Tracey Roberts (Pearce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the Voice to Parliament. This morning, the government introduced the first legislative steps towards achieving recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians in our Constitution. I want to share with you a letter from a constituent of mine in the electorate of Pearce who wrote to me to explain her support for the Voice. I will now read that letter.

I have just hit my seventh decade, and it is time!

I did not see my first Aboriginal person until I was thirteen years old as there were none attending my primary school or high school during those years.

Looking back at my education I am incredibly angry that my schoolbooks and the "Australian" history being taught in schools was completely whitewashed.

I learnt absolutely nothing about Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander history—nothing—it is like they did not exist.

It is a national disgrace that we did not properly recognise our First Nations people until the 1967 Referendum that sought to change the Constitution, to ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were recognised as part of the Australian population.

90.77 per cent of Australian voters voted Yes to these changes and we can do so again.

We all now know the history of dispossession, control, and oppression over the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders including the sorry history of States that enacted Aboriginal Protection Acts giving them the legal right to remove children from their families.

I have worked up north in Queensland as a young woman and in latter years in the northwest of WA.

During that period, I've been privileged to meet some amazing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are trying extremely hard to create better education, training, and work opportunities for their children, sometimes against all odds.

I have seen both the best and worst of policies and attitudes. The truth is we can do better and must by working together!

Anyone with any common sense must know, it is time for change.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart is a simple document that does not seek much in the scheme of things.

It is about recognition, respect, consultation, and the ability to have a voice on matters that impact on our First Nations people.

It is about truth telling and in time, Treaty.

I welcome the opportunity to have my say in a Referendum, as I genuinely want to embrace 65,000 years of continuous culture and what I have come to understand is the oldest known civilisation on

Earth.

The Referendum and Constitutional change to me represent a chance to truly embrace our history, the good and the bad, but importantly, a chance to change our future by taking this journey hand in hand with our First Nations people, towards true reconciliation.

Sincerely—a constituent of Pearce.