Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

NAIDOC Week is an important week in our national calendar. It's a time to acknowledge and celebrate Australia's rich cultural identity. Our ancient lands are home to the world's oldest continuous living cultures, and that is something we should all be enormously proud of in this nation. We have much to learn from the 65,000-plus years of First People's knowledge and connection to this country.

This year, NAIDOC Week will again bring communities from across Australia together in the spirit of solidarity to listen and learn. In addition to celebrating the many extraordinary achievements of First Nations people, we must also face squarely the brutality of colonisation and its lasting impacts. This year's theme, Always Was, Always Will Be, reminds us of the contested nature of our histories and that sovereignty was never ceded. The battle for justice, recognition and respect is far from over, and NAIDOC Week demands that we reaffirm our commitment to change and reform.

That's why Labor reiterates our support of the Uluru statement in full. Our position has not changed. We have never wavered in our support of an Indigenous voice to the parliament enshrined in our Constitution. We have never wavered in our commitment to establish a Makarrata commission to supervise an agreement and treaty-making process between governments and First Nations, and Labor is 100 per cent behind a national process for unvarnished truth-telling— (Time expired)