Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Tangney tells us he was driven around Broome by the local chamber of commerce, peering out the car window at some appalling conditions and asking his white host why Indigenous elders were not doing something about it. It is a pity he did not stop the car, end his self-imposed apartheid and actually get to know the Aboriginal people he is slamming; or meet Aboriginal leaders like the Dodsons and Watsons in the West Kimberley, June Oscar in Fitzroy Crossing or Ian Trust in the East Kimberley, who are working with their communities to create economic sustainability and social resilience; or go out to the remote communities he reviles and learn that many people are living there after their third displacement by white settlement, and understand that these places are their homes.

He could learn about the Aboriginal people who live on country, who drive in and out to work at the Telfer gold mines, or who fly in and out from red soil to the West Angelas iron ore mine. He could go to Punmu and experience the extraordinary merging of the old people with the land on which they had been raised without contact with Europeans until the 1960s, and at the same time he would see the bold steps that community is taking to turn around educational outcomes.

It is profoundly racist and counterproductive to demand Aboriginal people reject their culture to become part of Australia. (Time expired)