Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to follow my fellow South Australian Senator Stott Despoja to support this National Apology to the Stolen Generations. In May 1997 I spoke to a motion in the South Australian parliament as a member of that parliament at the time. It was a motion of apology and reconciliation. I indicated then that I thought it would be appropriate for the federal parliament to make a similar apology. It has taken more than 10 years. I hope that this occasion means that Aboriginal people will finally have the sense of a complete and heartfelt apology from all of the governments of Australia, because all of the states and territories, I think, have now delivered an apology for their role in the administration of the forcible removal of Aboriginal children. It is very pleasing to see that the national parliament, the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and all of the minor parties here in this chamber have now joined the states and territories with one voice to speak that apology to those people who have suffered the pain and the devastating consequences of a policy which was aimed at the assimilation of Aboriginal people.

The time at which we gave the apology in the South Australian parliament marked the 30th anniversary of the 1967 referendum to give the Commonwealth special powers to be used for the benefit of the Aboriginal people. I would just like to reiterate a short part of the remarks that I made at the time. I said:

It is not enough to recognise and acknowledge the mistakes of the past: we must also make a commitment to avoid those mistakes in the future. In 1967 the Australian people voted overwhelmingly in favour of that referendum in a country where very few referendum questions get up. The Australian people did that, I believe, because they thought it was a fair thing and a recognition of the rights of people in this country. We take for granted that our Government is set up to make laws for our benefit, even if we do not agree with those laws, but Aborigines have no such confidence based on their past experiences. The rights of Aborigines as citizens were denied—rights such as life, liberty, property and dignity. They deserve an apology for those past mistakes and deserve to be told that we will ensure that it will not happen in the future.

I think that is still precisely what this apology is about now. In my view, it is about apologising for the past, making sure that these mistakes do not happen in the future and doing something about it.

Senator Macdonald earlier quoted a friend of mine, Warren Mundine, about another issue, but I will quote him as well. I saw him just now at lunchtime and he said that this apology is essential because it will raise itself again and again and get in the way of what we do in the future. That is another reason it is important. We must have this as the starting point before we can go forward and rectify those mistakes.

In rectifying those mistakes, we must first of all ask ourselves why we are doing it. This is about the dignity of and the respect in which we hold Indigenous people in Australia and the acknowledgement that we treat all Australians with justice and equity. We do not treat all Australians the same but we treat them all with justice and equity and respect their rights as individuals.

In moving onto the future, the Prime Minister in his speech today talked about targets in education and health. I want to support those targets but with the understanding that they are set with the full cooperation of and consultation with Aboriginal people and that they are not decided for them. We must give Aboriginal people the dignity and respect that we give to all Australians—and the choice and the say in their lives and their lifestyles, and never deny that to them. It will not work if we do not do that.

I am no expert. I have spent some time working and living in outback areas of South Australia and the Northern Territory. I spent some years in Alice Springs working at a pathology lab in the hospital there and therefore had some experience of the Aboriginal communities around Alice Springs. I have a sister who has worked for 30 years in education in the Northern Territory, particularly with Aboriginal children. I do not claim any particular expertise, but this is my assessment of where the Aboriginal community is positioned: before we can move forward, we need to have the full cooperation of that community. They must make the choice about which direction they want to head in. The Prime Minister referred to that in his speech this morning. He said that there is no one-size-fits-all approach for the hundreds of Aboriginal communities around Australia. He said that what we are doing is setting a destination and we should be asking the Aboriginal people to come along with us.

Aboriginal people have been here on this land for many thousands of years. We came and we built our country and our wealth on their land. In doing that, we displaced and/or disrupted many Aboriginal people. That means, in my view, that we have an ongoing obligation to care and show consideration for those who continue to suffer the consequences of that trauma. The way we should be addressing the future is by providing ongoing compensation for that. This small proportion of our wealth should not be paid with any sense of paternalism or of someone with a better knowledge coming in to provide for those communities. It should be paid as a just and right contribution for the displacement that those Aboriginal communities have suffered.

In conclusion, it has given me great pleasure to be here as a representative of South Australia in the federal parliament and to be part of this national apology. It is clear, from the many people I have seen around Parliament House today, that receiving that apology has given pleasure to many Aboriginal people. I think that is a wonderful start for the future relations between Aboriginal people and the parliament and people of Australia.