Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I want to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land that we and probably anyone in this country we call Australia are on. I want to acknowledge the First Nations members of this parliament: our own mighty Senator Lidia Thorpe; Senators Malarndirri McCarthy, Pat Dodson and Jacqui Lambie; and members of this place Linda Burney and Ken Wyatt, the member for Barton and the member for Hasluck. I want to acknowledge, as we rise to talk about closing the gap, that we're on stolen land. We're on land in this country that we call Australia that became part of this country because of violence and dispossession. This place that we call Australia is founded on a history of violence and dispossession of the First Nations peoples. It's something that we still haven't fully recognised. It's something we still refuse to tell the truth about. The problem is that, until you recognise this, admit it and tell the truth, we are going to keep on committing versions of that same violence and dispossession day after day after day. It will be our First Nations people who will continue to suffer.

This Closing the Gap report is a shameful documentation of this government's failure not just to meet the targets that it has set for itself but to begin to tell the truth about what lies at the heart of this country so that we can then have a proper process of reconciliation and then march forward, together, with a treaty between all of the peoples of this country and our First Nations. This report that we are talking to is a shameful indictment of the government because it comes at a time when about 500 people have died in custody since the royal commission. Five hundred First Nations people have died in custody since the royal commission, and, shamefully, we can't even know the exact number because the government doesn't even report it correctly or in anywhere close to the sad, real time that it happens. This report comes at a time when so many First Nations people are being locked up that the incarcerations target set out in this report, which acknowledges that we are locking up our First Nations people at an unfair and unjust rate, isn't even on track to be met until 2093, so slow is this government moving.

Why does this happen? Well, a big part of the reason is that in this country we still lock up kids as young as 10. Kids as young as 10 who do something wrong should just be brought back in closer to the family and told how to live life right. They shouldn't be locked up in custody and then in jail. But that is what happens in this country. This country says the age of criminal responsibility in many places is as low as 10. I want people to think about the 10-, 11-, 12- and 13-year-olds they know and ask whether any one of them deserves to be in prison, whatever they've done.

We need to fix that. We need to fix the problem, in part, where it starts. That's why we've got to raise the age of criminal responsibility in this country. But there's nothing in this report about that. That is a big part of the reason why only three out of the 17 targets are on track to be met and why, as I said, the incarceration target in closing the gap there won't be met until 2093. What this report shows us is that this government and the other governments around Australia are on track to keep locking up kids as young as 10—and then we wonder why we're not meeting the targets, why we're not closing the gap and why we still have injustice and racism in this country.

This report tells us that there are more First Nations people dying by suicide and more being imprisoned. There are other elements of this report—and I'll talk about those briefly in a moment—but I've focused on this issue of incarceration and imprisonment because it is a truth that we are just unwilling to address in this country. Our First Nations people are crying out, 'Stop locking up our babies,' and it is time for us to listen. We look across at the racial injustices that are happening in the United States and we applaud the Black Lives Matter movement that is happening there. One of the things that that has done is shone a light on what is happening here too. And, just as we lend our wholehearted support to the Black Lives Matter movement around the world, we must lend our support to that movement here in Australia, and the big thing they are crying out for is justice. And the First Nations people of this country are entitled to justice.

There is one thing that is not in this report, and it is a critical component if we are to ever tell the truth and march together, and that is self-determination. Self-determination means giving First Nations people the right, the resources and the power to be in the driver's seat to determine their own destiny. Instead of continuing oppression and injustice, it's enablement and empowerment, and it's not only a recognition of the past injustices but then giving people the tools and the ability and the say and the right and the power to determine their own destinies.

When we are in a position to fully recognise First Nations people, then we will be in a position to talk about what it means to have a treaty, or treaties, in this country. We've seen some steps being taken towards that around other parts of our nation, but we've got to take the lead here in parliament. We've got to take the lead here in parliament, because the idea of a treaty is that it's a treaty between equals and it recognises that the First Nations people of this country were right and justified to fight to defend this country. It means acknowledging that those who died in the frontier wars are entitled to be acknowledged and recognised as heroes because they were defending their country. It means recognising in this place that this nation of ours that we call Australia was originally a rich and diverse land of many, many nations. When we recognise that, when we're prepared to tell the truth, when we're prepared to go through a proper process of truth-telling, reconciliation and healing, then we can move to the next step of having a treaty. So we must start the treaty process yesterday. We have to start the process of truth-telling and treaty, because only then are we going to be able to heal.

There are a lot of things that we've got to address in this country. We've got a climate crisis looming over us that we've just been told we've only got a few years to rein in or we're going to go over the cliff. We've got an inequality crisis in this country, where many people don't go to the dentist because they can't afford it and then end up sick or in hospital for something that could have prevented if only we had dental under Medicare. We've got a situation in this country where you can be working full-time and still be in poverty, while billionaires have increased their wealth faster than anyone else in any other country during the pandemic. We've got a lot of things that we've got to challenge in this country.

The best way we're going to be able to move forward is in partnership and in a treaty with our First Nations peoples, because then we get to write our own history. We can't change what has happened before, but we can acknowledge it, we can tell the truth about it and then we can write our own history, a history that future generations will be proud of. They will be so proud that we, here, took a moment to say, 'Time to tell the truth about the past; time to acknowledge the injustices and march forward together. We need a treaty now.'

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