Linda Burney (Barton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I recognise country and everyone that has joined us today. I want to tell a very personal story of a remarkable day: 13 February 2008. The story had started many years before. It began with the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families—the Bringing them home report—some 11 years earlier. It followed a decade of stubborn refusal by a Prime Minister and a government, for reasons I will never understand and from whom an apology required so little yet means so much to so many.

I will never forget 27 May 1997 when Mick Dodson and the late Sir Ronald Wilson lodged the Bringing them home report at the convention centre in Melbourne at the 1997 Reconciliation Convention. Senator Dodson, our chair, his bravery was extraordinary. He declared in front of the world there can't be reconciliation without social justice, a moment that held such power, such truth and, in my mind, always will.

Thirteen years ago, after the election of the Rudd government, the apology allowed this country to breathe again. We'd been holding our collective breath for so long it was like suffocating. The power of words must never be underestimated: they can hurt but they can also heal. That day I sat in the third row of the Speaker's gallery, up there—your gallery, Deputy Speaker Gillespie. As I looked down on the chamber, there were present all living former prime ministers, bar one: Paul Keating, Bob Hawke, Malcolm Fraser and Gough Whitlam. I remember survivors of the stolen generation were sitting around the chamber, and we heard both the Prime Minister and the leader of the Labor Party talk about that today. I also acknowledge the presence of the stolen generations with us at the moment. We sat not quite believing the moment. As Prime Minister Rudd began to speak, the tears flowed not just in this place but across the nation. Prime Minister Rudd said:

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

He went on to say:

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

At the conclusion of the apology, as the Prime Minister and my leader have said, a coolamon was presented to the parliament by way of Kevin Rudd and Jenny Macklin. It was a powerful acknowledgement of the apology as a coolamon is traditionally used to keep safe our infants. This was a remarkable gesture of grace, generosity and dignity. I don't think I'll ever see anything like it again.

I left this chamber and made my way to the forecourt. Aunty Mae Robinson—she's gone now—was carrying a large black-and-white photo of a young Aboriginal girl with a big bow in her hair. It was her mother. We fell into each other's arms, and, through tears, Aunty Mae said: 'I brought Mummy with me today. She was removed and sent to Cootamundra.' On the lawn, thousands of people were holding each other and crying. It was a good day.

But the apology was not just about saying sorry; it was about making things right. It marked the beginning of a commitment by government to close the gap, to heal the very real inequalities between First Nations and other Australians. We all know the grim statistics, so familiar that our eyes glaze over and our ears close up, but think of these statistics, so familiar, as our mothers and brothers, fathers and cousins, sisters and friends who pass on while still so young. Labor supports the new approach to closing the gap and the new targets, but in the 2020 report only two of the seven targets were on track. After more than a decade, the other five were not, including life expectancy.

Refreshing the targets and setting new deadlines that are yet further away must not become a bureaucratic sleight of hand that lets this parliament off the hook for another decade—and I include all of us in that—because by 2031 a whole generation will have passed. We must all be accountable for the central commitment of closing the gap—closing the life expectancy gap in a generation. In 2005 the Social Justice Report set Australia the challenge of closing the gap. As one of the first items of business, the Rudd Labor government committed to closing the gap as part of a great national effort.

In 2017, the Uluru Statement from the Heart set this country the challenge of delivering voice, treaty and truth. Three and a half years later, those aspirations remain outstanding. If we want to see real and lasting progress on closing the gap, First Nations people must be at the centre of decision-making. I know the new agreement is about that. That is why Labor is totally committed to all three elements of the Uluru statement: a constitutionally enshrined voice to the parliament, not just the government; and a makarrata commission of treaty making and truth telling, because the healing power of telling the truth, as my leader has said, did not end with the apology; it began.

A constitutionally enshrined voice to the parliament is within our grasp if this government wants it and we extend our hand. As the Labor leader has said, we want to work with you in the spirit of bipartisanship to make this a reality in this term of parliament. I don't care who gets the credit. I really don't. I just want to see it done. If political parties offer their full-throated endorsement of an enshrined voice to the parliament and a model is settled with the broad support of First Nations communities, I have no doubt a referendum will succeed. There is time to get this done if we work together and with the community. The government started out this term speaking with real ambition, and now it's time for action. An enshrined voice to the parliament would mark the beginning of a pragmatic new way of doing business for all of us—a new way of listening, of being heard, of being accountable and of making sure the laws, programs and policies of the government are actually working to achieve what we, on this day each year, profess as our national duty: to finally close that gap.

Can I complete my statement with a direct quote from the Bringing them home report:

Most of us girls were thinking white in the head but were feeling black inside. We weren't black or white. We were a very lonely, lost and sad displaced group of people. We were taught to think and act like a white person, but we didn't know how to think and act like an Aboriginal. We didn't know anything about our culture.

We were completely brainwashed to think only like a white person. When they went to mix in white society, they found they were not accepted [because] they were Aboriginal. When they went and mixed with Aborigines, some found they couldn't identify with them either, because they had too much white ways in them. So that they were neither black nor white. They were simply a lost generation of children. I know. I was one of them.

Debate adjourned.

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