Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

I am quite surprised that the preceding speaker did not choose in his address to engage in any material way with the substantial injustices that are experienced by Australia's First Nations people. I am genuinely surprised, because I think a decent person genuinely seeking to reflect their community might have had the grace to consider the cruel circumstances, the limited life choices and the discrimination that has propelled this conversation in recent weeks and has driven so many people to reflect on what we might do better. I was surprised not to hear any reflection on those questions from the preceding speaker.

What is happening in the United States has caused many Australians to reflect on the treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by law enforcement. As Labor's shadow minister for Indigenous affairs, Linda Burney, recently said, what is happening in America is an example of the divisive and corrosive effects of systemic discrimination, and racism and we don't need to worry about importing it here because it is already here and it would be far better if we accepted and were honest about our history and our present.

This government needs to consider its priorities. Government members stood in support of today's motion. Instead of picking a fight about protests, they might do better to turn their minds to the material issues that drove the protests. Instead, we've had tone deaf comments from the Prime Minister and tone deaf comments from Senator Cormann. Thousands of Australians clearly were trying to balance their sense of responsibility about their obligations to protest against institutional racism alongside their obligations to support public health. But there's no support for those obligations from this government. The government has the policy levers to effect serious social change, whether it be in law enforcement, social services, housing or health care. It could choose to address the injustices that are present for First Nations people. But government members don't choose to come into this chamber and talk about that.

Even during Reconciliation Week, the unfair and sometimes brutal treatment of First Nations people occurred on an almost daily basis. In my own neighbourhood, footage emerged of a young Aboriginal man slammed to the ground by a New South Wales police officer. An Aboriginal woman in a Perth prison was body slammed by a guard and left in a critical condition. A young Aboriginal girl was incorrectly accused of stealing at a local store. An Aboriginal woman was dragged out of a Melbourne hospital by staff after experiencing a drug overdose. I don't imagine that those events or stories are surprising for First Nations people, because this is the real experience of discrimination that they seek to speak to us about again and again.

I want to read to this chamber one of the most moving parts of the Statement from the Heart that was adopted at Uluru:

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.

These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is the torment of our powerlessness.

I think about that statement, adopted by so many people at Uluru after an extensive nationwide consultation, undertaken at the request of government, that went on for many years. I think about that powerful statement of powerlessness—that sense that, no matter how often they raise their voice, they are not heard—and I think about the callous, disrespectful way that the government responded when that statement was presented to them. They dismissed it out of hand. They mischaracterised the idea of a constitutionally enshrined voice to parliament as a third chamber, which is not something that was ever sought by people at Uluru. And they did all of that after having invited the ideas of our First Nations people. They dismissed those ideas out of hand almost immediately upon receipt, and without discussion—without discussion with the people who they had requested to drive and run that consultation. It was disgusting!

And so, if people feel that they are not being heard and say, 'We have no other way to have our voice heard and to have our perspective heard—to be listened to by this government—except to protest,' well, who can blame them? Their treatment by this government over seven years has been absolutely disgraceful. They have had their time wasted. They have engaged again and again and again in good faith—in conversations about reform of the CDEP, in conversations about reform of the Closing the Gap targets and in conversations about reform and constitutional recognition. They have engaged again and again and again, at the request of government, in good faith, and nothing ever changes.

There is absolutely a sense that people's time is being wasted. And if people are angry and upset then I understand that. The last week ought to have been a pause for reflection, not for coming into this chamber and playing petty politics with, arguably, the most serious issue that this nation needs to address.