Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was with great sadness that I learned Nyungar elder Patrick Hume passed away on 20 May, and I offer my sincere condolences to his family and to the many people who benefited from his leadership, friendship, care and wisdom. Mr Hume was a significant leader in the community I represent. Over a 30-year period, Mr Hume worked with successive Western Australian premiers and the WA Department of Aboriginal 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 Nyungar native title. Indeed, Mr Hume gave testimony before the Federal Court of Australia that was critical in proving Nyungar native title in the Swan River region, an area known to the Nyungar people as the Derbarl Yerrigan.

Navigating the twists and turns involved in the change of governments and of government policy, but undeterred in the face of persistent intolerance and inequality, Mr Hume remained true to his values and beliefs, and he pursued his ideals with unceasing energy, passion and cheeky good humour. Mr Hume and his late wife were 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 in the 1980s and 1990s he worked on a voluntary basis to drive deceased elders back to their remote communities so that they could be buried in country. Mr Hume 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. I know that Joy Collins spoke movingly at the funeral service on Tuesday of Mr Hume's involvement in the Mandjah Boodjah project, which Joy herself has spearheaded. Mr Hume's lifetime commitment to reconciliation and to the full and equal participation of Indigenous people in Australia was recognised when he was awarded with the West Australian Centennial Medal.

I would like to conclude by noting, with sadness, that Mr Hume was at the forefront of efforts to prevent the WA government putting a truck freeway through the middle of the Beeliar wetlands—a site of immense cultural and spiritual significance to the Nyungar people, as well as being a habitat of enormous environmental importance to a number of endangered species and migratory birds. I say 'sadness' because this damage is still very much in prospect and I know that Mr Hume would have been a decisive part of the battle that we need desperately to win. I had the privilege of meeting and working with Mr Hume. He was a person whose goodness poured out of him. He was clear and forthright and never afraid to take on discrimination or injustice, but he always started from a position of seeing and expecting the best in others. My community will feel his loss—but we will remember and be inspired by the example of his big life.