Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As you are aware, yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the referendum conducted on 27 May 1967. Yesterday I was also honoured to be asked to be the keynote speaker at a gathering organised by the Shellharbour council, one which involved a lot of Indigenous and non-Indigenous citizens in a celebration of commemoration and reflection on those events of four decades ago and some of the difficulties that continue to face our Indigenous communities.

This weekend’s event was preceded by a very important event on Friday night where the elders in my community presented themselves at what they referred to as a debutante ball. It was great to see many of the local female elders being presented to the gathering at the WIN Entertainment Centre and in a lot of cases being accompanied by their grandchildren. It was important to see that the generational issues of concern to Indigenous communities and the importance of their culture was being passed down from the elders to the younger people in our community.

It was four decades ago that the Australian people overwhelmingly voted to give the federal government the power to legislate for Aboriginal people and to count them as citizens in their own country. It is hard to believe, isn’t it, that it took until 1967 for the first peoples of our nation to have their citizenship rights recognised in that very important referendum. The overwhelming support for those constitutional changes—and, as history records, more than 90 per pent of Australians voted yes for those changes—was a national expression of hope: hope that the injustices, the disadvantages and the legacies of historical wrongs would be righted in the decades after the referendum.

These changes in 1967 were a big step on the road to reconciliation. As history records, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people were involved in gaining support over many years for the petition that led to the referendum and in the lobbying that urged for a bipartisan approach to the changes sought by the Indigenous community. The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, FCAATSI, was an important component of the campaign and that organisation embraced a number of high-profile Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. One in particular stands out in my memory—that is Faith Bandler. I was really heartened to see interviews with her last weekend and to recognise the important contribution that she has made to the cause of justice for Aboriginal people, her own people from the Torres Strait, and other islands.

The campaign for justice for Indigenous communities in our modern era probably dates back to 1938 when Bill Ferguson and 1,000 Aborigines protested in Sydney on the day they refer to as the ‘day of mourning’. At this protest, they loudly proclaimed their concern about the loss of their lands, the loss of their culture and the denial of citizenship rights.

With the changes in the referendum, a lot of hopes were realised but, then again, I think people understood that there was no guarantee of action to remove the legacy of disadvantage and discrimination. While over the last four decades there have been advances in Aboriginal legal and land rights and laudable achievements, particularly by noted Aboriginal actors, athletes, artists, academics, doctors and lawyers, the appalling state of living conditions for many remains a blight on Australia’s standing in the international community and shames us all. The commemoration of the anniversary of the referendum has been an opportunity to speak the truth and to find common ground among Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples so that we can work together to eradicate the disadvantages we are all so aware exist in many Indigenous communities.

As it happened, this weekend was also very close to the 10th anniversary of the Bringing them home report into the stolen generations. I think we should acknowledge the deep, personal grief inflicted on many children and their families and, to that end— (Time expired)