Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In 2017, the Uluru Statement from the Heart outlined a pathway towards reconciliation and towards constitutional recognition of our First People. I am very pleased to say that, on Thursday 7 November, Senator Pat Dodson, from Western Australia, also known as the Father of Reconciliation will be coming to my electorate of Macnamara to deliver a lecture, 'On the road to reconciliation'. It is fitting that Senator Dodson will be delivering this lecture, which is the Marek Edelman Centenary Lecture. Marek Edelman was a freedom fighter. He fought in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising. He was actually the leader of that uprising after Mordechai Anielewicz was killed in the fight in the Warsaw Ghetto. After the war, Marek Edelman served in Poland as a senator, fighting against fascism and standing against anti-Semitism, and, of course, eh was famous for standing up against the silence of the Bosnian genocide in the 1990s. It is fitting that Pat Dodson is delivering the Marek Edelman lecture this year as Pat talks about the pathways to righting the wrongs of the past, to building an Australia that is inclusive of our First Nations people and to making sure that Australia is a place where we bring people together and we celebrate our differences and we celebrate our shared past.