Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Yanggu gulanyin ngalawiri, dhunayi, Ngunawal dhawra. Wanggarralijinyin mariny bulan bugarabang. Today we meet on Ngunnawal land and we acknowledge and pay our respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. We pay respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the chamber today and across Australia, including the Hon. Ken Wyatt, the first Aboriginal man to be elected to the House of Representatives and the first to be appointed a Commonwealth Minister, and Linda Burney, the first Aboriginal woman to be elected to the House of Representatives, and of course we acknowledge, in the Senate, Senators Pat Dodson and Malarndirri McCarthy.

Acknowledgement requires the humility of acceptance of the truth, and acknowledgement is the seed from which hope and healing grow. Today we remember a period of our history when loss and grief almost consumed whole peoples, our first peoples. We stand in awe of the strength of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians who, despite all the injustices, have survived.

Today marks a decade since former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised to Australia's first peoples. Ten years ago the gallery in this place was a sea of proud but heartbroken Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, their eyes telling the story of the trauma they'd lived with for their whole lives. They came to hear the leader of the nation finally acknowledge that their pain, suffering and hurt, and the pain, suffering and hurt of their parents and grandparents, was a deep and irreparable wrong. Hundreds gathered in the Great Hall, and thousands more spilled all the way out onto the lawns in front of the parliament and down Federation Mall. Many watched from afar as Mr Rudd apologised for the laws and policies of successive governments across successive generations, and I reaffirm his apology today.

As I said in this House, when Mr Rudd retired in 2013, that apology to the stolen generation will never be forgotten. It is not just one of those marks in the sand of history to be blown or washed away by time but it is carved into the granite, into the bedrock, of our history.

Most of us will never know—have never known—the heartache of being torn from the arms of your mother, of never knowing your brother and sisters, of being denied the right to have a name and being known only as a number, and, after all that, then having to wait for so long for that simple acknowledgement and apology.

When past governments took children away from their families and denied them their cultures and languages, the policies were brutal and based on ignorance. What Australia failed to understand was that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were proud peoples with an intimate knowledge of these lands, who'd cared for this country for 65,000 years, whose songs and culture date back to time out of mind, who had an intricate knowledge of the seasons and the waters, and who had complex social and kinship structures that guided their lives. We did not see Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and peoples as the gift they are—a gift which should have been honoured but which was cast aside, disparaged and ridiculed.

Today, on the 10th anniversary of the national apology to the stolen generations, I extend my respect, I'm sure on behalf of all honourable members, to all the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who, despite immeasurable pain, have survived. We are grateful that you accepted our apology with such generosity of spirit. But our research tells us there is still much more we can do. On the 20th anniversary of Sorry Day last year, the Healing Foundation provided me with a copy of Bringing Them Home 20 years on: an action plan for healing. The report recognises that the needs of members of the stolen generations are changing and evolving, and their descendants' needs are changing too. The biggest change, of course, is that many are getting older and face new health and social challenges, including the fear of being reinstitutionalised when they go into aged care. It's important we understand those changes better so we can continue to support them. We're supporting, as I noted yesterday, the Healing Foundation to undertake a needs and demography analysis so we can get a clearer picture of what the stolen generations and their descendants require into the future.

The Closing the gap report I presented to parliament yesterday is a practical embodiment of the original apology and its promise for a better future. Great challenges remain. A person's right to shape their own identity and for that identity to be respected is absolutely central to the wellbeing of all people. The national apology recognised that indigeneity and skin colour had been used to control the lives of Indigenous people and diminish their value in society. But, as I said yesterday, we have the chance to write a new chapter of history where indigeneity is embraced, not divided; where diversity of cultures and language embodies strength; where individuals, families, governments and institutions operate in a relationship based on high expectations. Together we can build a relationship based on mutual respect and, in doing so, we'll honour the resilience and the survival of the stolen generations, who wanted nothing more than what was their right—to be cared for by their own families, brought up in their own culture and respected by their nation as equal citizens in their own country.

See this speech in context