Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Evans, the Minister representing the Prime Minister. In making his apology to Indigenous people at the beginning of parliament two years ago, the Prime Minister said:

… unless the great symbolism of reconciliation is accompanied by an even greater substance, it is little more than a clanging gong.

On 3April last year, the Rudd government subscribed to the international Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples providing amongst other things for ‘the right to own, use, develop and control’ their own lands. In view of this, Minister, will the Labor government be supporting Mr Abbott’s private member’s bill to overturn the Queensland Wild Rivers Act and so give Indigenous people the right to own, use, develop and control their own lands?