Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The earliest photo I have of me in Boorloo, the Perth electorate, is at a rally. Ron and Wendy, my mum and dad, are walking down William Street, marching for Aboriginal land rights. In my dad's arms is a six-month-old baby—me. My mum is pushing the empty pram. They're smiling for a staged photo, but the reality of these protests and rallies in 1985 was different. Dad tells me they were yelled at and hateful slurs came from the street to Aboriginal leaders and all who supported them, like my mum and dad. On one occasion mum and dad, with six-month-old me, were spat on—hate in physical form. But we know that compassion overcomes hate. I'm a realist. We'll see division, racism and hate in this debate, but time and time again hate loses the policy argument. It has no moral authority, no integrity and no longevity.

For some Australians it will be confronting to see the racism that so many Aboriginal people have experienced throughout their lifetime. Other Australians will learn for the first time the truth of Australia's treatment of First Nations people. Together we can learn and grow. We can choose our future, choose to heal, choose to take responsibility and choose to recognise and consult with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, because it is the right thing to do.

My parents were both primary school teachers. They taught me not just to stand up for what is right; they taught me to make what is right a reality. Our home on Hampton Road was opposite Fremantle Prison, which was then a working prison that was disproportionately filled with Aboriginal people. Australian prisons are both symbols of justice and symbols of injustice. Fremantle Prison has long since closed and become a World Heritage site, but Indigenous incarceration continues to be an unacceptable national failure. As the Uluru Statement from the Heart says:

Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are aliened from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future.

It is this hope for the future that dominated my recent discussion with Dr Robert Isaacs, a great Western Australian Aboriginal leader. He said: 'The government must honour its commitment to the Uluru statement. The Voice will take not only Aboriginal people but the Australian community into the future—a new beginning, a new era for Aboriginal affairs in the community at large.'

Debate interrupted.

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