Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence Industry and Support) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's my pleasure to present a petition from the Social Justice Advocates of the Sapphire Coast in relation to the Uluru Statement from the Heart to this parliament. It is a great privilege to present that petition. The Uluru statement was a magnificent process, bringing together the First Nations peoples of this nation. We, of course, in the lead-up to that process were in a hopeful phase of bipartisanship in improving our understanding and participating in that process. There was a great deal of hope out there in our Indigenous communities. I want to pay tribute to all the Indigenous nations of my region—the Yuin peoples of the coast, the Ngambri, Ngarigo and Ngunnawal peoples of the high country and the Wiradjuri people of the western regions of my electorate. They have a magnificent tradition and culture that we're very proud of.

I want to praise Michael Brosnan and the crew from Social Justice Advocates of the Sapphire Coast. I was with them on the weekend when they held a wonderful multicultural event in the little town of Wolumla. That event, celebrating 50 different nationalities, brought people from all around the region.

It is critical that we now deliver for our Indigenous peoples through this Uluru statement. It's a crying shame that up there the Prime Minister will do his acknowledgements of country and do the party trick of having learned a few lines of Indigenous language but he won't follow through. All of that means nothing if we don't follow through on the things that must be done to put our Indigenous peoples where they need to be. This cry from the heart needs to be answered. If we can't get a bipartisan approach to this then Labor will push on. In the absence of cross-party support necessary to achieve that constitutional change in government, Labor will legislate for a voice to honour the aspirations of the Uluru statement, to have that voice to parliament, not in parliament. It's completely outrageous for the Prime Minister to claim this would be a third, additional chamber in this building. It would not be. That's just a sop to try to avoid doing something real in this space. We also won't lose sight of the need for the constitutional guarantee, and we'll continue to work to build the support necessary for a successful referendum in this space.

Labor will also commit to a compensation scheme for the stolen generations and establishment of a healing fund, and will also convene a national summit on First Nations children to address the extremely high rates of child removal. We can't, similarly, sit here and make noises. It was wonderful doing the Sorry statement from Prime Minister Rudd, but the follow-through is what's needed now. This is what our First Nations people deserve and this is how we move to full healing in this nation.

The petition read as follows—

from 263 citizens