Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—Our founding document, the Australian Constitution, has a hole, a void, a silence. There is no recognition of the first occupation of the Australian continent and its islands by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. There is no acknowledgement of the continuing relationship with traditional lands and waters and no respecting of their culture, languages and heritage. Indeed, the Constitution itself shows no respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It contains obsolete, anachronistic and racist provisions—for example, section 25 of the Constitution contemplates that the states of this country can exclude people from voting on the basis of their race. It should go. It is redundant. It is useless. It has no place in the 21st century of this country.

It took until the early 1960s before the Indigenous people of this land received voting rights. It look until 1967 before the people of this country overwhelmingly voted in favour of giving the Commonwealth power to pass laws for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and to include them in the census. After more than two centuries of dispossession of land, destruction of language, disadvantage in education and discrimination in the workplace, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have every expectation and every belief that the Constitution should recognise them and provide protection for them and their descendants.

This final report, along with our interim report in July 2014 and our progress report in October 2014, shows that the expert panel, chaired by Professor Patrick Dodson and Mark Leibler AC, got it right. This final report endorses the intention and the thrust of the expert panel's recommendations in 2012. Constitutional change must be real and it must be substantive. As I say, it must get rid of those racist provisions. It must retain the integrity and the purpose of the 1967 referendum result. It must recognise, it must acknowledge and it must respect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, their prior occupation, their continuing relationship with land and waters, their culture, their language and their heritage. It should include a prohibition against racial discrimination constitutionally.

Preambular words and symbolic change will not get it done. They will not be accepted by the Australian public. If the evidence that the submitters gave to this inquiry is to be believed—and at every public hearing from Tasmania to the Torres Strait, from the Kimberley to Brisbane and elsewhere, we heard the same message again and again, overwhelmingly, consistently and unequivocally—the needs, aspirations, dreams and desires of Aboriginal people are to be protected from governments passing laws which adversely discriminate against them.

Mr Mark Leibler AC, the co-chair of the expert panel, said at one of our inquiries in Melbourne:

At every single consultation that we held—

that is, the expert panel—

there was a reference to substantive recognition—'We want substantive recognition.' What did that mean? It turned out that substantive recognition means something to preclude racial discrimination.

For those constitutional conservatives who say that something like that which the expert panel has recommended and that which we include in the various options in our recommendations are single-line bills of rights, I say it is nonsense. The High Court of this country has found implied rights of freedom and of political communication. While we do not have a bill of rights in this country, as this report sets out, we certainly have rights protected expressly by the Constitution of this country: protection of property, freedom of trade and movement, trial by jury, freedom of religion and the prohibition against discrimination on the basis of state residence. I refer to sections 41, 51, 31, 92, 80, 116 and 117 of the Constitution.

This is a final report. It is unanimous. It has strong multipartisan support. There is no dissenting report. Liberal, Labor, Nationals and Greens have all agreed. I want to commend the chair, Ken Wyatt, the member for Hasluck; and the deputy chair, Senator Nova Peris. What an historic moment—the report is tabled in this place by an Indigenous man and in that place over there by an Indigenous woman. This report has the support, we are confident, of Indigenous people around the country. I believe the Prime Minister is utterly genuine in wanting to get constitutional recognition done. I believe the Leader of the Opposition is utterly genuine in wanting this to be done. There is great multiparty support across this chamber and in the Senate to get this done. There is momentum, consultation and engagement. The opposition will be there—the Leader of the Opposition, Senator Peris and I will be there on 6 July for this meeting. The opposition are ready, willing and available to consult and engage and do our best to participate in a bipartisan way with the government. We want this done. We want to do nothing without the support of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We think it is time. Labor believe it is more than time.

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