Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

Last year, I put together a video for Harmony Day and I asked locals from various multicultural backgrounds to deliver a message of peace and unity in their native language. We had representatives from the Chinese, the Greek, the Bangladeshi, the Indian and the Muslim communities, who delivered a message in their native language for Harmony Day. But I wanted the video to begin with the oldest language of our area—the language of the local Aboriginal population at La Perouse, the Bidjigal people. When I made inquiries with the local community about finding someone to begin the video in that local language, I was stunned to learn that there was no-one left in that community that could speak the language. In fact, when many of those now elders were children at the La Perouse primary school they were actively discouraged from speaking their native language by the teachers at the school. They relayed stories to me of talking in their native language at school earning them a rap over the knuckles from the teacher. As a result, that language is now lost to Australia. In the wake of that, I thought to myself, 'What a waste.' Here we have the oldest continuing culture in the world, and a language that passes on and tells the stories of that culture—that history, that connection those people have with the lands and the waters around Kamay, or Botany Bay as it's more commonly known—is lost to generations. That is a symbol of the disrespect that white Australians have shown to Aboriginal Australians over the last 200 years.

There has been a lot of talk in this place and in Australian commentary over the course of the last couple of years about our approach to Aboriginal reconciliation and what we need to do as a nation to close the gap, to reconcile with Aboriginal people and, ultimately, to provide them with a better quality of life and higher living standards. A common theme that we've heard is, 'Do things with us, not to us.' That can be summarised in one word, in my view: respect. The Aboriginal people are only asking for respect, the respect that hasn't been there for the last 200 years. That is evident in the fact that they were not represented under our Constitution as citizens of our country until 1967. We thought we knew what was best for them when we took their babies away from them, despite the fact that parents were capable of raising their own children in a loving family environment as part of a community. We believed that they shouldn't have access to proper education and to places of public importance in our nation—most notably, pubs—where, in the past, we asked people to be segregated. Unfortunately, young Aboriginal men are well over-represented in our jails throughout the country, through their rates of incarceration.

I don't believe that present-day Australia, particularly with this Turnbull government, is adhering to that motto of, 'Do things with us, not to us.' That is evident in the Turnbull government's approach to the Uluru Statement from the Heart from the Aboriginal people. That was their voice. It was their recommendation to the leaders of this nation of that view, 'Do things with us, not to us.' It was their recommendation to ensure that that can occur in Australian politics. It was dismissed out of hand by this Prime Minister. In fact, it was done in a disrespectful way in that it was leaked from cabinet before it was even announced publicly that the government were rejecting those recommendations. It was a blanket dismissal of the wishes and the will of the Aboriginal people. It was disrespect continuing, unfortunately.

Now we've released the ninth Closing the gap report and it makes damning reading, once again. We are only making progress in actually closing the gap with three of the seven goals. And we're not going to close that gap—we are not going to make progress in these identifiable areas that the parliament has assigned as areas of proof of closing the gap—while we continue to show disrespect to Aboriginal people. At the heart of the problem is the fact that we continue to disrespect Aboriginal people in the approach that this government takes to Aboriginal affairs.

That's why, when it comes to life expectancy, there's a huge gap between Aboriginal Australia and white Australia, and why we're not on track to meet the goal of closing the gap on life expectancy by 2031. When it comes to school attendance, there's still a gap and we're not on track. When it comes to halving the gap in teaching reading and numeracy for Indigenous students, we are not on track. And we are not on track when it comes to halving the gap in employment by 2018. Thankfully, we are on track in three of the areas: child mortality, early education and halving the gap in year 12 attainment by 2020.

Bill Shorten has announced, quite properly, that if elected at the next election Labor will add a justice target, where we will work to reduce the shocking rates of incarceration of young Indigenous men. Each year in NAIDOC Week, I visit Long Bay jail and attend a function with Aboriginal inmates. Unfortunately, there are too many of them in Long Bay jail. You see in their eyes the lost hope, the feeling of despair from being away from country and from community and the plight of Aboriginal people over the course of the last 200 years.

For me, it all begins with respect. That gap is not going to halve and we're not going to make progress on Aboriginal affairs until we begin to show respect to Aboriginal people. We haven't done that in the past, and it's time that we started to do that. Thankfully, Bill Shorten has said that, if we are elected, we will introduce this justice target. More importantly, we will offer compensation for the victims of the stolen generations. We'll set up a $10 million healing fund to work with those people, and we'll launch an inquiry into the shocking rates of out-of-home care for Aboriginal children. Importantly, we'll also show respect to the Aboriginal people by working with them on the recommendations of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, rather than dismissing them out of hand, because we believe that respect means actually doing things with Aboriginal people, not doing things to them. That means action, not just hollow words. Labor, led by Bill Shorten, is committed to doing that.

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