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

CHANEY ( ) ( ): I rise to speak in response to the 15th anniversary of the National 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 remain shocking. Instead, I want to share what I've learned about why investing and building relationships and respect is important and practical and what I think we have to learn from Aboriginal culture in relation to the apology and the Voice.

Just after the apology, I was Manager of Aboriginal Affairs at Wesfarmers. It was a steep learning curve about Aboriginal history and culture, guided by some wonderfully wise Noongar leaders. Like so many others, the more I learned about Aboriginal history and culture, the more I realised I didn't know. I had a number of moments on my cultural awareness journey that were characterised by the feeling of having the rug pulled out from underneath me—moments when I realised that all I confidently believed to be true was a bit shaky. It made me question so many of my own assumptions.

Here's an example. 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 of six seasons: from Makuru, fertility; Djilba, conception; Kambarang, birth; Birak, childhood; Bunuru, adolescence; Djeran, maturity; and back to Makuru, fertility, again.

After I'd been working with Aboriginal people for a while, I heard from someone—and I can't remember who—about how they saw the same cycle applied to everything, even project management and social change. As a former management consultant, I loved a good framework, so I found this fascinating. They said that every project followed the same cycle of life, from fertility to conception, birth, childhood, adolescence and maturity. I remember Noongar people chuckling about how non-Indigenous people always want to rush to the season of birth and start a new project before investing the time in fertility and conception. This, they said, was the reason Wadjela projects often failed. They didn't spend time building the strong foundation of respect and relationships before diving in.

How could something be successful if you haven't done the work to truly listen to and understand each other and work out together what it is you want to achieve? It's as ridiculous as Married at First Sight or, even worse, starting with the birth of a child together. For me, this was so insightful. It made me look very differently at various projects, especially projects aimed at solving problems for Aboriginal people.

Marking 15 years since we acknowledged a difficult part of our history gives us the opportunity to think in longer time frames, not 60,000-year time frames but at least decades. The apology created a fertile space to acknowledge our history and redefine our common direction. Now, the Uluru statement is a generous invitation to invest the time in listening and understanding. It's an acknowledgement that we are in the season of makuru, the season of fertility. We have the ideas, but we're not yet ready to implement them.

There is of course pressure to address the very urgent issue we see around the country, whether in Alice Springs or Banksia Hill Detention Centre. This is urgent and we must try, but we are doing it again: we're jumping to the season of birth, because it's urgent. We can and we must do two things at once. The reality is that we don't know how to fix the shocking issues in many of our communities. We have tried many things and, largely, they have not worked. Governments are not good at relinquishing control, and even if the idea of partnership and shared control is appealing, in reality our systems resist it. It's hard for politicians to admit they don't have the answers.

First Nations people don't necessarily have all of the answers either, but the statistics in our annual Closing the gap report mean that we must face the fact that we are more likely to find the answers by listening. We need to build a strong foundation, a foundation of commitment and openness. We won't get the Voice model exactly right the first time. It might take years to iterate and refine it. Freezing the model in 2023 would be a mistake. We need to retain the flexibility to continue to improve it through our parliament. But if we are committed to the concept of a voice in our Constitution, we are committed to continuing to try, and we are committed to continuing to listen.

We can show that we have learned something from the longest continuing culture in the world. We have learned about long-term thinking and the importance of listening and understanding. This lesson can be a gift from the ancient cultures that are truly Australian. There are so many ways we can apply this lesson to how we think about our world. Without the Voice, I suspect we will be here and another 15 years wondering why all the effort and money we have invested in projects designed in Canberra by politicians and public servants aren't working. Through the Voice, let's invest in building relationships and respect. Let's invest in listening and learning. Let's commit, in our Constitution, to continuing to try to get it right together.

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