Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I commence my remarks by acknowledging that we meet on the traditional lands of the Ngunawal and Ngambri people. I pay my respects to their elders, past and present. I also wish to acknowledge the traditional owners of the Bundjalung lands, because those are the lands that I grew up on.

I want to use my time today—and I will try to keep my remarks brief—to reflect a little bit on what it meant to grow up in a community where the Bundjalung Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people played a very active role. I do so to perhaps place some of the remarks from the former speaker in context, because my memories of the relationships I had with the Aboriginal community and Islander community in northern New South Wales are overwhelmingly positive. I acknowledge that a child's eyes are more innocent than most. As I have grown up I have come to understand that many of those people faced poverty, racism and hardship. But the experience I had was of an enormously resilient community, with all of the strength and capabilities to take charge of their own destinies.

I think about the role that those young people in my school played as team players. They were always the leaders in the sports teams or any team we put together. They were always people who took a frankly hopeless sportsperson—that was me!—under their wing and gave me encouragement and support even though my contribution to the team's outcomes was always fairly limited. But those people were always willing to take the lead.

Senator Urquhart interjecting—

I am told not to put myself down, but sometimes accuracy is important even in—