Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make some brief remarks in this very important parliamentary discussion. I am pleased to have the honour—as I regard it—of participating in this parliamentary resolution of apology. It is an occasion of great significance for our parliament, for Indigenous Australians, for our nation and for our nation’s future. Since my first speech in 1997, which I will avoid the self-indulgence of quoting, I have supported an apology to Indigenous Australians of the stolen generations. It was not necessarily a popular claim to make in 1997 from my side of the chamber. Today’s resolution, though, is a very important step in the history of reconciliation in this country. To those men and women who have campaigned long and hard for this apology and other aspects of reconciliation, I truly hope that you are able to take a great deal from this day and from this parliamentary resolution.

I have heard other speakers today, in this chamber and elsewhere, talk about their experience of living in Indigenous communities. I cannot lay claim to that experience. However, I have found in the last 10 or so years that one of the great privileges of this role in the Senate has been an opportunity to learn much more about Indigenous Australia and Australians than I had known before I came here. For that, I thank some of my colleagues who in part formed the instruction team along the way, based on their own enthusiasm and interest. And, perhaps ironically, I also thank the Senate committee process.

The committee process of the Senate is sometimes regarded as a practice of the darker arts, but in this case it is a highly valuable experience and it has afforded me a chance across the nation—in the Northern Territory, Queensland, Western Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and here in Canberra—to meet with a range of leading Indigenous Australians and many members of the community to discuss a very broad list of issues over time. Those issues have ranged from the one we are discussing here today—the stolen generations, the subject of this motion—to the detention of juvenile offenders, to reconciliation more broadly and, more recently, to the question of stolen wages. With my colleagues I have heard many personal stories and testimonials—sometimes highly emotional and highly disturbing; sometimes so coldly factual that they were even more devastating in their effect—about some of the personal and family experiences of these our fellow Australians. Through that process, overwhelmingly one of listening, I have been persuaded that the symbolism of this apology is indeed very important and that it does have the capacity to make a real difference to our capacity to move forward in relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

I have been interested to listen to some of the discussions about the value of symbols. It seems to me that, as members and senators in this place, we work in an environment laden with symbolism and, in 2008, still redolent with tradition. I think it is actually very difficult for us to judge for others, culturally and personally, what is a validly important symbol. But I do hope that this symbolic step of ‘apology’ does have the desired outcome for members of the stolen generation and their families and is a step forward on the path to reconciliation in Australia. Saying that is emphatically not a rejection of the importance of what has become known as practical reconciliation. Without the basic advantages of life that the overwhelming majority of Australians take for granted in terms of health, of life expectancy, of education, of living circumstances, and so the list goes on there is no capacity to move forward. I absolutely acknowledge that and want that to be a very important part of my remarks this afternoon. But the link between symbolic and practical reconciliation, which I hope this apology establishes and confirms, is one which I further hope enables us as a nation to move further forward.

I particularly want to acknowledge and congratulate the women of Indigenous Australia that I have had the most extraordinary honour and pleasure of meeting over the last 10 years. In so many cases it has been their leadership in their communities and in their families—and in the face of adversity that is unknowable for women in the situation I, the previous speaker and many others in this place enjoy—that has enabled governments to actually pick up the steps of practical reconciliation and move towards their implementation.

I quite honestly cannot imagine the pain of being separated from one’s living family. I have enough trouble dealing on a daily basis with the loss of both my parents relatively early in my adulthood. But I do know that my family grounds me; that my family helps me know where I actually belong. In his remarks in the Members Hall today I heard a person for whom I have an enormous amount of respect, Tom Calma, the Social Justice Commissioner of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, talk about the importance of ‘belonging’, in the context of this apology and of the experiences of his own family. It is not rocket science to understand that if you are dislocated, if you are separated from your family, it is hard to know where you belong. That does not just go for Indigenous Australians, of course. But today is about the impact of these actions and these policies on Indigenous Australians over decades in this country.

When I finally saw the motion moved by the government yesterday afternoon—after waiting, I thought, quite patiently, which is not something for which I am known—I was struck particularly by the last five clauses. They refer, so importantly, to the future—to a future where the parliament is able to resolve that these injustices must never be repeated; where we are able to harness the determination of all Australians, which hopefully today will reinforce, to close the gaps I spoke about in life expectancy, education and economy; and where we will look at new solutions to enduring problems where, as the words of the resolution of the parliament say, ‘old approaches have failed’. Without an acknowledgement of that it is impossible to move forward. The clauses also refer to a future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility and to a future where, as the last clause says, ‘all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country’. They are very powerful words and ones to which I am very proud to commit myself absolutely. I think the parliamentary resolution is one which provides for this nation, in so many ways, an opportunity to advance on the path of reconciliation. It is something which I am proud to see we can all participate in here today.