Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Skills and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to reflect on the passing of one of Australia's most revered and influential Aboriginal leaders, Dr Lowitja O'Donoghue. Lowitja O'Donoghue was a proud Yankunytjatjara woman of great intellect, great courage and great dignity. She dedicated her life to improving the health and lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and her fearlessness to enact change has left an indelible mark on the pages of Australian history.

From fighting racism to becoming Australia's first Aboriginal nurse, from campaigning for constitutional reform to fully count First Nations Australians in Australia's population to negotiating the development of native title post the Mabo High Court decision while the first chairperson of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, Lowitja O'Donoghue was a formidable woman, whose legacy will continue on.

More than just a leader for the Indigenous community, she was perhaps one of Australia's greatest leaders, with the vision of creating a more united and reconciled Australia.

Through her impressive negotiations, conducted with a fierce grace, she worked across all sides of politics to address Indigenous human rights issues, including health, housing, community development and land rights.

Her life was shaped by the racism she faced and a traumatic childhood separated from her family, community, culture and country.

Born in August 1932, in the north-west of South Australia, Lowitja O'Donoghue was the daughter of an Aboriginal woman, Lily, and an Irish father, Tom O'Donoghue. At two years of age she was taken from her family and brought up by missionaries in a training institution set up for so-called 'half caste' Aboriginal children to be assimilated into white Australia away from 'the sounds of the corroboree', as described by the missionaries.

Her name was changed to Lois, and she was no longer allowed to speak her native language, in which she was fluent, even at that young age. She was not allowed to ask questions about her origins or even about her parents. It wasn't until 33 years later that she was reunited with her mother. Lowitja didn't have a birth certificate, but the term 'half-caste' was applied to her government file—a term that Lowitja found offensive, and she worked to change the language of quantum being used to describe being of Aboriginal descent. As the child of a white father, she was encouraged by the Chief Protector of Aborigines to become exempt, which was a process where you signed a document to renounce your Aboriginality and declare yourself a white person so you were eligible to do things only afforded to white people at the time, including getting married and drinking in pubs. She rejected this advice and instead took the more challenging path. She not only refused to deny her Aboriginal roots but it strengthened her resolve to dedicate her life to improving the lives of our First Nations people.

While she never felt a strong connection to her European heritage, she has said she felt a kinship with the Irish people. On St Patrick's Day in 2016 in this place, I mentioned Lowitja O'Donoghue in the context of the influence of the Irish upon modern Australia. Lowitja herself described the Aboriginal-Irish connection as 'dynamic', remarking that there are many Aboriginal people who have an Irish background. She expressed in her 1994 biography and elsewhere an affinity between the two backgrounds, borne through:

… the combination of the Aboriginal, you know, fight for justice and, you know, what we know of the Irish and their fight.

Another of those First Nations Australians with Irish heritage is, of course, Pat Dodson, the former Labor senator known as the Father of Reconciliation—a great friend and mentor to many. He described Lowitja O'Donoghue as:

… an extraordinary person of great courage and strength. Her leadership in the battle for justice was legendary. Hers was a strong voice, and her intelligent navigation for our rightful place in a resistant society resulted in many of the privileges we enjoy today.

Another great Indigenous leader and advocate for Indigenous Australians' rights to land, Noel Pearson, said:

She was our greatest leader of the modern era, …

…   …   …

… she was full of grace and fortitude. She was the definition of courage and never lapsed in her principles. Her love and loyalty to our people across the country was boundless.

We owed her an unpayable debt for the sacrifices she made while she lived. Her memory will never be forgotten and her legacy will endure.

While Lowitja's life was full of many achievements, too many to list here, I will remember her best for her work with the former prime minister Paul Keating as the lead negotiator on the Native Title Act after the 1992 Mabo decision. As the inaugural chairperson of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, she brought together a group of Aboriginal leaders for an eight-month consultation on the design of the Native Title Act. At that time it was the first and only time the Aboriginal community of Australia was brought into the Commonwealth cabinet room. And Paul Keating, the former prime minister, in his 2001 Lowitja O'Donoghue Oration said:

I like to think that together, she and I were able to lead our respective political forces towards an historic outcome for a race of people dispossessed and decimated by the process of settlement.

Keating described her as:

A leader whose unfailing instinct for enlargement marks her out as unique.

He went on to say:

Without any position of mandated authority from her people, she caused their mobilisation in what was, the first time, that Aboriginal people were brought fully and in an equal way to the centre of national executive power. In the 204-year history of the formerly colonised Australia, this had never happened. Never before had the Commonwealth government of Australia and its Cabinet nor any earlier colonial government laid out a basis of consultation and negotiation offering full participation to the country's indigenous representatives; and certainly not around such a matter as the country's common law where something as significant as native title rights could arise from a collection of laws which had themselves developed from European custom and tradition.

…   …   …

She knew that in the dismal history of indigenous relations with European Australia, this was an illuminated breakout, a comet of light in an otherwise darkened landscape.

Lowitja later turned down Paul Keating's offer of the governor-generalship. Such was her integrity and forthrightness that she told him, 'I'm a republican, and so are you.' I want to acknowledge the impacts and the immeasurable legacy she leaves behind and pass on condolences to her family and the broader First Nations community as they mourn the loss of Aunty Lowitja.

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