Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

Of course child sexual assault is abhorrent, and everybody in this place would condemn it. I notice that the relevant organisation in this space in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, SNAICC, has said another royal commission, another inquiry, is not a solution. Like many of the interventions by those opposite, this is all about the politics and not about the solution. It's always about the politics, never about the solution. What is the content of this motion and the letter really about? It's really about an angry pursuit of the people who those opposite don't like and who didn't agree with them in the recent referendum.

Let me make the government's position on this referendum really clear. We accept the result of the referendum unequivocally—without equivocation. The Prime Minister made that very clear on Saturday evening. I understand that there are those opposite who are not interested in solutions but interested in the politics. They are interested in looking for an argument, not in looking for solutions. What we as a government will do is listen. We will listen carefully. We will, as I said, having accepted what happened over the course of the weekend, listen carefully and continue to proceed in a careful and deliberate way. We will listen carefully to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. There is a difference, of course, between the approaches. The Prime Minister of Australia said many, many times in the lead-up to the last election that we would hold a referendum on the request that was made to us in the Uluru statement. And do you know what the Prime Minister did? He held the referendum.