Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Indigenous Affairs (Senator McCarthy) to a question without notice I asked today relating to the Uluru Statement from the Heart and Makarrata.

There's not a day that goes by in this place that I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised, because the minister gave us some answers about the principles of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The principles say that First Nations sovereignty has never been ceded and is spiritual, that there needs to be a constitutional voice, that makarrata includes truth and treaty and that the rates of incarceration and child removals actually require action in this place. They may have taken the commitment of a constitutional voice to a referendum, but they are stalling and continuing to stall.

This morning, I was at a meeting with the minister and said, 'Let's do some truth-telling in this place.' Right now, we have four Closing the Gap targets going backwards: child development, incarceration and deaths in custody, suicide and mental health, and child protection. These are disgusting. In 2024, we shouldn't be having this conversation. There's no structural reform happening. The Productivity Commission has told you that several times already, and you continue to ignore it.

Well, let's wind forward. Everyone was patting themselves on the back during the last fortnight at Garma, in the ceremonial grounds of the Gumatj people—to reset, regroup and regather. Wow, that sounds like some sort of retreat! All the while, this government doesn't want to tell the truth. The truth is they went into the lands of the Gumatj people, sat in a ceremonial place, accepted the sacred object—the Prime Minister did that—and then gutted the Indigenous affairs portfolio for the poor minister that walked into that. It was her first week in the job. I tell you what, if my boss had done that to me, I would have turned around and said: 'I'm out of here. I'm not accepting that.' The following Wednesday I went to Larrakia country, to Garramilla, and stood with the Gumatj people outside the High Court because this government has taken them there to appeal a case in which the Gumatj people won $700 million of just-terms compensation—which they deserve—for mining operations on their country.

How can cabinet ministers, especially the Prime Minister, from the other place, go into those ancestral lands, accept a sacred object and say, 'By the way, I'll see you at court next week'? How shameful! Shame on you for doing that to the Gumatj people. They had to reset and react. They were so confused when I was with Djawa Yunupingu at court on Wednesday. When I sat in that courtroom and listened to the argument that Commonwealth solicitors gave, they gave the case that the 'no' case had. They talked about sovereign power of the Constitution. It's shameful that the Labor Party have now become the opposition.

They want to talk about bipartisanship. You're waiting on a bloke from the other place who walked out of the apology in 2008. Why would you wait on him? He's not going to give you anything. We could have makarrata tomorrow if this government were brave and courageous enough for the 6.5 million people who voted yes in this country. Stop denying us what we deserve—First Nations justice in this place. We want a makarrata commission.

As for Lee Point—the answers that were given about their own bulldozers not even being able to protect 400-year-old trees—this is a farce. We've been dealing with this for 65,000 years, and now we have environmentalists at Lee Point standing with the Larrakia people against DHA and this government. The Minister for the Environment and Water should be ashamed. You are stalling on Aboriginal cultural heritage protections in this country, and your environment laws are so weak that you are ultimately just land clearing. Land clearing for what? Most of those houses are going to be sold off for profit. They are not going for homelessness and housing, which Minister Gallagher just told everyone.

This is ridiculous. We are still in this stuck-in-time moment; we feel like we're in a damn time machine. This is not just happening to Larrakia people and Gumatj people; it's happening everywhere. You don't want truth telling in this nation, particularly at the federal level while you can kick the political football down to the states and territories because the truth is that you've got blackfellas in this country tied up in litigation for years on federal law, native title and cultural heritage.

Question agreed to.