Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Nine years ago, we met here in this chamber, here on Ngunnawal land, which we acknowledge every day, and heard Prime Minister Kevin Rudd deliver the apology to our First Australians. It was a remarkable and historic moment. The galleries were filled overwhelmingly with our First Australians. There was almost no room in the Great Hall. The area in front of the parliament was a sea of humanity, expectation and support. The Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, gave an apology on behalf of us all for the laws and the policies of successive parliaments, successive governments and successive generations. In particular, he apologised for the policies that removed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country. It is an apology that today we reaffirm and it is an apology that has echoed through the years and will echo for centuries to come. It was an apology whose time had come.

As we look ahead to a better future, we know that acknowledgement is the seed from which hope and healing are sown. In that spirit, we acknowledge the enormous strength and resilience of our First Australians who have overcome and are overcoming the disadvantage that was woven into their lives by policies like that. We acknowledge the mums and dads, the grandparents, the aunties and uncles, and the brothers and sisters who strove against overwhelming odds to find their lost children. And we acknowledge the suffering of those little children, crying for their mothers and their fathers and the warm embrace of kin. We acknowledge the disruption to culture, the loss of language and the destruction of community. Above all, we acknowledge the lifetime heartache that has been endured by each child and each parent who suffered and who continues to suffer. To all those families, we acknowledge that your suffering cannot be healed by words alone, and so we commit ourselves again to address the disadvantage that has stemmed from those past policies.

Tomorrow I will present the Closing the gapreport, a gap we are as determined now as we were in 2008 to close. We look forward to receiving the recommendations from the Referendum Council so the parliament can complete the work of a constitutional amendment to recognise our First Australians. The Referendum Council is undertaking its process of consulting with Indigenous Australians. The Leader of the Opposition and I are looking forward to receiving the recommendations from the council, because then it will be the parliament's task, a parliament with distinguished Indigenous Australians among its members, to then shape the amendment and present it to the Australian people.

Most importantly, we do all of this together. We face the future more hopeful than ever because our relationship is based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility. And it is one that must be filled with optimism. The apology was a very sad and solemn moment, but we see so many stories of remarkable enterprise, resilience, courage and achievement among our First Australians.

I was discussing with Chris Sarra only the other day, an Aboriginal man whom I quote a lot and whose writings I have found profoundly instructive. When we talk about the challenges that we are working on together, we must not solely focus on the deficit side of the ledger. There are great stories of achievement. We are looking at them here in this House: the first Indigenous Australian to be a minister in a Commonwealth government, Ken Wyatt, and Linda Burney, in her own right the first Indigenous woman to be a member of his House and a minister, of course, in the New South Wales government previously. So there are great positive stories to tell and we have to be focused on them as well.

Our First Australians lead lives as diverse and different as any of us, from the most remote communities to the centre of our busiest cities and to our parliaments themselves. They are citizens of our modern multicultural nation, contributing to our society, their families and our community, playing a magnificent, resilient, enterprising part in our great nation. So today we not only reaffirm the apology that was given by Prime Minister Rudd but, while we recognise the importance of words—after all, this is a House of words—we recognise nonetheless that it will be deeds that will set us surely and truly on the path of reconciliation and recognition.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a newly elected member in this place, I had the privilege of being in the chamber for Prime Minister Rudd's apology to the stolen generations. Some days, parliament together hits those rare notes where collectively the sum of our actions is greater than the individual parts. On that day nine years ago, that was such a day. Prime Minister Rudd, opposition leader Brendan Nelson, the government, the parliament and the people of Australia said sorry. We faced up to a dark shadow of our national past: exclusion, discrimination and dispossession.

The moment I remember most vividly was not the offer of the apology, as fundamental as that was, but the way it was accepted. On that day, there was a giving of forgiveness and a seeking of forgiveness. There was a sense of hope and joy. How on earth are we so fortunate to share this continent with the bigness of spirit of our First Australians, the way they grasped the hand of national healing? It did not become a moment for recrimination; but it in fact became a moment of catharsis for all, banishing the demons and devils of old hatred as forgiveness was sought. I think a lot of us that day found ourselves asking, 'Why did it take so long? Why did we wait to do the right thing?' That was because once it happened, with one or two unfortunate exceptions, there was a collective weight taken off the shoulders of the nation. Let us not find ourselves asking that again.

There are profound challenges ahead of us on the road to reconciliation. We should be taking hope from the resilience of Aboriginal people; drawing hope from the success of Aboriginal leadership; finding hope in the way that communities, locals, young people and their elders are tackling the problems they face; and creating hope in a future where our First Australians have the first say in decisions which affect their lives. With this hope, let us walk forward together in the spirit of the apology nine years ago today.