Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the Ngunawal and Ngambri peoples as the traditional custodians of this land, as well as the Nyoongah people in the south-west of WA, and pay my respects to their elders past and present. I would also like to reflect on those words, the tireless battle for recognition they represent and the progress Australia has made in giving proper recognition to Indigenous people as the first Australians. Only weeks ago we celebrated the 20th anniversary of a definitive moment in Australian history, the High Court decision in Mabo, the beginning of Australian legal recognition of native title.

Eighty-five-year-old Nyoongah elder Patrick Hume, a resident of Bibra Lake in my electorate, is one of the few surviving elders whose testimony before the Federal Court of Australia assisted in proving Nyoongah native title in the Swan River region, known to the Nyoongah people as the Derbarl Yerrigan. Over a 30-year period, Mr Hume has worked with successive Western Australian premiers and the WA Department of Indigenous Affairs to secure more than 300 Aboriginal heritage sites across WA. Ten years ago he stood before the Federal Court to make his own claim for Nyoongah native title. Through changing governments and government policy, and in the face of intolerance and inequality, Patrick Hume has remained true to his values and beliefs and he has pursued his ideals with unceasing energy, passion and his indomitable strength of conviction.

Mr Hume is one of the founding members of the Aboriginal Medical Service, the Aboriginal Legal Service and the Aboriginal Housing Board. He led the Aboriginal Advancement Council in the 1970s and volunteered in the 1980s and 1990s to drive deceased elders back to their remote communities so that they could be buried in their country. The remembrance, observance and practice of Nyoongah culture has always been at Mr Hume's core, and many WA school children have benefited from the knowledge of Nyoongah traditions he has passed on to them. Patrick Hume has even met the Queen on two occasions.

He has been at the forefront of efforts to prevent the WA state government putting a highway through the middle of one of the last remaining wetlands in the southern metropolitan region—the Beeliar wetlands—a site of immense cultural and spiritual significance to the Nyoongah people as well as enormously important from an environmental standpoint, being home to a number of endangered species and migratory birds. Mr Hume has championed the establishment of the Mandjah Boodjah Aboriginal Corporation's Indigenous housing initiative in my electorate, where senior Aboriginal people from the Fremantle community reside and where young Aboriginal people can come to feel welcome and safe and to receive mentoring from their elders.

The Nyoongah people have lived in WA's south-west for tens of thousands of years and have many culturally significant sites. However, recently the WA Barnett government moved to extinguish native title in south-west WA as a condition of current negotiations with the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council. I want to say in this place how important it is that we stand against the dismantling of native title by the WA government and work to support the legacy that Patrick Hume, Eddie Mabo and many others worked so hard and so long to achieve.