Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too acknowledge the Ngunnawal and the Ngambri people, and the Larrakia people, the traditional owners of my electorate. I spoke with a Larrakia elder this morning who is in Parliament House talking to people about the reality of the voice and what it will do—the powerful, practical advantage in having a formalised voice. For any member of the parliament who wants to speak with her and learn from her wisdom and perspective, I'm certainly happy to organise that.

It was also good to catch up with my mate Kevin Rudd while he was here in the building over the last couple of days. I remember well 13 February 2008, when he made a formal apology on behalf of the nation to Australia's Indigenous peoples. The apology was particularly made to the Stolen Generations and their families and communities for laws and policies which had inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss. It was incredibly moving to join members of the Stolen Generations on Monday morning for the 15th anniversary of the National Apology to the Stolen Generations.

Last week our government and the Northern Territory government announced a landmark package for Central Australia to improve community safety, to tackle alcohol-related harm and to provide more opportunities, particularly for young people, in our Red Centre. In addressing the past decade's decline in investment and services, we will invest in a plan for improved community safety and cohesion, job creation, investing in families, improving school attendance and school completion through caring for culture and country, and preventing and addressing the issues caused by fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, or FASD. Hopefully, more honourable members are starting to learn about how damaging that particular disorder is. In addition, the Closing the Gap implementation plan is our plan to work with First Nations organisations and communities, and all levels of government, to make serious progress on closing the gap in life outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Sadly, the latest annual report on closing the gap shows that the gap in many measures is not closing—or at least not fast enough—and on some measures it is, regrettably, going backwards. We see encouraging progress, like more babies being born with a healthy birth weight, more children enrolled in preschool and higher numbers of high school graduations, but we also see a disappointing lack of progress in a number of other areas, including the amount of children in out-of-home care—not with their parents or their kin but in out-of-home care—and the adult and child imprisonment rates, which are, frankly, a blight on our nation.

Our 2023 implementation plan invests almost half a billion dollars towards closing the gap, and includes but is not limited to $150 million over four years to target First Nations water infrastructure through the National Water Grid Fund, providing save and reliable water for remote and regional Indigenous communities. I can tell you that in the Northern Territory there are some communities that do not have safe and reliable water. There's $111 million for a one-year partnership with the Northern Territory government to accelerate the building of new housing in remote areas so that we can address the problem of overcrowding, which in remote communities leads to really bad health and social outcomes. There's almost $12 million over two years for the national strategy for food security in First Nations communities so that we can make essential foods more affordable and more accessible, particularly in that remote community context. And, yes, in the Northern Territory there are communities that do not have a good standard of accessible and affordable daily needs as far as food security goes.

We'll continue funding—$68.6 million over two years—for family violence and prevention legal service providers that deliver that vital legal and nonlegal support to women and children experiencing family, domestic and sexual violence. Almost $22 million over five years will be spent to support families through seven place-based, trauma-aware and culturally responsive healing programs for those impacted by family violence or at risk of engagement with child protection services and being taken into out-of-home care. We want to keep families together. If they can't be with their parents, we want to keep them with kin. We know that's when they'll be their healthiest, happiest and safest.

There's also $38.4 million over four years to boost on country education for First Nations students, and this includes junior rangers and greater access to culturally appropriate learning. Again, we know the kids will develop educationally and spiritually in a more healthy way if they are connected to their culture. There's also $21.6 million to support quality boarding school accommodation for rural and remote students for an additional year.

Closing the gap is a top priority of the Albanese Labor federal government. We will only build a better future for all Australians if we take serious action to address the inequalities that we see in our land. Our measures will be designed and delivered in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians because the best solutions, and this is the foundation of the Voice and why it's so important, come from the people on the ground who know what's needed and feed that advice through their representatives to inform our work in this place.

As we reflect on reconciliation, it's important that we recall that the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which is now six years old, is a culmination of years of discussion, consultation and hard work by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Establishing a Voice is essential in helping us close the gap. It will further enhance the strength of First Nations voices in the development of laws and policies that will affect them. Recognition is the 'what', the Voice is the 'how' that recognition will see practical changes. It's not a funding body, it's not a third chamber of parliament, it won't run programs, it won't have a veto. It's about recognition of our continent, our ancient continent, and the First Nations people, and for that to be recognised in the birth certificate of our nation.

Reconciliation is a national journey that we must all embark on together, but it's also one of individual learning and growth. In the time remaining I will reflect a little bit on my journey of reconciliation, my personal story and what I've learned along the way. My father, John, worked with blind people in a leprosarium in Derby, Western Australia, and that's how we as a family, how us kids growing up first got to understand the magic nature of this longest-surviving culture on Earth.

A little bit after that, I went and stayed with some friends of ours on a mission. It was a little bit inland from Geraldton, in a place that was called the Tardun kids home. I had an experience there, on the ground, with kids my own age. I saw the anger in them about the way that they and their families had been taken off their land. It was a real eye-opener. As a young fella, I felt at the time that I was seen as being responsible somehow, as a non-Indigenous kid, for what happened to them.

It made me step back for a while, until I became a Territorian and started living in the Territory. I saw people like the legendary Northern Territory football player Michael Long, who got up one day and started walking to Canberra to force John Howard to start caring about Indigenous people and the shocking states that they were living in around our nation. He was not necessarily a Labor man; Michael Long just wanted some justice and wanted the suicides to stop. He walked from Melbourne to Canberra, and I joined him on the road and learned from the elders, particularly from the Gunditjmara. I got an understanding of history and the 15-year war that the Gunditjmara fought for their own lands.

It's a humbling thing to learn from them. I learnt more later on in my career, and I'm always happy to talk to honourable members about my experiences and what I learned about First Nations people in our nation.

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