David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I fear that at the core of this proposal is a deep insecurity about who we are as a country—an aversion to coming to terms with our past and being able to acknowledge the brutal dispossession of a land inhabited for 60,000-plus years by hundreds and hundreds of generations and the massacres that occurred that we do not talk about. Of course, you and I didn't do that. We weren't there, but we're here now, and we choose how to be part of a country that is grappling with its past, as we saw in the referendum.

There are First Nations people alive today who were ripped from their families and stopped from speaking their languages. An acknowledgement of country is a sign of respect to those people and to this continent's first people. As an immigrant—I've only been here 20 years or so—I think it is such an incredibly generous thing for First Nations people across the country, who have been subjected to what they have been, to still be willing to welcome gatherings and to bring their culture and say: 'This is all of our country. Welcome.'