, he fought them. He fought for those rights and he won rights. When I hear people sort of beguiling us with, 'You can't give blackfellas rights,' I think, 'What nonsense.' They are our First Australians. They deserve the recognition we have been so profoundly bad at giving them.

Yami fought with a smile. He made friends with those who might otherwise be his enemies and, by doing that, was able to do a great deal more than others could. He was someone who impacted mightily upon the lives of the Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Ngaanyatjarra people of northern South Australia—communities that I lived in and out of for some years. I am forever grateful for knowing Yami. I was reminded yesterday by a person he came to live with in later life, Bronya Dineen, after he separated from Lucy, how fondly he remembered the pork roasts at our joint—because that is what we used to do. He didn't mind a drink. Many times my office phone would ring, and a voice would say, 'Yami here, I'm ringing to ask you something.' It could be for anything. It could be for a bet on the Melbourne Cup or matters of great importance requiring government action. Sometimes it was just to have a yarn. He was someone for whom I had the greatest respect and admiration. His family are wonderful people.

Yesterday's state funeral in northern South Australia was the first conducted in the Pitjantjatjara language, the Yankunytjatjara language, as a celebration of his life. Paul Kelly was at the funeral to share a song with us, 'Maralinga'. It was uplifting. You could say so much about Yami, but to see the people he brought to his own country—born in that country, died in that country—and what did he die of? End stage renal failure. He had made the choice not to go and live in Alice Springs for renal dialysis, and, ultimately, it took him.

We can do so much more in this place. People think I'm mad, I'm sure, because I don't shut up about this stuff. For as long as I have got a breath to give, I won't shut up. These Australians demand of us the best, and we must do the best for them and with them and understand the priorities that they set are ones we should follow. Vale Yami. Yah! Good one.

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