Patrick Dodson (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Reconciliation) Share this | Hansard source

I first met Bob Hawke in 1980, at the height of the Noonkanbah dispute, when First Nations peoples united to take on the Western Australian Liberal government of Sir Charles Court and the international mining company AMAX, which wanted to drill on sacred land. The meeting took place at Tullamarine, and Bob struggled with the concept of a sacred site of land at a place called Pea Hill. However, he listened intently and promised to do what he could at that time. Bob was then President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions and a key ally in what would become one of Australia's most significant demonstrations of non-violent resistance. Noonkanbah was a turning point for First Nations land rights, and Bob Hawke, along with his son, Stephen, then a liaison officer with the community, promoted the cause to national significance.

Much has been said in the weeks since the death of Bob Hawke about his love for his country and its peoples. I have some reservations about some of that, and I approach his legacy, and I know some of my colleagues approach it, with some frustration, anger and annoyance because he couldn't achieve and deliver for First Nations—because of some of the vested interests and the hard-Right attitudes in our community—when it came to treaty and national land rights in particular. I reflect on the period with ambivalence and great disappointment and regret that, in relation to what could have been and what he hoped would be, because of Bob's sense of pragmatism and sense of understanding of the challenges he faced, we were not able to achieve the unity of the Australian people with his aim and vision and ours. The reality is that Bob's empathy for the cause of First Nations was not shared by the broader Australian population at the time. Political leadership should reflect hard on this conundrum as pivotal to the process of reconciliation.

Bob was at ease in the company of blackfellas because his belief system did not allow for discrimination. Although he did shy away from the regime of national land rights and although he did have a rush of fervour towards the promise of a treaty with Aboriginal people and failed to deliver it, he did remain committed to high ideals of reconciliation. And when he did deliver, like the time he put Aboriginal cultural values above those of development-minded colleagues and prevailed over cabinet to veto mining at Coronation Hill in the Northern Territory, his stand on First Nations views contributed, in our view, to his demise as a Prime Minister. In the case of his walking away from the national land rights agenda, let's face and acknowledge the awful reality that powerful forces were against him. The hysterical lobby of a virulent mining industry, sadly backed by an equally virulent Premier of my home state, Western Australia, killed that aspiration.

But today I put aside the prime ministerial failures of Bob Hawke, because he was, in his heart, a committed friend of Australia's Indigenous peoples. I was the director of the Central Land Council, and Bob Hawke attended the annual Barunga Sport and Cultural Festival in June 1988, the year of Australia's bicentenary. Gerry Hand, the minister at the time, was a great help in getting Bob to Barunga. There are many stories to be told about that, and Gerry would remember them—especially about the need for Bob to have a pair of red underwear on in case he needed to go to the ceremonies. It was there that he was presented with the Barunga Statement by the chairmen from the Northern and Central land councils.

The Barunga Statement was a historic declaration of self-determination and of cultural Aboriginal culture. It requested the Commonwealth parliament to negotiate a treaty recognising Aboriginal prior ownership, continued occupation, and sovereignty, affirming our human rights and freedoms over 30 years ago. In return, the Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, famously declared, 'There shall be a treaty.'

Although he was unable to deliver on that commitment by the time he left office in December 1991, he did deliver on his commitment to Indigenous self-determination. His demonstration of that was the creation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission in 1990. ATSIC gave a real voice to Indigenous people, regionally and nationally. It was a real instrument of self-determination and self-management; however, it suffered as a creature of legislation. Alas, ATSIC was dismantled by the Howard government in 2005.

The year after ATSIC was established, Prime Minister Hawke established the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. I well remember when his then minister for Aboriginal affairs, Robert Tickner, was dispatched to Derby to try and woo me to take up the job as the council's first chairman. At that stage in my life, I was reluctant to return to the national stage after my experience of working as a commissioner at the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. And let me remind you that the royal commission was of Bob Hawke's calling. He was appalled by the proliferation of suicides amongst Aboriginal people in custody and he withstood criticism from those, including those within his own party, who saw the royal commission as a waste of time and money.

Anyway, back to the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation and the government's effort to recruit me to chair it. My grandfather had just passed away, and I was wanting to anchor myself in my own country and culture. That was until Bob Hawke himself got on the phone. His powers to cajole and coerce are acknowledged by all who ever dealt with him, but it was not until you were subjected to that special Hawke treatment that you really appreciated that you'd been confronted by a great persuader. I yielded in the face of his supplication and agreed to sign on as the foundation chairman of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation.

Little did I know that he had only a few months left in office as the Prime Minister. Fitting then that it was his last duty, literally in the last few minutes of his prime ministership, in December '91, to unveil the Barunga Statement in Parliament House, where it rests today. In that brief ceremony, Mr Hawke said that he had promised in '88, back at Barunga, to hang the Barunga Statement in the Parliament House 'for whoever is Prime Minister of this country, not only to see, but to understand and also to honour'. With the presence of the Barunga Statement in this great building, he called on those to follow him to continue to find solutions to the abundant problems that still face Aboriginal peoples in this country. Nearly three decades have passed away since that exhortation, but those last words of Prime Minister Bob Hawke still hang in the air. May they inspire us all and remind us that we are yet to reconcile as a nation.

Bob was passionate about our nation. When Bob Hawke was talking about reconciliation, he wasn't talking about just practical reconciliation, the myth that simply adjusting social and economic policy settings constitutes real reconciliation; he knew it had to be about finding an accommodation of the rights and interests of the sovereign position First Nations held and never ceded. In fact, he identified this false dichotomy in the first item of substantive business which he moved in this new Parliament House, on 23 August 1988. Back then he said:

… the true remedy does not lie purely in the allocation of resources. For if we provide budgetary assistance but not hope, not confidence, not effective consultation, not reconciliation, then that assistance will fail to lift Aboriginal and Islander people from their disadvantaged state.

More than 30 years on from that speech, reconciliation may have become an insipid word or even a corrupted concept because of the dashed hope, the broken promises, the corporatisation and the program failure to close the gap, amid glittering functions at the well-off end of town.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart is a plea to the Australian people. It captures the contemporary and historical dispossession experienced by First Nations Peoples. The 'tyranny of our powerlessness' is about being constantly ground down and denied in preference to every other interest, constant delays and broken hopes. The time for such piecemeal measures has gone. The proposal of a pathetic voice to the parliament reliant upon an enabling power supported by referendum has not shifted the political appetite to commit with clear time frames. Such an interim measure, if achieved by way of referendum, could spark hope and indicate that Australia is serious in establishing an entirely new relationship with First Nations peoples. Embarking upon a treaty pathway, enlightened by truth-telling, would work towards healing our past and laying the foundations of unity for our future.

The abundant problems referred to by Bob Hawke still exist today; they still beset us. But there is a way out of this conundrum. My appeal to the political leadership of today, in remembrance of the commitment of Bob Hawke, is that we address the hard task of reconciliation; we address the question of a treaty and we set out the treaty framework process for a treaty with First Nations as part of their mantra of voice, truth and treaty making; that we own up to the constant detrimental procrastination; that we work to give pride to all Australians of goodwill; that we give certainty for First Nations; that we return politics to something decent, in the manner of Bob Hawke's leadership, despite his attempts and failures, that we, in our unity, can make real. Until we reach such an ultimate resolution we will always remain a damaged and divided nation. Thank you.