Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted to continue my contribution to this important bill which, as I said last week, is only an interim step towards recognition of Australia's Indigenous peoples in the Constitution. Before debate was interrupted, I was indicating to the chamber that, while ultimately it will be the voice of Australian people who give constitutional recognition to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, this bill will help raise awareness more broadly in the community of the issue and will also commence a conversation among us all. It remains the resolve of the government to pursue meaningful change to the Constitution that echoes the hopes and aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The bill provides a mechanism for all Australians to become familiar with the possible wording for a constitutional statement that could be included in a future referendum.

I have seen countless times in our area the positive effect that recognition has on people through, for instance, the many award presentations held in the electorate each year, simply acknowledging the good deeds and efforts of individuals and groups. It provides an enormous sense of satisfaction and empowers them to continue to do their work. Imagine how empowering it would be were we to take this to a higher level, the most paramount level, and that is to have existence recognised within the heart of Australia's constitution. This is the sort of effect that the High Court's Mabo decision had on Indigenous people across the country when the court overturned a long-held legal view that this land had not been inhabited prior to European settlement. Overturning the principle of terra nullius acknowledged for the first time in law, for the first time since Captain Cook landed on these shores, that there were people here long before Europeans. It also validated their sense of being, their sense of belonging to the land, their sacred places and stories, and the struggles of all those who came before them. The Mabo decision itself opened the door for everything that has occurred since regarding Indigenous recognition.

It is absolutely important and appropriate to recognise the landmark speech made by former Prime Minister Paul Keating at Redfern Park in December 1992. There he publicly acknowledged to Indigenous Australians that European settlers were responsible for the enormous difficulties that Aboriginal communities continued to face. I quote Mr Keating directly:

We committed the murders.

We took the children from their mothers.

We practiced discrimination and exclusion.

It was our ignorance and our prejudice …

These were important words and should not be viewed simply in the sense of blame but, rather, recognition of past ills and to enable a situation where we can repair our relations and move the country forward. In a similar way, who can forget the tears of joy and relief displayed when former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd gave the formal apology on behalf the parliament and previous governments for the wrongs that had been inflicted on Indigenous Australians under the previous policy of removing children from their families.

This week marks the fifth anniversary of this significant act of reconciliation, for which Indigenous people in the Chifley electorate continue to be enormously thankful. I hasten to add that the Chifley electorate has one of the largest urban Aboriginal populations in the country, and that many Aboriginal people in our electorate are either members of the stolen generation or their direct descendants. Five years after the apology to the stolen generations, people will again gather in Mount Druitt this week to commemorate this significant national event. Long before 'reconciliation' was a commonplace term in our day-to-day vernacular, members of the community, whom I am proud to represent, started gathering each year in Mount Druitt to celebrate Aboriginal culture and to march together as one for reconciliation. Fifteen years later, the Mount Druitt reconciliation march continues to be an important event in the social justice calendar in the Chifley electorate. This event continues to be well attended and is also recognised as part of the ongoing festivities within the Blacktown City Council area.

At this point, I want to note that these types of events do not occur on their own and that within the context of the discussion that we are having in this place it is important to recognise the central figures who drive the work of the Mount Druitt and Districts Reconciliation Group—in particular, Marguerite Tobin, President; Pat Smith, Secretary; Maureen Berger, Vice President; and Debra Robertson, Treasurer. Their work has helped provide a platform to bring people together across our area, and they should be deeply thanked for this.

I also want to make reference at this point to something else which I was enormously proud to be associated with and which I also think has great relevance to this discussion. Last year, as a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, I was involved in the inquiry into Indigenous languages in Australia. I was very enthusiastically supportive of the establishment of the inquiry for a number of reasons, which I will touch upon shortly. I note that in its report titled Our land our languages, the committee recommended that the government support constitutional changes to include the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages. The two issues of recognition are inextricably linked. The recommendation of constitutional recognition of Indigenous languages is an acknowledgment of the fact that, post Mabo, Australia should no longer be considered a monolingual nation. The committee found that at the time of colonisation there were an estimated 250 Australian Indigenous languages being used and that today we report with great regret that only 18 languages are spoken by significant numbers of people across all age groups.

The committee's report found that Indigenous language is inseparable from culture and a person's capacity to learn, making it a significant barrier to closing the gap on educational performance. As someone who grew up in a household where we learned English as a second language, I can testify to the powerful impact that language has on a sense of identity and a sense of being—and this is particularly so with Indigenous language and the role that it plays in day-to-day existence. I know how important having access to language is. It is a bridge between generations and in forming an important bond with culture. It should not be underestimated.

I cannot stress enough the effort that has been undertaken in the preparation of this report and then to bring those recommendations to life. I can testify with my own eyes and ears—hearing and seeing—what is being done in our area. It is great to see the amount of work that is being undertaken to keep Indigenous languages alive and to teach these languages to young people from within cultures. In particular I note Hebersham Public School and the work that it is doing with its Koori Play and Chat program. This program is designed to teach younger Indigenous Australians the importance of their own language and it does so within the educational context. In the future, how exciting it will be when students from all cultures are able to study and master one or more of our own Indigenous languages. What greater recognition of Indigenous culture could there be?

The simple answer to that is that there is no greater recognition for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people than the single most important document to our nation—the Australian Constitution. As I indicated earlier, the Constitution sets out rules for the conduct of the Commonwealth of Australia. But, importantly, as a document it helps define who we are and what we value. Also within this document, the truest recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders must and should occur.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As honourable members are aware, the opposition supports the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Bill 2012 and warmly supports the long overdue move to provide for the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Australian Constitution. Indeed, the second of the two referendum proposals which were defeated in 1999 was a personal project of the Prime Minister of the time, John Howard—a new preamble to the Constitution. It was designed, in large measure, to achieve this very objective—to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

That preamble proposal was, regrettably, defeated in the referendum, as indeed was the change for which I was leading the campaign—to make Australia a republic and ensure that our head of state was no longer the King or Queen of the United Kingdom but rather an Australian citizen chosen by Australians. It is worth noting that the preamble—and this is a cautionary observation—had absolutely unanimous political support. I am not aware of any member of the House of Representatives, the Senate or any political party who opposed the preamble. Notwithstanding that, the preamble achieved fewer votes than the republic proposal. This is a very important point about the practicality of this change to which I will return.

Our Constitution was not a document establishing an independent country. Australia was not an independent country in 1901. It was constituted as a self-governing dominion within the British Empire but subordinate to the imperial government. The Governor-General was not an Australian head of state. The Governor-General was not chosen by Australians or appointed on the recommendation of the Australian government. The Governor-General was an imperial viceroy and indeed was the effective representative of the imperial government in Australia right up until the 1930s—1933, I believe—when there was, for the first time, a British high commissioner appointed to Australia.

So it is important, when you read the Australian Constitution and see references to the Queen—which are defined in the Constitution Act as being references to 'Her Majesty Queen Victoria and her heirs and successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom'—that does not, in 1901 terms, mean the Queen as she is today, acting on the advice of the state government; it means the Queen acting on the advice of her imperial ministers and the imperial government. The Constitution is filled with provisions which speak to this subordination of Australia. A very good example—this is one of a number, but I will just recite one—is section 59, which states that the Queen may annul any Australian law within one year of it being enacted. Indeed, under other provisions, the Queen has the ability to withhold consent to any law which had been reserved for her consent by the Governor-General.

So there was a whole scheme. If the Governor-General, the representative of the imperial government, felt there were an Australian law that was out of place, he could refer it back to Whitehall where the Queen or King, acting on the advice of the imperial government, could then knock it back. If, by some mischance, the Governor-General approved a bill and it became law—became an act—the Queen nonetheless could annul it.

That of course raises the interesting constitutional question of what would happen if an incoming government in the 21st century were to advise Her Majesty the Queen that she should annul certain laws passed by the previous government within the previous 12 months. It is an interesting question as to whether that dead letter could rise, vampire-like, from the grave and bedevil all the constitutional lawyers and politicians.

But my point is the Constitution was a document written in and of its own times. It has evolved mightily. It has evolved not very much by the method that the founders imagined, by formal amendment, because it has been so difficult to amend the Constitution. Indeed, of 44 proposals to amend the Constitution, only eight have been successful. The last one which was even remotely controversial that was successful was in 1946. The Aboriginal rights referendum in the 1960s, an initiative of the Holt government, was unanimously supported. And the other referendum changes, at least in my lifetime, that have been successful have been essentially technical ones. How the Constitution has evolved has been largely through Constitutional or political evolution. There were the Statute of Westminster and the Australia acts, which had the result that without changing a line in the Constitution references to the Queen, meaning the Queen acting on the advice of the imperial government, came to mean the Queen acting on the advice of the Australian government. And then you have all of the changes effected by the justices of the High Court as they interpreted the Constitution.

But we have in many respects, as George Winterton once said, in Constitutional terms a frozen continent. We have been unable to change our Constitution in any controversial way. Many people have said that you need bipartisan support to change the Constitution. It is certainly very hard to change it without it, but it is absolutely not enough. The preamble is a very good example of that, a very good demonstration of the force of what I am saying.

In order to successfully change the Constitution you need to have overwhelming public support, a real sense of momentum, the strongest possible support, and very little opposition—somewhere between very little and no opposition. The reason for that, in my judgement—and I acknowledge that it was the Chief Justice Murray Gleeson who drew this to my attention many years ago—is that we have compulsory voting in Australia. So people who are not interested in the issue, not because they are foolish or irresponsible but simply because they are not interested in the issue—people who have chosen not to pay attention to it, who have not read all the literature and have not watched the debates, and are then, as we are in Australia, dragged along by force of law to the polling booth and presented with a proposition—are invariably much more likely to vote no than yes. If you don't know, you are likely to vote no. Indeed, at every referendum which has been contentious the forces against change have said quite openly, 'If you don't know, vote no.' Obviously the less you know about it the more likely you are to be open to scare campaigns and the like. They are not unknown in political circles, so honourable members I think will acknowledge.

So the big challenge we face with this project is not that everyone in this building is not united in their support for having a Constitution that more properly speaks to the Australia of today: the Australia that does not treat Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders as it did in 1901, as not simply second-class citizens but effectively non-persons, noncitizens, not even to be counted, not to vote, as though they had just been airbrushed out of history. That was pretty much where it was in 1901, to our great shame. But all of that has changed. How do we make this document speak to the civilised, just, fair Australia of 2013? How do we get it passed?

Some people would say, 'Oh well, just give it a go. Work up a referendum proposal and see how you go.' The consequences, to my mind, of a referendum proposal on this topic being defeated would be very serious. It would be seen as a national rejection of reconciliation. It would do extraordinary damage to Australia in terms of our own perception of ourselves and indeed to the world's perception of us. So to have a referendum on this topic is a momentous roll of the dice. I think Australia would have been better advised, obviously, to have approved the republic proposal in 1999. I imagine there are many people in the world who still imagine that Australia is in some respects not fully independent because the Queen of the United Kingdom is our head of state, notwithstanding that we are of course as thoroughly an independent country—in fact in some respects more independent—as the United Kingdom. So perceptions matter. But with this question, because it touches on such a sensitive issue of race, the stakes are much higher.

So I am very pleased to see that the bill provides that the minister shall within 12 months of this bill being enacted take soundings, and report on the feasibility of a change being achieved. It is something that is going to have to be undertaken with great care and with great responsibility. There is a tendency in some sections of the media and in some sections of the community to run very hysterical scare campaigns on a range of issues. We are all familiar with those. This is a proposal that is very potentially vulnerable to that. You can well imagine people saying, 'Oh, if we were to make these changes, Aboriginals will be able to claim our backyard, claim our house.' You can imagine all the scare campaigns that could be run. They will have to be resisted with great force, and care. This is going to be a test of our maturity as a nation. Are we able to tell the truth about ourselves? We no longer regard Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as second-class citizens or noncitizens. There may be some people who do, but there is no serious constituency. There is no accounting for a handful of people. But overwhelmingly the vast majority—that is 99.999 per cent—of Australians share the same aspirations as are in this bill. But it is so easy to run a scare campaign.

Of course, you have to remember that in any referendum you have to have a specific proposal. You cannot just have a vote on recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, just like you cannot have a vote on whether Australia should be a republic. You have to have some specific words. It is always possible for people to say, 'Oh well, we agree with the general objective but we object to these words.' They try to clothe their opposition in a technical objection. This bill, which some people have said is pretty innocuous, is much more potent than most of its readers imagine. It is in many respects a challenge to all of us, to all Australians: are we mature enough, are we grown up enough, are we confident enough to say we are not going to play petty politics, scare campaign politics, frightening people politics? Are we going to face up to the facts and maturely and soberly find a set of words that achieve the recognition that we should all support, but does so in a way that it can be carried? This is a great project that we are looking at today and we should all strive very hard to ensure that it is completed successfully.

Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise with some hope and sense of anxiety, I expect. That was very well articulated by the member for Wentworth, because this Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Bill 2012 is indeed adult reading for an adult nation, and we need to take the necessary precautions to ensure that all Australians come with us on the journey as we move towards this appropriate recognition of the reality of our country and history.

I am proud to be a member of the party that removed the final vestiges of the White Australia policy. I am proud to be a member of the party that handed the first tracts of land back to traditional owners and I am proud to be a member of the party that apologised to the stolen generations. I am proud to stand here in this place as part of a Labor government that continues to make important strides forward in the official recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in our Constitution.

While we should be proud of these strides we made as a government and nation it is also important to recognise that there have been times we should be ashamed of: times that we have gone against our great professed Australian belief in egalitarianism, times in our national history that reveal us as a people failing to meet that sense of our best selves, times in our history where we have had a sense of what we should strive for to ensure we all move forward together and times when, through lack of generosity or fear, the historical record reveals us as far less than the best Australians we could be. So let this time, our time, not be one of those shameful times.

In order to advance Australia toward fairness we, the Gillard government, are introducing this very important bill to the House. On our journey toward community understanding of the substance of a referendum and a confidence that such a referendum will successfully achieve a positive outcome for the entire population—the first Australians and those of us who arrived a bit later on boats and planes—this bill is both an instrument that enables that conversation to occur and a record of our journey toward that day of constitutional recognition.

We find ourselves here, in this House of Representatives, with this Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Bill before us. It is a bill that will establish an act of recognition acknowledging the unique and special place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their descendants as the first people of our nation. It will serve as a stepping stone to holding a successful referendum that will change the Australian Constitution to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This should be a bipartisan goal, and I am very heartened by the comments of my fellow parliamentarians in this debate. This should be a goal that brings all Australians together, not one that divides us. This should be a goal that we can be proud of, not one tarnished by political gains.

As part of our commitment to recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Australian constitution, this government established an expert panel to lead a discussion with the communities to move this issue forward and to bring it to public consciousness. The expert panel consulted widely, and we in this place should be very proud of the high level of community engagement that was achieved during this process. When the report was handed to parliament in January last year we had a comprehensive set of proposals that would guide our government and future governments toward the effort of recognition.

We have already invested $10 million to help build public awareness and community support for change. In my role as the member for Robertson on the very beautiful Central Coast—Darkinjung and Guringai country—I meet wonderful, active citizens who deeply understand what we are seeking to achieve here. I commend a particular group from my electorate known as Friends of Mingaletta, formerly called Central Coast Citizens for Constitutional Change, and I acknowledge and put on the record today my regard for their work and advocacy in bringing more attention to this issue in the seat of Robertson. The Friends of Mingaletta have already held a number of community meetings, and they have brought together community leaders to enlist their support in promoting and publicising the need for constitutional change and engaging the wider community in that debate. It is a task that has presented quite a challenge and they have certainly risen to that challenge. They know that for this historic and necessary change to come about we have to pull together—we have to come together as a country. And, as the member for Wentworth indicated, there are those whose interest, perhaps, in making money above making a country might interrupt this journey in some way. We need to be very careful to engage our media in enabling an historic, forward-looking campaign to achieve the outcomes that this legislation sets in train.

We have to talk about this issue with colleagues; we have to talk about this issue in schools; we have to talk about this issue through social media and, importantly, we have speak about it in the parliament. Indeed, as parliamentarians we are called to lead discussions in our own communities in very positive ways about the issues that are at hand and being considered through this bill. We have to drive the conversation. We have to ensure that as every week and month passes more non-Indigenous Australians hear about this proposition—that more non-Indigenous Australians say 'yes' to recognition; that more non-Indigenous Australians say yes to closing the gap. Passing this act will continue that momentum for change.

Again, referring to the region in which I live—the seat of Robertson—I am privileged to have a very active and growing local Aboriginal community, ably represented by Sean Gordon, CEO of the local Darkinjung Aboriginal Land Council. I asked him to bring together some of his own thoughts on what this legislation will mean for the local Aboriginal population that he leads at this moment, along with other great leaders in our local Aboriginal community, and I would very much like to read those comments into the record now:

Darkinjung local Aboriginal council is located on the Central Coast of New South Wales representing 9,000 Aboriginal people on the Central Coast and is the fastest-growing Aboriginal community in Australia based on the 2011 census data. Our experience is similar to that of our remote communities although not to the same severity. What is clear is that Aboriginal people living within urban settings are more likely to be disconnected from country, language and identity due to colonisation and European settlement. The Act of Recognition bill is an important critical step towards Constitutional recognition. This bill provides an opportunity to introduce as an interim measure the concept of recognising Aboriginal people as the first people of this country. The bill is a step in the right direction as it establishes foundation to build the necessary support structures to gain bipartisan agreement within parliament; however, more importantly, the bill allows the Australian community, both black and white, to better understand the importance of recognising aboriginal people in the Constitution. The immediate impact of the Act of Recognition Bill, if recognised, supported and passed by parliament demonstrates that there is a genuine commitment to create a real and lasting change between black and white Australia and demonstrates a sign of good faith that governments care and acknowledge our history. The Act of Recognition bill should not be seen as the solution to address the existing problems between black and white Australians nor should it be seen as the solution to fixing communities. The bill should first and foremost be seen as the first step in a true recognition and a genuine reconciliation. This bill, if passed, will provide our future generations—our next generation of leaders—the opportunity to be proud of our history and proud of who we are as Australians. The bill will hopefully generate and sustain a new generation of leadership amongst Aboriginal people and communities and allow future leaders to concentrate on remedies and solutions to our communities without the burden of recognition or the lack thereof. Finally, if the Act of Recognition bill is passed, it will lay the foundation that is necessary to achieve constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians and demonstrate what we all know and love: that Australia truly is a great country.

Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, I want to thank Sean Gordon for those words and all the representatives on the land council for their contribution to our life—our cultural life and our physical life on the Central Coast. I have been taught to look with new eyes many times by my Aboriginal brothers and sisters, and I am sure that you have had similar experiences, as we are gifted with opportunities to travel around this great wide brown land.

This legislation makes the clear statement of recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first inhabitants of Australia. It acknowledges the unique history, culture and connection to traditional lands and waters. It also commits to closing the gap in life outcomes between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and other Australians and acknowledges that constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is an important part of that process.

This bill should not be a substitute for full recognition but, rather, it should encourage all Australians to become familiar with the need for and the importance of a constitutional change. Sunset provisions in the act will mean that a future parliament will reassess how to move forward with the change and will not allow this legislative instrument to become entrenched at the expense of a referendum. The apology did not bring a full and equal opportunity for Indigenous Australians and, sadly, nor will this referendum, even if it proceeds to a successful conclusion from the perspective we have been discussing here today. Nonetheless both are very important steps in bringing closer that goal and bringing it to reality.

As the Prime Minister's words echoed just the other day, there is much more to do to close the gap, and this bill is, in essence, part of the journey towards closing that gap. I do recall, as a student, accessing a book in the library one Friday afternoon. It was one of those Friday afternoons when perhaps I was avoiding a more onerous task, but I was browsing the shelves and pulled off a book and opened it up. Sometimes in our lives the pages that appear before us are very powerful. The story that was recounted on those pages was of a different interaction that might have occurred when the British arrived here in this country. I read several pages of an interaction in which the white arrivals spoke to the Aboriginal people and marvelled at the richness of their understanding of country, marvelled at the uniqueness of their language, marvelled at the sustainability of the way in which they lived and marvelled at the complex multikinship structures, and I often wonder what a different country we might be if that fantasy had been a reality. The moment for proper engagement and acknowledgement of the richness of Aboriginal culture passed at that time. It is important that at this time, while it is our duty and we are on watch, we make every endeavour possible to ensure that we reach out across the nation, that we engage in sound enabling education that draws us together with an acknowledgement of our common humanity and draws us to a much better and long overdue recognition of the place of the first peoples of this nation. I commend the bill to the House.

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Health Services and Indigenous Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Indeed the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Bill 2012 allows this nation more time to debate the issue of constitutional recognition, to build consensus and to work on increased awareness right across this great country. The debate, I think, has had two important contributions made by the previous speakers. On our side, from the member for Wentworth, there was a very, very clear elucidation of just how complex a referendum change can be, and the previous speaker referred to 'an adult conversation for an adult nation'. It is a theme that I would like to pick up, because the one component of that discussion that has not yet been added to this debate in this parliament is the conversation within Aboriginal Australia about their role in succeeding in this very, very important course of events.

I would like to focus a lot of my speech on a 2009 quarterly essay by Noel Pearson, not because I do not believe that it is, for the very simple and self-evident case, a very important piece of work that will be remembered as really expanding on the role of Indigenous Australia in its own journey towards constitutional recognition but because large elements of this quarterly essay have yet to find their way into Hansard. I believe that important parts of this debate on this day will be looked back on, and we will see the important role that this piece has played in this journey.

Of course Pearson, like many people, is inspired by the readings of others. In this quarterly essay, he focuses on Jonathan Lear's Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, a work in 2006, where Lear asks the important question: what would it be for such radical hope to be justified for Aboriginal Australia? Those who hold, harbour and project such hope must be serious in order to succeed. Pearson makes the very important point that determination alone is not enough, that it is necessary but not sufficient, that we will need more than that. When you are struggling against all odds, determination is no guarantee of success. He makes the very important observation that discipline is just as important. The 'great vulnerability' that he observes in Aboriginal people has been that the institutions of their culture mandated a seriousness that, met long ago, fell apart and has really struggled to restitute itself. It has been inadequately replaced or inadequately rejuvenated. In the midst of the ruins of the old world and facing the mutations of the new, Aboriginal Australia is seeking an accommodation of those things that make Aboriginal culture something of a serious people.

Pearson postulates that all pre-modern peoples face this very challenge, that they carry within their culture 'some institutional essence of what made and maintained them as peoples', but at the same time they are facing modern people—to use that vernacular—who are secular and unanchored. Modern people come to feel a double-edged sword, because modern people in many ways are free of that traditional orthodoxy. That includes the ability that we have to lose our own identity as modern people and to also succumb to and assimilate easily into a dominant culture, which is not the characteristic of pre-modern people. That is a fascinating observation by Pearson. Those who resist assimilation really have no protection against its inexorable advance, so Pearson asks this very question: what will it take to seriously engage that challenge ahead? Obviously, he makes his case that education is something that can, in a parallel world, be pursued with other elements like constitutional recognition. If I am reading his quarterly essay correctly, he says, 'Never make constitutional recognition something upon which we become utterly reliant but let it be something that we engage in, in parallel.'

Pearson makes two observations about what it takes to be a very, very serious people. The first of those is to live in hard places—the very self-evident observation that, the harder the place, the more serious must be the people. Human societies occupy some of the hardest and most inhospitable and economically irrational corners of the world. They are places on Earth that require serious people to sustain them as homes, and strong rationales are needed to maintain that hearth in hard places. The second element is when people are striving to maintain and transmit to future generations their pre-modern culture in a language of a modern and global world. The more esoteric and the less economically rational that these cultures may be deemed and that languages are to the imperatives of the modern global world, the more serious a challenge these people will face and the more serious they will have to be in order to retain their culture and language.

I think he very, very simply elucidates that the challenge facing elements of traditional and often remote Aboriginal Australia is even more than we can understand as modern people, to use his expression. His notion of seriousness is about orthodoxy—a 'serious person' in the sense that we are concerned with an orthodox person. Pearson makes the interesting observation that one of the great challenges to the traditional life has been alcohol. He notes that in a range of orthodox cultures around the world alcohol is anathema but that that is not the case in traditional Aboriginal Australia where they have faced a range of European vices that are unprecedented and where, he notes, 'Aboriginal Law did not evolve to proscribe these vices according to comparable principles of precedent'—principles that you might find in other cultures. The whole point that he makes about orthodoxy is that in many of the cultures—but not in Aboriginal Australia—elements like alcohol, gambling and illicit drugs have become anathema but that that has not yet occurred in many elements of traditional Australia which have survived to the present but remain 'fatally compromised by the assumption that the Law which underpins this High Culture does not have anything to say about the European vices'.

This is an observation that I was privileged enough to be part of in 1994, when petrol sniffing first arrived at the Central Desert community of Lajamanu in the mid-nineties. These were the first images that senior Aboriginal people on the traditional council had of their grandchildren: with half-cans of Coke tied around their noses and filled with petrol. They called a community meeting in Lajamanu in the first few weeks that I was there. I had no language to understand the discussion, but in their Warlpiri—their emotional, heartfelt Warlpiri—they had no words to describe these very vices, so they simply borrowed from the English. The only parts that I could understand of the entire communication at this community meeting were the English words for the vices for which they had no traditional response. And so what really started these contradictions that we see between a traditional strong culture based on kinship and the almost impotent powerlessness of dealing with external threats is something that Pearson challenges his own people with. He challenges them to have that conversation and to walk in both worlds, where there is both a traditional and a mainstream response to those challenges.

This brings me to the fifth Closing the gap report, where, in a presentation from the Prime Minister that was just touching on some levels of early data about which we can all be optimistic, she then switched back to very much a focus on the banned drinkers registers, on Alice Springs and on disputes between jurisdictions—something which I think belittled that report. I think we were really there for a distillation of the evidence, to be hopeful for where there is promise and to be rightfully concerned where there is not progress. But, in the end, quoted in that very important—and landmark—fifth anniversary speech was data provided by the then Labor minister from the Northern Territory and released prior to the Northern Territory election which compared the impact of the Banned Drinkers Register to its impact the previous year.

What was not known to anyone—not to those listening to that speech nor even to the Prime Minister who read it out—was that the data attributed to the use of the 'Enough is Enough' Banned Drinkers Register in Alice Springs had actually had lifted out of it all of the alcohol-related antisocial behaviour reports attributed to domestic violence. These reports were not included after the Banned Drinkers Register came into effect, but they of course had all been included prior to the Banned Drinkers Register. This is a comparison of apples and oranges, and a false attribution of the impact of the Banned Drinkers Register when, on any fair and balanced assessment of the data in the Northern Territory, the Banned Drinkers Register had very little impact at all on dysfunctional behaviour or antisocial behaviour in Alice Springs. But that is not what has been carved into stone in the fifth Closing the gap report. That is genuinely unfortunate.

To emerge from these challenges that are fundamentally destructive of any culture, be it traditional or otherwise, the challenge for Aboriginal Australia will be to incorporate into their own belief systems having one foot in mainstream legal systems, and of course to continue also the culture of their people that have for millennia dealt with an enormous number of challenges but are yet to deal with some of the Western vices that I have outlined.

The late Maria Lane, a South Australian Indigenous academic who was mentioned in that quarterly essay, also made an important, though unpublished, contribution which Pearson picks up in his essay. In that paper, Lane observes that, effectively, we have seen a division—which Marcia Langton in her Boyer Lectures this year picked up on again through a slightly different prism. Lane refers to: 'A Welfare-Embedded'—Aboriginal—'Population which is risk- and work-averse, and benefits-, wealth- and security-oriented', and to the other leaf of the dichotomy, 'An Open-Society Population which is opportunity-, effort- and outcome-oriented'. She described this division very early, long before the Boyer Lectures of this year where Marcia Langton referred to a north and a south: a north economically engaging in the mining opportunities of remote Australia, and then very much a more eastern seaboard, urban Aboriginal debate that is predominantly focused on the rights-based debate. She makes the obvious point: 'Why can't we have both?' or 'Should we even be learning from the activities of the north and making sure that we don't become preoccupied with the former?'

Interestingly though, it was Lane who first described this. She talks about the origins of the open society population being found in the forties and the fifties when Indigenous people first started leaving the settlements to move to urban areas and often picked up very menial and basic work. Their children grew up within that ethos. Secondly, she talks about a number of the settlements where people either chose not to, or were unable to, move from remote Australia, predominantly because the welfare system trapped them there on a pedestal—to move from those communities was, effectively, to walk away from a lot of the welfare supports that one relies on in a community. It is interesting that this has been picked up a long time ago and is still informing debate today.

I think the most important thing that Lane talked about was that this open society population has developed almost independently of many of our Indigenous-specific educational interventions. It occurred simply by movement to opportunity, and that is why it is very important to make sure that we never prohibit, or never make it difficult through government policy, for Aboriginal Australians to move to where opportunities are. We should never say to them, 'Well, you'll lose your publicly funded housing'. We should never say to them, 'If you move to take a job, there go your entitlements'. We have to find a way to transition into grasping opportunities, because through capability of course comes opportunity.

Lane scathingly characterised a lot of the programs as being preoccupied with questions of relevance, cultural sensitivity, language and racist theories such as learning styles, theory-appropriate curriculum, role of elders, parents or community, self-esteem, cooperativeness, need for outdoor activity, focus on sport, love of art and all those Aboriginal exceptionalism arguments, which failed to identify that, at the heart of it, all Australians are just wanting the same thing for their children. As a result of the irrelevance of many of these specific policies, Pearson argues that there will be a predicted shift away from this exceptionalism, and back towards a focus that every opportunity that Australia offers should be available to all Australians.

In that ideal, we are now seeing break-outs right across the country, not just in Cape York. Great work is being done in the Kimberley and great work is being done in parts of outer metropolitan urban Indigenous programming as well—not to mention in Queensland the great work being done by QAIHC and the establishment of a range of Aboriginal-controlled medical centres that are working in this area to run on a mainstream model but deliver Indigenous-tailored and Indigenous-centred and controlled care.

In Cape York there is of course the focus on education. They are initiating this debate that says, 'We can walk in both worlds and enjoy the best of both, and that we can realise that by starting with the children.' Chris Sarra, Noel Pearson and a range of others around the country are working on that.

I have explicitly focused on this, because I think the most important thing of all is not to have a mostly non-Indigenous discussion about our Constitution. We also need to have a discussion with Indigenous Australia about the shape of the next Indigenous studying, training and working population. At the moment we have a great dissonance. We have a falling out of educational opportunities for a whole host of reasons, and an expungement of Indigenous language out of a range of state educational curricula. We have children falling out of the system the minute they drop out of school, and we have no community-wide system to ensure that working-age cohorts all get an opportunity. And ultimately, we have not yet developed a mature welfare system that is prepared to support not just an Aboriginal Australian but any Australian who is willing to move further than the 90-minute Centrelink rule to take up an opportunity. Only when our welfare system can mature to that point can we absolutely grasp the opportunity that every Australian family wants, be they Indigenous or otherwise.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too take this opportunity to speak to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Bill 2012. This legislation follows the report titled Recognising. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Constitution, which was presented about a year ago. I note that the member for Page, who was a member of the expert panel that put together that report, is in the chamber. I say to her on behalf of all of her colleagues that it is, indeed, an excellent report. I have read through it and I believe it sums up the situation of Indigenous people of this country very well.

When I think about Australia's identity and what distinguishes Australia from other nations, the first thing that comes to my mind is the Australian Indigenous people—the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of this country: people whose attachment to this land dates back tens of thousands of years; people with a fascinating and, indeed, unique culture. Since 1788, the place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Australian story has been controversial and at times divisive. Since colonisation, Australia does not have a proud history in its treatment of the Indigenous people. It is a history littered with government policy and decisions based on prejudice and ignorance. One only has to look at the speeches of Prime Ministers Edmund Barton and Alfred Deakin to understand the racist thinking of the time. Nor was the racism directly and solely meant for the Indigenous people of this land. In fact, I suspect that most of it was intended towards other people. Policies which in hindsight have been discriminative, racist and heartless arose as a result of thoughts in that era.

In recent decades, however, there has been considerable effort to recognise the rights and equality of Indigenous people in Australia. The 1967 referendum, land rights, Mabo and Indigenous political representation have all been commendable examples of changing attitudes throughout this country, yet many other efforts have had only limited success when assessed against the often substantial resources committed. The issue of Indigenous recognition in the Australian Constitution is a prime example of that. Few people expressly opposed the proposition, yet following through with constitutional recognition has proved incredibly difficult. I heard the speech by the member for Wentworth and he made that very point. He quite rightly also made the point that not only has it proven to be very difficult in the past but also it is likely to be very difficult in the future. That may be partly explained by the broader issue about the difficulty of amending the Australian Constitution. Only eight propositions out of 44 put to the Australian people have been successful. I suspect, however, that it has more been about a lack of commitment by politicians at all levels across Australia. The rhetoric and the platitudes have not always been matched by the necessary commitment and effort required, in a similar way to the lack of commitment that we are seeing on the question of local government recognition.

Indigenous Australians are understandably cautious about the latest proposal. Recognition of Australia's Indigenous people in Australia's Constitution will be more than just a symbolic or patronising gesture. The Australian Constitution sits as the foundation document of Australia's legal framework. It provides a framework for Australian laws and the responsibilities of federal and state governments. It is the founding document of our nation. The absence of any recognition of Indigenous people in the Australian Constitution is a denial of the truth about the origins and history of Australia and perpetuates an injustice that may have been accepted in 1901 but it has no place in Australia today.

Indigenous recognition in the Australian Constitution will recognise the rightful place of Indigenous people in the Australian story, but it will do much more than that. Constitutional recognition, reconciliation and Closing the Gap all intersect. Reconciliation will never be complete without truthful recognition of Indigenous people in Australia's history and its future. Importantly, every act of reconciliation will break down barriers to Closing the Gap strategies. Acknowledging injustice and grievances can be a powerful step in the reconciliation process.

That is why former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's national apology was so important in unifying Australia. The Prime Minister's Closing the Gap statement on Wednesday, 6 February, only last week, highlighted progress made in overcoming Indigenous disadvantage and hardship. The statement also reaffirms the considerable disadvantage that continues to exist throughout Indigenous communities—the kind of disadvantage that led to the Northern Territory intervention policy. I believe that the Northern Territory intervention policy is well intentioned, but it will be some time before a proper evaluation of it can be made. My expectation is that there will be some initial benefits, and those who support the policy will point to those benefits as evidence that the policy is working. There are concerns, however, that over time there will be ways found to circumvent the policy, and just as prohibition did not stop the consumption of liquor in the US, the intervention may result in corruption and illegal activity in order to get around it.

I am also told that intervention is causing considerable resentment amongst many of the Indigenous people. Addressing core problems through education, awareness and inclusion would very likely have much better long-term benefits than protectionist laws which attempt to control behaviour. Whilst disadvantage continues, many of Australia's Indigenous people will continue to feel resentment, continue to feel discriminated against and continue to focus on past injustices. So Closing the Gap will heal wounds and enable reconciliation, and conversely reconciliation will help close the gap. Both will be enhanced by constitutional recognition of Australia's Indigenous people. This legislation, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Bill 2012, is an important step in that process. It follows the work of the expert panel that I referred to in my opening remarks. Cognisant of the track record of constitutional change, the government wants to ensure that any proposal for Indigenous recognition has the best chance of success. With that in mind, this bill establishes a process for consulting with the Australian people, getting the wording of the proposed constitutional change right and overcoming procedural concerns as obstacle to a successful referendum.

Last year I was asked to address a forum organised by the City of Salisbury on the question of Indigenous recognition in the Australian Constitution. The Hon. Robyn Layton AO, QC, former Supreme Court justice, currently co-chair of Reconciliation South Australia and, in fact, South Australian of the year, Professor Peter Buckskin, Dean of Indigenous Scholarship, Engagement and Research at the University of South Australia, and Khatija Thomas, Commissioner for Aboriginal Engagement, also spoke at the forum and shared their expert perspectives on the constitutional change and the process required. It was an interesting discussion. I came away from the forum with two clear observations. Firstly, whilst the City of Salisbury team had gone to considerable efforts to organise the event, the numbers participating, although as well as expected, reflected the general lack of interest in the matter. The attendance at the forum was consistent with many other forums that I have attended with respect to Indigenous issues. The point I make is that regardless of how much we try it is quite often very difficult to engage the broader Australian community in questions and issues relating to the Indigenous people of this land. That is certainly one of the observations that I came away with.

Secondly, there was, from memory, unanimous agreement from those present that whilst Indigenous constitutional recognition should occur, there was still considerable work to be done to ensure that a referendum on the question would be successful. The concerns expressed on the night were consistent with the concerns that have been expressed in this place and previously in other places and at other times. It is extremely difficult to change our Constitution. It is even more difficult to change our Constitution when we are dealing with a matter relating to the Indigenous people of this land.

Whilst I note that the states of Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria have all acknowledged Australia's Indigenous people in their state constitutions, I am also conscious of the difficulty that we face in changing the Australian Constitution. In fact I understand that attempts in 1944, 1974, 1988 and 1999 to change the Constitution with respect to Australia's Indigenous people all failed. The only successful attempt was in 1967 and I understand that it was overwhelmingly successful, in fact the most successful change to any Constitutional matter in the history of the nation. I suspect there was also a very good reason for that, and the changes made at a time, I think, were quite logical and understood by the Australian people as being changes that should be made without there being any disagreement from any quarters.

Whilst the Mabo High Court decision of 1992 led to the Native Title Act and the establishment of an Indigenous Land Fund and the delivery of a social justice package, I believe that it also raised profound questions about the Australian Constitution and in particular the moral and legal requirements for Indigenous recognition. For example, if Indigenous ownership pre-dates British occupation, are those lands exempt from colonial law, and what other rights therefore pre-date the Australian Constitution? Such questions will continue to remain unresolved and these are questions about the sovereignty of this nation. I note that the expert panel made some comments about that in the report—very good comments, I might add—but questions remain unresolved and in fact they are questions that now arise, in my view, as a result of the Mabo decision. Furthermore, the Australian Constitution cannot continue to remain silent on a matter which the High Court has now ruled on and which contradicts a critical presumption on which, I understand, the Australian Constitution was framed.

I conclude with a couple of other observations. I note that in many of the recommendations, including some of the propositions put forward by the expert panel, words like 'recognise', 'acknowledge' and 'respect' feature in any proposed wording that may be put to the Australian people as the words that we ought to adopt with our Constitution. I note that the word 'rights' is never mentioned. I do not know how others in the future will interpret words like 'recognise', 'acknowledge' and 'respect' unless you attach specifics to those words. If you do not, then, quite frankly, it will also leave a degree of ambiguity about what the Constitution says about our Indigenous people. It seems to me that if the word 'rights' is not mentioned, and is never going to be mentioned, then the Indigenous people of this land, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, will continue to feel aggrieved. Perhaps, as other nations have done, it is time for this nation to also strike a treaty with the Indigenous people of this land. At least that will then enable Indigenous people and the non-Indigenous people to move forward with a degree of certainty about the rights of each party. With those comments I commend the bill to the House and once again extend my thanks to the expert panel for the work that they have put into presenting their report to the House.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the introduction of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Bill 2012 into the House. This is an important step forward in the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in our nation's Constitution, something I support. It is important that we maintain a bipartisan approach to their constitutional recognition and I welcome the Leader of the Opposition's proposal that both leaders make statements to the House of Representatives affirming support for constitutional recognition. I also commend the government on the establishment of a parliamentary joint select committee following the recommendation of the coalition. In December 2010 the government announced the formation of an expert panel on constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to consult throughout 2011.

I join with my coalition colleagues in thanking Professor Patrick Dodson and Mr Mark Leibler AC for their work in consulting with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to deliver a report on possible options for a constitutional change. It is essential that we work together with this expert panel to achieve this necessary change to the Constitution and to take the important step forward in recognising our first Australians. Achieving meaningful change to the Constitution has long been a commitment in this place of the Liberals and Nationals.

It was a coalition government which was responsible for the historic 1967 referendum which removed racially discriminatory provisions from the Constitution. That referendum passed with the overwhelming support of the Australian people—more than 90 per cent of all votes cast and all states carrying it. In 1998 Prime Minister John Howard spoke in favour of a constitutional amendment that recognised the prior occupation of Australia by Indigenous peoples and their place in the Australian community as well as their right to preserve their distinctive identity. At the 2007 election the Liberals and Nationals made a commitment to hold a referendum on this matter, which took the Labor Party 2½ years to match. It is the coalition that has maintained its position on constitutional recognition and our commitment to seeing it pass. But we cannot do this alone.

Wagga Wagga based Wiradjuri elder Aunty Isabel Reid said it is time for the parliament to put politics aside and work together to achieve meaningful reform in this area, so I welcome the government's bipartisan, in-principle support of the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I am pleased that this is now a bipartisan endeavour but there is still much work to be done.

Given the fact that we are only months away from the federal election, little progress has been made to ensure there is necessary community consensus for this change at a referendum of the people. We just heard the member for Makin say that there have been only eight of 44 referenda passed. Thankfully, the fifth of those, on 27 May 1967, gave the Commonwealth power to make laws for Aboriginal people resident in the states and to include all Aboriginal people in the national census. But generally referenda fail, so it is absolutely crucial that when this referendum is put to the people it passes, as well as recognition in the Constitution for local government. We must make sure that when we do put it as a referendum it absolutely passes with the majority of the people.

Because of this, it is appropriate that we delay a referendum bill on this important issue until a time when there is wide, long-lasting and bipartisan support for constitutional recognition. The coalition has consistently reassured the government and the community of our strong support for the recognition of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Islander peoples in the Constitution and we want to ensure that this happens in the right way, at a time when it has the most chance of succeeding at a referendum.

Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in strong support of this bill and it pleases me that it has come before the parliament. Having served on the expert panel, and now being a member of the Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Islander Peoples, I have been deeply involved in this issue for quite some time. The contribution I make tonight is a rather small one because of the continuing work that I will be involved in to advance constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

This bill is a landmark piece of legislation. It may be that it is only for two years, and some people have asked me about that. They have said, 'Why couldn't it last permanently?' I have said that the bill is put here. It is an act of faith. It is an act of faith by this parliament to say that we will work together in a spirit of cooperation with the communities, and have full consultation across the community of Australia with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, to advance the question of constitutional recognition. It is an act of faith, but it is a landmark in what it does for recognition.

It is one of our shorter bills. There are not too many short bills that get put through this place. They are usually longer and far more complex. But it is one of the shorter bills. It is one of our most easily read. It is also one that is easily understood, and it gives expression to that recognition.

One of the other issues that I wanted to talk about was everybody involved with the expert panel, my parliamentary colleagues the honourable member for Hasluck, the honourable member for Lyne and the honourable Senator Rachel Siewert from Western Australia. The four of us worked together in a very cooperative way to ensure that we were able to have input into the expert panel with all of the other members and say, 'We're putting forward the views of representatives of the parliament and also of the major parties, minor parties and Independents.' We were able to do that. The work that came out of the expert panel is a fine piece of work, and it gave the parliament, the government and the opposition something to work with. And it also, for the first time, presented and gave us a way forward with mechanisms for that recognition in the Constitution. It fleshed out all of the legal issues and other issues around it.

In working on the joint select committee on constitutional recognition, chaired by Senator Crossin, we approached our task, our work, in exactly that same way; in the spirit of cooperation and the spirit of working together to advance constitutional recognition. We have had a hearing, we have prepared a report and we have had our meetings and that spirit has prevailed, and that is the spirit that prevailed with the expert panel. The way forward relies on us working to come up with something that is absolutely satisfactory to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. That is essential. That is fundamental. That is a first and something that the Australian people can vote yes for.

We, the expert panel, had a methodology. The methodology that we used had four planks to it. It was to contribute to a more unified and reconciled nation, to be of benefit to and to accord with the wishes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, to be capable of being supported by an overwhelming majority of Australians from across the political and social spectrums, and to be technically and legally sound. The work the panel was able to do was across those four planks, including being technically and legally sound. We had the time to do that. I know that that sort of methodology, that approach, will be required to continue to make sure that we get to where we want to be, where I want to be and where I know a lot of people want to be at the end of this process.

As tempted as I am to crow about who did what first and who was better at it, I do not want to impart that into this debate. I do not think that is helpful. I just think that we need to put our heads down and get on with the task we have been set. It is one of the most significant tasks that members of parliament and this parliament have been set in terms of an advancement in the relationship among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and all Australians. With those words, I commend this bill to the House.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I firstly thank all of those who have also spoken on this important piece of legislation, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People Recognition Bill 2012, which, if passed, will commit the parliament to placing before the Australian people at a referendum a proposal for constitutional change of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The principal purpose of this bill is to articulate the parliament's recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the original inhabitants of Australia and also their ongoing connection with their traditional lands and waters, cultures, languages and heritage. What I would like to do is contextualise this discussion. As you know, I am here as the member for Lingiari. I was first elected in 1987. Prior to my election to the seat of Lingiari I worked as a policy adviser to the Central Land Council in Alice Springs. Prior to that I was a school teacher and prior that I was a researcher at the Australian National University on government programs and their impact on Aboriginal communities. In one way or another, either directly or indirectly, I have been working with or for Aboriginal people for at least 35 years.

Over that period many things have changed. I can recall in the eighties the Aboriginal Treaty Committee, which had as its spearheads Dr Nugget Coombs and Judith Wright. I remember the advancing discussion around the issue of a treaty and recognition in those days and the public discussion that took place around it. I recall well the period after 1976 and the introduction of the Land Rights Act in the Northern Territory. I also recall the struggle that took place in this parliament in the mid-eighties around the issue of national land rights. I recall the divisive nature of the debate. I recall the resistance from the mining sector principally; from conservative governments, including Brian Burke and the Labor government in Western Australia; and from other conservative elements within the community. I remember well the division. I remember well the demonstrations and rallies, of which I was a part, on the front steps of Old Parliament House, regaling the then Hawke Labor government about the importance of looking at a land rights model which did not jeopardise the principles of the Northern Territory Land Rights Act, which was seen as a precedent in principle for all land rights across this country recognising the inalienable right of Aboriginal people over their lands. That was not to be the prospect of the national land rights bill. Had the national land rights legislation been passed, we would have seen the erosion of rights previously given by this parliament in the Northern Territory, and that was not seen as acceptable. Ultimately, as we know, the national land rights bill never went anywhere.

Subsequently I remember the discussions that took place around the formation of ATSIC. I remember the public rally and the discussion which took place around the 1988 Barunga Statement, which hangs so proudly in this parliament. The principles of that statement could well fit this bill. It talks about recognition. It talks about justice. It talks about understanding the imperatives of Aboriginal people, in this case from the Northern Territory. We can go back even further to the sixties and the bark petitions. This year is a significant anniversary of the bark petitions, which of course were a precursor to the discussion around land rights in this place, as well as the issues that arose at around a similar time—the treatment of Aboriginal people in the pastoral industry and the people who walked off Wave Hill et cetera. There is a whole combination of elements which go together to hear the voice of Aboriginal people screaming out for the recognition of rights and the recognition of justice over many years.

I was either a very close observer or a participant in some of these things. The key element for me, though, was the way in which Aboriginal people so proudly and so justly argued their own case, and they did it with such great dignity, until finally this parliament was forced as a result of an action by a Torres Strait Islander in the High Court to once and for all get rid of the concept of terra nullius in the early 90s. We then had native title being recognised. Again, I remember the divisive nature of the debates here in this parliament, of which I was part. I remember vividly the entrenched opposition from vested interests outside this place who claimed the world was going to end. I remember the disgusting maps used by conservatives to advertise what the impact would be of native title if native title legislation was ever passed. Thank God it is now history. I remember well the eloquence of Paul Keating in his Redfern speech in 1992, and I will come to that a little later.

For me, this is a really important piece of legislation for the people I represent. Over 40 per cent of my constituents are Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory—by far the largest proportion in any seat in this parliament. I am proud to represent them in this place and—let there be no doubt—I am here because of them in so many different ways. I have seen old men and old women who argued, for nearly four decades now, the justice of what we are now accepting as a principle in this parliament.

Many of those old advocates, those people of great wisdom, have sadly passed and are no longer with us. But if they were here they would applaud the way in which this parliament has now come together around these issues. They would say, I am certain: 'This is the place we need to be to have our rights properly recognised, to see that we are getting recognition at last for who we are and for how important we are as a people, as part of the national community, as part of the national conversation and as part of our national narrative.' That, to me, is ultimately what this is about: to say to these old men and women, 'The sacrifices you have made in the past and the sacrifices which are being made now have been to some avail.' We now have in front of us this Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Bill. I could not have imagined this a decade ago; in fact, quite possibly not even five or six years ago. But here we are in this place, people of goodwill, coming together to support this legislation.

I thought I should refer more directly to that wonderful speech by Paul Keating. Whilst I will not read it all I do want to refer to a couple of elements of it. This is surely one of the great speeches made by any great leader in this country since federation, and certainly in terms of the cause of recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their rights this is first among them. He said:

And, as I say, the starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians.

It begins, I think, with the act of recognition.

How right he was and how right he remains in the context of this piece of legislation. He referred to the Mabo judgement:

By doing away with the bizarre conceit that this continent had no owners prior to the settlement of Europeans, Mabo establishes a fundamental truth and lays the basis for justice.

I agree and I think we now all agree. There is little division over this issue anymore.

He described Mabo as 'an historic decision'. Then he said:

The message should be that there is nothing to fear or to lose in the recognition of historical truth, or the extension of social justice, or the deepening of Australian social democracy to include indigenous Australians.

There is everything to gain.

How we know that now. Ultimately, later in this parliament we joined together in the Apology, which was so finely given by the former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. The Apology again addressed this issue of our history and justice, the understanding of the sacrifice and the hurt of the stolen generations. Former Prime Minister Paul Keating in his speech:

Where Aboriginal Australians have been included in the life of Australia they have made remarkable contributions.

He also said in this speech:

Ever so gradually we are learning how to see Australia through Aboriginal eyes, beginning to recognise the wisdom contained in their epic story.

This is now a fundamental truth—something which is now beyond debate in this country.

I want to conclude my contribution by reading the last 30 or 40 words from Paul Keating's speech:

I said we non-indigenous Australians should try to imagine the Aboriginal view.

It can't be too hard.

Someone imagined this event today, and it is now a marvellous reality and a great reason for hope.

There is one thing today we cannot imagine.

We cannot imagine that the descendants of people whose genius and resilience maintained a culture here through fifty thousand years or more, through cataclysmic changes to the climate and environment, and who then survived two centuries of dispossession and abuse, will be denied their place in the modern Australian nation.

We cannot imagine that.

We cannot imagine that we will fail.

And with the spirit that is here today I am confident that we won't.

I am confident that we will succeed in this decade.

We did not succeed in that decade but we will succeed in this decade. I think it is a tribute to this parliament that we have come across the aisle to support this very important piece of legislation that will, I hope, lead us to a referendum which will finally and once and for all give Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the recognition, which is their just deserts.

Debate adjourned.