Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week is National Reconciliation Week, a time to reflect on two significant anniversaries in Australia's recognition journey: 50 years since the 1967 referendum; and 25 years since the historic Mabo decision. Last Friday in our community of Kingsford Smith, I was honoured to attend the unveiling of the Stolen Generations Memorial at the Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park in the suburb of Matraville on the land of the Bidjigal people.

We are blessed to have a strong local Aboriginal community, particularly in the suburbs of La Perouse and around Botany Bay—or Kamay, as it is known in the Indigenous language. Many of them are surviving members of the stolen generation and were present at the unveiling. It was a solemn and meaningful occasion that brought to mind former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's 2008 apology to the stolen generations. In that momentous speech on that day, Kevin Rudd said the following:

Let it not become a moment of mere sentimental reflection. Let us take it with both hands and allow this day, this day of national reconciliation, to become one of those rare moments in which we might just be able to transform the way in which the nation thinks about itself, whereby the injustice administered to the stolen generations in the name of these, our parliaments, causes all of us to reappraise, at the deepest level of our beliefs, the real possibility of reconciliation … reconciliation across all Indigenous Australia.

Although our First Australians were brave enough to accept the apology and found it in their hearts to put aside their bitterness and their anger at what had had occurred over many generations, discriminatory policies such as this have left a stubborn and often deadly legacy across our nation and in the community that I represent. If you are a young Aboriginal boy growing up in our community at the moment, you are more likely to leave school and go to Long Bay jail than to the University of New South Wales as a student. Still today, an Aboriginal Australian on average will die 10 years younger than a non-Aboriginal Australian.

There have been recent suicides of young Aboriginal people in our community, each one a tragedy, and, despite the apology, 35 per cent of Aboriginal children are in out-of-home care away from country, kin and culture. It is not enough just to say sorry. Kevin Rudd's words, expressed on behalf of our nation, must have meaning. This Reconciliation Week let us remind ourselves of the fact that it is not merely about saying sorry for injustices done but committing to restoring dignity, respect and better living standards for our First Australians.