Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a)

notes that:

(i)

Australia was occupied by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who had settled on the continent for many thousands of years before British colonisation, and

(ii)

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders suffered major dispossession and dispersal upon acquisition of their traditional lands by the colonisers;

(b)

urges the Government to affirm:

(i)

the importance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and heritage, and

(ii)

the entitlement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to self determination subject to the Constitution and the laws of the Commonwealth of Australia; and

(c)

calls on the Government:

(i)

to support the adoption of the draft United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and

(ii)

to ratify the Declaration upon its adoption as a way of ensuring that Indigenous peoples have minimum standards for the protection of their fundamental human rights.

Question negatived.