Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that on Thursday June 11th the Prime Minister said in a radio interview that "there was no slavery in Australia",

(b) acknowledges that:

(i) First Nations peoples worked on farms and pastoral stations for rations instead of wages; they were traded amongst settlers, with children being taken from their families and moved across the country to work,

(ii) First Nations peoples' wages were stolen,

(iii) First Nations peoples had restrictions placed on them such as restrictions on movement and choice — for example people had to apply for permission to travel and what they could purchase and where they could live,

(iv) First Nations peoples were subject to forced labour,

(v) at least 60,000 South Sea islanders were taken to Australia from 1857 to 1908, where they worked largely in cotton, sugar and pastoral industries in a process named 'blackbirding', and

(vi) there are many other examples of such abuse; and

(c) calls on the Prime Minister to withdraw these comments, apologise and engage in a genuine process of truth-telling about Australia's history.