Malarndirri McCarthy (NT, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to inform the Senate of the passing this week of an incredible Australian and wonderful leader for First Nations people, Dr Lowitja O'Donoghue.

Dr Lowitja O'Donoghue was born in 1932. She was a proud Yankunytjatjara woman and a fierce advocate and leader for the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. She was born in the remote north-west corner of South Australia. At the age of two, Dr O'Donoghue was removed from her mother and put in the care of missionaries at Colebrook children's home at Quorn, South Australia. She was able to reunite with her mother only in 1967, more than 30 years later. In 1954, Dr O'Donoghue became the first Aboriginal person to train as a nurse at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, and this began the start of her journey as one of Australia's most celebrated leaders. In fact, I am sure that her time working as a nurse and her ability to look after and care for people enabled her to lead the way for First Nations people to work in the health sector. She was able to take that throughout her life into the community controlled health sector.

From 1970 to 1972, Dr O'Donoghue was a member of the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement and later became regional director of the Australian Department of Aboriginal Affairs. In 1976, she became the first Aboriginal woman to be awarded an Order of Australia. A year later, she was appointed the foundation chair of the National Aboriginal Conference and chair of the Aboriginal Development Commission. In March 1990, she was appointed the founding chairperson of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, ATSIC. During this time, she played a key role in drafting the native title legislation that arose from the High Court's historic Mabo decision. Dr O'Donoghue became the inaugural chair of the Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal and Tropical Health between 1996 and 2003, which later was named the Lowitja Institute in Dr O'Donoghue's honour.

Dr O'Donoghue received numerous awards and accolades. She was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, CBE, in 1983 and Australian of the Year in 1984, during which time she became the first Aboriginal person to address the United Nations General Assembly. She won the Advance Australia Award in 1982, was named a National Living Treasure in 1998, was awarded a Companion of the Order of Australia, AC, in 1999 and was named Dame of the Order of St Gregory the Great, DSG, a papal award, in 2005. There would be hundreds, if not thousands, of Australians across the country, especially First Nations people, who have been influenced and who have been able to look to Dr O'Donoghue and be inspired by the example that she set. If I can look at my own personal experiences of having met with her and learnt from her in my early years as a journalist and when she was also working in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, I know that, for those staff who worked with her at the time, that was an incredible opportunity for our country to try and engage with First Nations people and to give First Nations people an opportunity to lift out of despair and poverty.

Lowitja O'Donoghue actually experienced the deep challenges of what it was like to also be a commanding presence in a very humble sort of way. I heard Dr John Paterson, from the Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance NT, speak about her the other day and how, when he was working as part of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission as the commissioner in the Northern Territory, there were some times when she did pick up the phone to gently remind him that there were certain things he had to do. She had a way about her that told people she was very serious about what she wanted to do at the federal level with the commission, and she encouraged everyone to work as a team.

It was good to be able to hear from others just recently who spoke strongly about her as well. For example, Noel Pearson made the comment that she was 'the greatest Aboriginal leader of the modern era' and 'the rock who steadied us in the storm'. She was pivotal in the advancement of Indigenous causes and prevalent during some of the most historic moments in modern Aboriginal affairs, including the 1967 referendum, the native title legislation in 1993 and the National Apology to the Stolen Generations in 2008. Even our former senator Pat Dodson, the father of reconciliation, said:

This is a sad day for first peoples of this nation. We have lost an extraordinary person of great courage and strength.

I would also like to reach out to the families of Dr O'Donoghue and express our thanks for her service to our country and also our deepest condolences on her passing. I would like to also reach out to the Lowitja Institute, to the staff and to the board. The Lowitja Institute is named in honour of Dr Lowitja O'Donoghue. It is Australia's national institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research. A major funder of the Lowitja Institute is the Department of Health and Aged Care, which provides a total of $30.5 million to assist them. We know that the institute's work on the health and wellbeing of Australia's First Peoples is imperative. The fact that the institute has strong networks with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peak bodies, professional associations and communities is essential. Again, in life as in death, Dr O'Donoghue will forever remain integral in the development of First Nations peoples and the rights of First Nations peoples to improve our lives through the way she conducted herself, through all the things that she did and how she continues to do it. To each of you who continue to work at the Lowitja Institute, our thoughts are with you as well. I know that many of you go to work each day incredibly proud to work for an institute named after her, but also in the work that you do in trying to improve the lives of First Nations people.

One of the things I am proud of, having certainly known Dr O'Donoghue and having learnt from her—as I said, as a young journalist but also coming through in my own community of Borroloola and watching and learning from our elders at the time like her—is that I'm incredibly conscious of the fact that, as I stand as the Assistant Minister for Indigenous Health, we have work ahead of us in terms of renal dialysis and the units that we are trying to roll out across the country for the chronic disease; in terms of rheumatic heart disease and the work that we're doing in particular in places like Maningrida; and in terms of what we're doing in terms of the employment of more First Nations clinicians through the 500 health worker traineeship programs. All of this is a good and a constant reminder that the legacy of Dr O'Donoghue continues to live on, and I pay my respects to her family today.