Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

For more than 65,000 years Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have cared for land, country, sea and sky. Our knowledge systems have sustained the world's oldest continuing cultures and remarkable biodiversity on this continent. I'm a proud Noongar Yamatji woman, and I know that when we talk about protecting country, we're not talking about land in an abstract way. We're talking about family. We're talking about spirit. We're talking about connection and whose country we are on. For tens of thousands of years First Nations people have cared for this country, shaping and renewing this continent, and protecting its waters, its animals, its plants and its stories. That care was never incidental. It was deliberate. It was guided by law, culture and a responsibility that was passed on from generation to generation.

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Board of Management Functions) Bill 2025 honours the principles that country is cared for by the people who it's always belonged to and that keeps traditional owners leading the way, guiding our national parks that are managed, protected and also shared. Just last week we celebrated 40 years since the Commonwealth returned the Uluru Kata Tjuta area to the Anangu people, a moment when justice, partnership and a shared love of country came together at the heart of our nation. The act of handback was more than a ceremony; it was a statement of principle and that the people who have cared for country for millennia should continue to do that with the respect and authority that comes from ownership and stewardship.

It was also a moment of extraordinary generosity. The Anangu people chose not to close Uluru to others but to share it and to invite all Australians and the world to learn about their culture, their law and their enduring relationship with that sacred place.

Debate interrupted.