Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (NT, Country Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Hansard source

I know you love referring to the Uluru dialogues and the Uluru statement. Here I go again: I will have to lend some truth telling for you. The government needs to understand that 1,200 invite-only participants is not representative of the over 800,000 Indigenous Australians in this country. I have pointed out, and my colleague Senator Liddle has pointed out, that the word Uluru has been exploited for the purpose of this exercise. There are Anangu elders who are very upset about the exploitation of the word Uluru as part of the Uluru statement. You talk about, and I notice the Greens always talking about their respect for Indigenous Australians and culture, but the appropriate cultural processes did not take place in order to bring about the Uluru Statement from the Heart. You keep referring back to it as if this is a significant statement. You keep attempting to convince the Australian people that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people wholeheartedly support this statement. No other race of Australian people are treated in this way. To suggest that 0.03 per cent of the population of Indigenous Australians putting their signature to this document is a fair representation of Indigenous Australians and our views, as far as I'm concerned, is utterly disrespectful. Yet you use your positions in these chambers to throw this at us—representatives like myself and Senator Liddle, those of us who actually do have a spiritual connection to Uluru—as if this legitimises your argument. It's completely and utterly flawed. It's disgraceful, in fact, and I won't be lectured to on issues such as the Uluru statement and culture and all of those issues, especially when you can't identify what the issues are that are specific to Indigenous Australians that make us different to the rest of Australia.

I'm quite concerned about the term 'different' and the use of the word 'differently', which suggests that we are different to other Australians. Certainly it is my sense that we're looked upon differently. Certainly there are members of the Greens party who want to rescue us because we're so different! This word 'differently' sits within the memorandum. You can't identify what issues are different for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians as opposed to the rest of this nation, but that is your justification for the requirement of a detail-less voice to parliament. Senator, can you outline what makes us different?