Kate Chaney (Curtin, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in response to the 15th anniversary of the apology to the stolen generations and the introduction of the latest Closing the Gap implementation plan. I'm not going to reiterate the statistics about Aboriginal disadvantage, which we all know. Instead I want to share what I've learnt about why symbols like the apology and the voice are important and, indeed, practical.

I started working as Aboriginal affairs manager at Wesfarmers at about the time of the national apology to the stolen generation and the commitment to Closing the Gap. At the time, I don't think I realised how significant it was. I now realise that more than half of the adult Aboriginal population in Western Australia is either stolen generation or descended from the stolen generation. This was not a historical issue; it was a very real and current open wound. I came to the issue with a fairly corporate way of thinking. I saw the apology as a symbol—a good symbol but just a symbol. I now understand why it was much more than that and why symbols are vital.

The commitment to partnership and accountability around Closing the Gap fit better with my corporate framework of measuring your key performance indicators and managing to them. Since then, I've seen the bureaucratic knots we tie ourselves in and the layers of Closing the Gap documents and structures, but committing to quantitative targets meant that we had to accept our failures as well as our modest successes.

As the Aboriginal affairs manager at Wesfarmers Ltd, which was the largest private sector employer in the country, I was on a steep learning curve about Aboriginal history and culture, guided by some wonderfully wise Noongar leaders. Like so many others on that journey, the more I learned about Aboriginal history and culture, the more I realised I didn't know and the more I questioned my own culture. I had a number of moments on my cultural awareness journey that were characterised by the feeling of having the rug pulled out from under me—moments when I realised that all that I confidently believed to be true was a bit shaky, that made me question so many of my own assumptions.

I'm talking about this because I think it's deeply relevant to how we now think of milestones like the apology and the upcoming Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. My experiences helped me understand why this was important to First Nations people and that maybe they were on to something. Here's what I learned: the Noongar people in the south-west of WA recognise six seasons during the year. They see the weather, plants and animals change every year through this cycle: from Makuru, the season of fertility; to Djilba, the season of conception; Kambarang, birth; Birak, childhood; Bunuru, adolescence; Djeran, maturity; and then back to Makuru and fertility again.

After I'd been working with Aboriginal people for a while, I heard from someone—

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