Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

This morning, at the outset of this speech, I want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land our parliament meets on today, the Ngunnawal people, and the traditional owners of Perth, where I hail from, and the Whadjuk people within the Noongar nation as well as all of the wonderful First Nations communities of Western Australia. It is a great honour to be a representative in this place, working alongside the likes of Senator Pat Dodson, for those people and communities.

As we all know, we have a long road to closing the gap in life experiences, life expectancy, social health and economic outcomes for First Nations people here in Australia. Today, I want to talk about a different gap. It's a gap that, when addressed, makes such a critical difference to closing the gaps that have been outlined in the Closing the Gap statement on all those health and social outcomes. It also closes a gap for all of us as Australians. That is the importance of our nation celebrating, learning about, resourcing and respecting First Nations culture and people, and how much we still have to learn. We've come some way, and a long way, but not nearly far enough. It's evident in our cultural institutions, our schools and our communities. I want to lay on the record that we're all the poorer as a country for not having done enough of that. I include in that the importance of the implementation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

As I reflect on my own life as an Australian, I remember, in 1979, the 150th anniversary of the centenary of the so-called foundation of Western Australia by British colonists. I remember the celebrations at school and the re-enactments. I recall them very vividly. They were done with blindness, as far as I could see from a child's eyes, to the many First Nations people of Western Australia and to the frontier wars and massacres that took place across the state. I would spend my childhood holidays at Rottnest Island, ignorant at the time to the fact that it was a place of misery, slavery and incarceration, a place of chains and death for many hundreds of First Nations men from around the state. I recall the common parlance of appalling racist language across the community and in the playground.

As a background to my childhood and growing up, I finally learned of the ongoing structural marginalisation of First Nations people in my home state, in a real sense, when I went to university at UWA. I knew of this in my heart, but I'd never really had a chance to learn about it. I spent some time studying African history at about the same time as the end of apartheid. This was in the 1990s. I learned about the restriction of South African people's movement, their removal from homelands, the law acquiring them to have papers to go anywhere, the stealing of wages, the stealing of children and so on. I also learned that the many laws of South Africa that were still evident at the time of apartheid, the laws that I had studied, had been copied from my own home state of Western Australia. With my eyes peeled back anew, I could see the many layers of this legacy etched into the daily life of First Nations people in my home state and, indeed, for all of its citizens, whether in the remote communities of the Kimberley or the strong First Nations communities in the Wheatbelt, where they've nevertheless been dispossessed from country in the process of clearing and agriculture.

With my eyes opened anew, I have had the chance to reflect now on how far we've come in the last 30 years and what we have learned from First Nations communities, and it is with the deepest, most heartfelt sense that I say today how much richer my own life as an Australian is for the opportunity to share in First Nations culture and in the many diverse local cultures from my own home state of WA. I believe fervently in what First Nations people have achieved in coming together with the Uluru Statement from the Heart. I have no fear of its implementation and I really do not understand why this government has sought to block its aspirations. Its implementation can only do great good for our nation. As that statement said:

With substantive constitutional change and structural reform, we believe this ancient sovereignty can shine through as a fuller expression of Australia's nationhood.

I believe very much that all Australians have a great deal to gain from the expression of that constitutional change and structural reform, including in the way that we debate issues and listen in this place. I don't see constitutional recognition, or indeed a voice to parliament, as a controversial or difficult thing. After all, it is the job of this place, through our Senate committees, to listen to the voices of all Australians. It should appear simple enough, in the same way we are able to have a parliamentary joint committee for corporations, a redress committee or an economics committee, to have an approach and a committee that listens to First Nations people on their terms and utilises their cultural paradigms as it does that. It's done in plenty of other parliaments around the world.

I have to say, in touching on the Uluru statement, that in Western Australia we have almost as many First Nations people in our prisons as Victoria does, which is pretty astounding when you consider the difference in our population size. So I very much want to endorse the principle of makarrata, so that we as a nation can come to terms with our future and reflect on our colonial history and the frontier wars and First Nations peoples' struggles in that regard. In that context, I want to commend the production of York that I recently saw in Perth at the Heath Ledger Theatre.

As I reflect on what the Greens were just saying in this debate, I want to say that we can't hector the rest of the country into this but we can embrace the notion that we all have so much to gain in the full expression of ourselves as a nation. I see this in my six-year-old son's pride, curiosity and joy in learning about First Nations culture at his own school and reading their stories. It is a far cry from my own childhood and a real reflection of the future I hope we can all achieve as a nation.