Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When I heard the news of Uncle Archie Roach's passing on the weekend, my heart broke a little, and I expect that was a feeling shared by many, many thousands of Australians. That's why I'm really honoured to be able to rise in this Australian parliament today to both remember and honour the extraordinary life and legacy of that great songman Archie Roach.

He passed away last week aged just 66. That's a young age in Australia these days, but it came after a long illness. I want to acknowledge the lovely tributes from the shadow minister for Indigenous Australians and my colleague the member for Perth, with his great tellings of his family's experiences of going to those concerts in the early days in Perth.

Of course, Uncle Archie Roach's career spanned almost four decades, so there's a lot to tell if you want to track through each of those different stages of his life. He fell in love with gospel and country music. As a young man, he survived, as we've heard, periods of great trauma, of homelessness and dependency on alcohol. But the trauma of being separated from his family really was such a strong theme and an important part of his project of healing in this nation throughout his life.

His debut album was an ARIA-award-winning album: Charcoal Lane back in 1990. The anthemic track on that album is the one we all refer to today: 'Took the Children Away'. That really defined and helped shape Archie's career and introduced him to a very large audience in Australia. He went on to record nine studio albums. He also did a film soundtrack and lots of compilations and live albums as well. His November 2019 album Tell Me Why was his very first to reach the national top 10, and that was a pretty amazing achievement. Those very powerful songs from Archie Roach tell his story of really heartbreaking loss but also love and healing. That was a journey he took through song and music and so generously gave to all of us in this nation.

He shared his life with his life partner and creative soulmate, Ruby Hunter. As the Goanna frontman, Shane Howard, who was a longtime friend of Archie and Ruby, said earlier this week:

It's very raw. It's very real. It's a lot to lose, but I think Ruby might be calling him home.

Uncle Archie was a very proud Gunditjmara and Bundjalung senior elder. He was a musician, an author, a poet, a philosopher, a human rights campaigner and, as we've heard from many of the speeches, a member of the stolen generations. Whilst he was born in Mooroopna, Victoria, Archie was just three years old when he was forcibly removed from his family. He was placed in foster care and, like so many from the stolen generations, was told he was an orphan. He didn't know he still had a family to track down. The member for Perth very eloquently told that story and told of that heartbreak.

There was an editorial in The Age on Archie's passing which recalled the time at the very beginning of his music career when, in 1989—and he was still pretty much unknown to a mainstream Australian audience then—he was invited to perform live at the Melbourne concert hall by Paul Kelly and the Messengers. This was the concert that the member for Perth just referred to where Archie ended that relatively short set that he was given as a support act on the evening with some pretty heart-wrenching recollections of his experiences of the Stolen Generations. He led with that song 'Took the Children Away', which includes the words:

The welfare and the policeman

Said you've got to understand

We'll give them what you can't give

Teach them how to really live.

Teach them how to live they said

Humiliated them instead

Taught them that and taught them this

And others taught them prejudice.

You took the children away

As Paul Kelly, that other great Australian storyteller, would later recall, the audience sat there stunned:

He finished the song and there was still dead silence ... Archie thought he'd bombed, that everybody hated it, so he just turned and started to walk off-stage.

And as he walked off, this applause started to build and build and build. It was this incredible reaction. I'd never seen it before—people were so stunned at the end of the song that it took them a while just to gather themselves to applaud.

Archie Roach toured the world, headlining and opening shows for some of the great storytellers and songwriters: Joan Armatrading, Bob Dylan, Billy Bragg, Tracy Chapman, Suzanne Vega and my much-loved Patti Smith. That would have been my dream come true, to see Patti Smith and Uncle Archie Roach perform together. I've seen them both separately, but that is something I missed, and I deeply regret that. But certainly the legacy Archie Roach has left us is immense.

I remember some of my very early education in challenging the stories I might have been told about my nation when I was growing up as a young child schooling in Newcastle and Bermagui. It was songs from musicians and bands like No Fixed Address and Warumpi Band—my introduction to early Indigenous contemporary music—that really made me think about the stories of nationhood. It was those songs, and then songs of people like Uncle Archie Roach that came later, that really alerted me to an unsettled business in this nation. They were stories about land rights, sovereignty, kinship, trauma—and ultimately healing. They were great, great gifts to our nation.

Archie Roach's strength and courage in sharing his own story was crucial to establishing really great initiatives like having a Stolen Generations Redress Scheme. He never gave up on seeking justice. His generous gift of song and music to this nation is one that so many Australians have now taken to heart. Archie Roach changed lives. He's helped change our nation, and for that we shall always be forever indebted. He showed us the power of music, not just as a healing agent but also as a tool to seek justice.

At this time, I'm really thinking of his two sons, Amos and Eban. I send my heartfelt condolences to them and to all the family during this sorry time. Please take some comfort in knowing that there are thousands of Australians mourning with you today.

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