Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today is WA Day, marking the establishment of the Swan River Colony, the forerunner of the great state of Western Australia, in 1829. This commemoration must always be tempered by an acknowledgement of the Aboriginal people whose culture was so critically disrupted by this settlement. Our path to reconciliation of this clash of cultures has been pretty chequered. It is a work in progress that will require Aboriginal people to be given much more opportunity to shape their own destiny. On the other side, we are a community that has in the last few decades grown rapidly and has become much more ethnically diverse. This expansion has brought even more energy and vitality to the always energetic WA community.

The WA spirit has been forged by isolation and extended periods of hard times. It is inclusive, welcoming anyone, and it is creative and cooperative, as for many years we lacked the population to simply replicate the old order, requiring inventiveness. We joined the Federation a little reluctantly, and we may have tried to escape in the past, but our future is now clearly as part of the Australian family. We encourage our eastern states cousins to be as interested in and open to our stories as we are to theirs, and so to strengthen this shared Australian identity.