Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is an interesting day today. When walking around, you meet some very decent Indigenous people, so everything you say you have to temper with the fact that there is no point insulting people and there is no point making a statement of belligerence. But the concern today—and you could see it even with the way question time went—is that the issues move on. The biggest concern is that this issue will move on and will in fact be left behind. A year’s time from now is when we will truly be able to judge whether this was just a rhetorical day on which there was a greater sense of presence and possibly a sense of theatre but which never actually delivered anything. A year’s time is when we will have the ability to look back and say: ‘Did anything really get better for Indigenous people? Were their lives improved? Did we make concrete statements to go out to where these people live and improve the economies of those areas so as to pick up the health, the education and everything that goes with it?’

I know there are Australians out there who have serious doubts about this issue. I know that. I know everyone is drawing their affinities to the Indigenous issue, but, coming from Danglemah, having gone to primary school in Woolbrook and having lived in Moree and Charleville and currently living in St George—I think I am the furthest senator from the coast—and having a house in Werris Creek, I suppose I have spent most of my life around Indigenous people, and I am probably enriched because of it. But there is always a sense that these things can turn into junkets. If this thing turns into compensation or a junket where money gets poured in all sorts of directions, but generally in the direction of solicitors in Sydney and Melbourne, who does it profit at the end except them? Who is the actual benefactor of it at the end except them? We saw that in so many of the land rights issues, and that is an eternal frustration for so many people in regional Australia who see that statements are made down here with all the right atmosphere and all the right intentions, but where it all ends up is nowhere. That is one of the frustrations that I hope does not become evident after this process has finished.

There are certainly things in our history that we need to be concerned about. I can recollect stories that people have told me. One person told me how his father went out and shot Aboriginals and then grabbed the children by the legs and smashed their heads across a rock to kill them. That is a story that I heard. The person who was telling me had no reason to lie and I was extremely disgusted and disturbed by what he had said. Obviously, we all know the story of the Myall Creek massacre, of the putting of arsenic into flour. We also know the stories of retribution where Aboriginals were driven over cliffs, basically just to kill them. I am truly offended by any association between that and the government. It was never an action of the government. It was an action of individuals who were criminals, not the government. I do not believe that the government put forward policies with malice aforethought, that the government put forward policies that were distinctly designed to be some sort of final solution, because in some of the scripting that is the way these things are seen. I do not think that is right. They may have been misguided, they may have been wrong and they may need to be corrected, but were they policies with malice aforethought? I do not know whether that is a blemish that we want on our nation. We have every right to say, in a greater light, with our better knowledge, that we should not have done it. But I do not suggest that that is the case.

In the process of this debate, it has to be said that a very dangerous precedent was created. I am discussing the issue now, but the vote has gone. The vote is over. We know it is a very important issue, but we have created a very dangerous precedent. Once you have created it, it becomes the excuse for others. I think that needs to see the full light of day. After this day has cooled down and after the media have had their time with it, I think we should reflect on what we did today—that is, to carry a vote without acknowledging that the debate can influence people. If you respect this chamber, you must respect the belief that people can say things that influence you. Today I have had the capacity to walk around and talk to Indigenous people, and they have influenced me, because I am a human being and I am affected by what people say to me. But to circumvent the process of the Senate and say there is a reason for that is really opening yourself up wide for things that may happen in the future. I think that should be acknowledged and I do not think we should ever do it again. I think people should question whether we could have conducted this in a better way so as not to circumvent and disrespect the process of the Senate.

Another flaw, I think, is that we see the world in 2008 but forget that the world of 2008 is not the world of the time when the initial acts were written, in 1869. It was built on the premise of an 1864 act. It is a different world even to that of the 1970s, and we have to be very careful that we do not start judging the views of people then by our views and values now. There are people who did the wrong thing, but I do not think that we should target certain nuns—who honestly believed that they were trying to advance the condition of fellow Australians who were Indigenous—with the word ‘stolen’, because I do not think they believed that they were stealing anybody. I do not believe that they thought they were doing a criminal act, and the pejorative term ‘stolen’ sends the message that the people who did it were criminals—and they were not. So this is an issue that I also think needs to be reflected on in the cold light of day.

We have had a lot of symbolism here today, but we all know that symbolism neither feeds nor clothes nor cures anybody. The issue that will be judged, whether at Woorabinda, Cunnamulla, Burketown, Doomadgee, Walgett, Tibooburra or White Cliffs, is whether the lives of the people actually get better. That will be the real judgement of what happens here today. If it becomes a lawyers’ feast—and I would have liked to have seen the legal advice tabled, not because of political point-scoring—that will completely disavow the clarity of what we were trying to do. It also opens up an avenue for other people to become financial benefactors of the Indigenous issue, and that has happened so many times. So many people—to be quite honest, white solicitors with harbour views—become the financial benefactors of these issues by turning them into a legal morass. If that happens because of this, then that I think is not good.

In summary and to close, there is an immense sentiment in the nation—I acknowledge it and I have changed my view—of a sense of true reconciliation where people are talking to one another and acknowledging the humanity of one another, and putting aside their conceits and maybe some of the views that they had prior to this. Maybe that inception has happened today. If it happened today, that is a good thing. If that is a true inception of reconciliation—my understanding others better than I did before and possibly them understanding my and others’ views—then that is a great step. Unfortunately, that view of reconciliation has already had, in some instances today, the winds of animosity blowing through it and blowing out the candles of reconciliation. I hope that does not happen. I hope that, if there is one thing that happens from today, it is that we all go on a path together where, as a nation, we make lives better not just for Indigenous people but for Australians in general.