Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before this debate was interrupted by question time, I was indicating to the Senate that I, like my colleagues, will be supporting the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Bill 2012.

I mention, for those listening to this debate, that speakers get a maximum of 20 minutes to contribute on the bill. Just before two o'clock, when I started my contribution, I indicated my support for the bill. I also took the opportunity at that time, when all of the government ministers were in here preparing for question time, to describe a situation in Townsville. We hear many fine words about recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people—and I agree with the need for recognition and I agree with the contents of this bill. There is a situation in Townsville at this very moment that involves Indigenous people, many of whom do not come from Townsville but come from outlying areas up in the gulf and Cape York, some 300 or 400 kilometres from their home base, and do not have big support networks in Townsville.

Until recently those people were able to get a state government sponsored taxi fare to the hospital for renal dialysis. For whatever reason, the state government suspended that program. I do not want to get into the blame game, but this has resulted in a terrible situation for those Indigenous people requiring renal dialysis. There was a community group that had started to transport them—a group of volunteers who convey people around Townsville. Without going into detail, for a number of reasons it became impossible for that not-for-profit community group to continue doing that at no charge. One of these Indigenous people in Townsville has already died, and I am told that four have died since this transport service was stopped.

I took that opportunity just before question time, while ministers were in the chamber, to say: please can you do something about this? If you are really interested in Indigenous people, do something positive that will help bridge the gap that you speak so much about. I asked ministers: please refer the three ministers I wrote to to my letter of 20 February. Have a look at it; please do something urgently.

I thought everyone in this chamber would agree with me. Some of my Labor colleagues shouted at me. I think it was Senator Sterle—if it was not him, I will apologise later; if it was not him, it was one of his colleagues—who said, 'You wouldn't even know what an Aborigine looked like.'

'How dare you raise this in this debate!' I heard another of the Labor senators say. I find that appalling and offensive. It is not offensive to me but to the people that I am trying to help in this chamber.

Why did I raise it here? I raised it because it is now six days ago that I wrote the ministers an urgent plea—not a political plea—to help these people. Why? I had been asked by Indigenous people to help them. I had appeared on the Indigenous radio station 4K1G in Townsville, and I have had two discussions with the presenter about this very issue.

I have had no response from the ministers' offices. Admittedly it is only six days, but this is a matter of life and death. So I take the opportunity to alert the ministers to this critical situation—to say, 'Please do something about it'—and all that happens to me is that I get shouted at by Labor members of parliament. These are the same members who will get up and give very impassioned speeches about Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander people, and yet when there is an opportunity to do something to help Indigenous and Islander people all I get is abuse.

Just for the Labor senator who interjected and said, 'You wouldn't know what an Aborigine looked like,' may I say that, unlike most Labor senators, who live in the cities—in the flash houses or apartments—and many of whom went to the flash private schools, I went to a state school. And I grew up with both Aboriginal and Islander kids. I have to confess that I had some problem with Aboriginal and Islander kids because they were always the ones who tackled me hardest at Rugby League. They were the ones who were game winners in basketball, because they were very talented people. They were the ones who would attend parties at my house and win some of the young females that I was trying to deal with. So I find it very offensive that Labor senators suggest that I would not know what an Aborigine looks like.

I only raise these things to say that I have lived and worked with Indigenous people. And I know that the issues that are of interest to Aboriginal and Islander people are not so much the flowery words of apology—although they do play a part—but the need their people suffer as a result of being treated as being different. It started with Whitlam saying, 'Look, we owe you a living. We've wronged you. So don't bother to do anything; we will feed you and clothe you and you won't have to work.' Indigenous leaders now understand—Noel Pearson is one—that the welfare society imposed upon Indigenous people by the Whitlam government and subsequent 'socially conscious' people from the other side of the chamber, is the worst thing that has ever happened to Indigenous people. And their leaders now understand this.

So why couldn't some of the time and money that we have spent on this particular bill, which I think everyone agrees with—everything spent on all the committees, inquiries and other costs—be put into transport for Indigenous people requiring renal dialysis in Townsville? And I am sure the same thing happens everywhere else.

I return to the bill before us. As I said earlier, this bill says:

(1) The Parliament, on behalf of the people of Australia, recognises that the continent and the islands now known as Australia were first occupied by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Whilst I am supporting the bill for its symbolism, I have to say that I think most Australians actually understand that Australia was first occupied by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The bill goes on to record:

(2) The Parliament, on behalf of the people of Australia, acknowledges the continuing relationship of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples with their traditional lands and waters.

I think there would be few, if any, Australians who need an act of parliament to inform them of that. And I think most Indigenous people accept that every other Australian accepts those two things.

And, of course, the bill goes on to say:

(3) The Parliament, on behalf of the people of Australia, acknowledges and respects the continuing cultures, languages and heritage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Again, I think most Australians, without this bill, would have accepted, acknowledged and respected those cultures, languages and the heritage. And I think most Indigenous and Islander people also accept that other Australians accept that.

So, whilst this is symbolism—whilst it is, I guess, a step in the right direction—I do not think it is the most important issue that confronts our country as it deals with Indigenous people. The Labor Party talks a lot about closing the gap, but it never seems to happen. Even last week a woman—she was half Aboriginal and half Islander; she proudly told me her family history—came into my office and said, 'Please, Senator, can you help me. We've always voted Labor because the Labor Party come and promise us everything. They've been doing it for 20 years. They keep giving us the same promise every year and we keep voting for them, but nothing ever happens. Can you please make sure something happens.' She was speaking in relation to the protection of children in trouble.

I do not want to be political about this, but if you look at the results in the Queensland election you will see that places like Palm Island—an Indigenous community off Townsville—for the first time ever, had a majority vote for the LNP.

We usually used to get five or 10 per cent of the vote on Palm Island. This year on first preference we got 48 per cent, from memory, and on two-party preferred an enormous vote. Have a look at what happened in the Northern Territory election. Indigenous people understand that the Labor Party is all talk and very little action.

The coalition and the Liberal Party, of which I am a member, are very proud of our involvement with Indigenous people, particularly with Indigenous people in parliament. We do not need 'captain's picks' to get Indigenous people to parliament. We have had Indigenous people approach us, become part of the party and stand for preselection against all other comers.

Eric Deeral, I remember, was the first Indigenous member in a state parliament. He came from the electorate of Cook, which includes Cape York and the Torres Strait Islands. I think Eric was a Cooktown person. I did know him. He was a member of the National Party in the Queensland parliament. Of course, my friend and colleague Neville Bonner was the first Indigenous person to ever set foot in this parliament of Australia. Again, he was a guy who got here on his own merits, not by a 'captain's pick'. He was selected by members of the Liberal Party as the best person for that position. I often recount and well recall how Nev Bonner stayed at my flat one time before I was married. I warned him that it was a flat that did not have all that good a reputation for parties and those sorts of things, but he was happy to spend the night in my flat and I was honoured that he did. He was a very fine man. Ken Wyatt is another Indigenous person who is currently a member of the House of Representatives and who is a very significant person. Whether he is Indigenous or anything else, he is a real achiever and a real leader. I am delighted that he is a member of our party. I remember even the Democrats had an Indigenous senator at some time.

The Labor Party have never had it in their souls to select an Indigenous person, so the Prime Minister has had to have a so-called 'captain's pick'—overturning one of the Labor senators who, I have to say, has done more for the Indigenous communities than any other Labor politician I can remember. She has been thrown over so that the Prime Minister's Indigenous 'pick' could take her place in the Senate. As with all of these things, actions speak louder than words. I am, as I say, delighted that I have known Indigenous people who have represented all Australians in state and federal parliaments of this country.

This bill does hopefully take reconciliation further, but I keep saying the best form of reconciliation is to give Indigenous people the same opportunities that every other Australian has: a good education; a good opportunity to get a job and become a member of our community—not someone different, not someone who needs special attention, but someone who has the same opportunities as every other Australian. That is the important challenge. Sure, apologies take the fancy of the media but they do not, in effect, do a hell of a lot for a very disadvantaged group of people in a country as lucky as Australia. I look forward to the day when an Abbott government—should we be elected at the next election—can continue the process of real advancement for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in this lucky country and land of plenty.

John Madigan (Victoria, Democratic Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome, the DLP welcomes and I am sure the majority of Australians welcome the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Bill 2012. I think it is important that we as a nation take the opportunity to listen to Aboriginal Australians and Indigenous Australians to determine the sort—if any—of constitutional recognition necessary and that they be fully involved in this process. I am hopeful that the government will allow for a more transparent and inclusive procedure to determine the course of this process to referendum than was afforded to the communities in the Northern Territory through the Stronger Futures legislation.

In the 1967 referendum, the majority of Australians voted to give Indigenous Australians the right to vote, which they did deserve, do deserve and should have always had. Let us all focus on the future and not on the past. Hopefully, we can not politicise this debate, can stop attributing blame to one another and can just get on with it. We need genuinely inclusive and thoughtful discussion. Actions speak louder than words. We need tangible actions in Indigenous health, education, self-empowerment and employment. I look forward to this legislation and will be providing my contribution in due course on what I believe the final outcome of this process should be. Ultimately, it should be for the good of all Indigenous Australians.

(Quorum formed)

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a real honour to be able to speak this afternoon on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Bill 2012, which brings our nation a step closer to the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as our nation's first peoples. There is no doubt about the need to fix the historical exclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from Australia's Constitution, and I am very pleased that there is bipartisan support for this recognition—recognition that I think will enhance our national character, reflect us for who we truly are as a nation and reflect the fact that this nation's relationship with Indigenous people is one of its greatest national assets but that we will not maximise this asset unless we recognise it. Therefore, it is a relationship that should be reflected in our Constitution, and I am glad that this bill brings us a step closer to that recognition.

We also need to remove the remaining discrimination from our Constitution—the part of the Constitution that says people can be banned from voting based on race. Our Constitution is more than a century old. It has some wonderful attributes. It has in many ways served our nation well, but its exclusionary nature—the fact that for many years it disenfranchised people—has also been a blight on us. So as a document—as a set of guiding principles to underpin the functioning of our nation—it cannot truly serve the nation well unless it serves all its people. I know that even conservatives accede to this point.

We need a Constitution that recognises the first chapter of our national history. I believe in this not as an act of reconciliation but as an act of the fundamentals of the fabric of our country. It is about the foundation of this nation and who was here when our national story began to develop. We need a Constitution that recognises the simple fact that Indigenous people have lived in this land for some 40,000 years, keeping alive the world's oldest continuous cultures. So it is remarkable to me that our Constitution should pretend really just to be a reflection of the last couple of hundred years of our history. We need a Constitution that reflects our true national character.

It was a blight on our nation that the document that serves as the foundation for our democracy in government as a nation mentioned Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people only to discriminate, only to exclude.

I would like to use this debate this afternoon as an opportunity to reflect on what I think is an important element in addressing social disadvantage. As a nation we really need to be focused on the participation of Indigenous people in decision making. I ask senators in this place, through you, Mr Acting Deputy President: would the women in this nation have made the gains that we have without being at the table, without being in parliament? I think not. Without having gained the right to vote some 100 years ago? Again I think not.

I truly believe that, until Indigenous people in this country are in the room making decisions for Indigenous people, Indigenous communities and Indigenous people will not experience the kinds of gains that non-Indigenous women by comparison have made. It is little wonder that we have high rates of poverty, high rates of social exclusion and high rates of incarceration for Indigenous people in our nation. It is no wonder when, for six decades of the history of our democracy, Indigenous Australians could not vote and were excluded as citizens. Fortunately, today, Australia prides itself on being a place of fairness—but still our Constitution does not recognise the first Australians and lets states ban people from voting based on their race.

I truly believe that Australia is ready for a new, stronger and deeper relationship with its first people—a relationship that is not based even on reconciliation but is based on recognition, as the recognition campaign clearly illustrates, of the fact that Australia's first peoples are at the very heart of our nation and that they deserve that celebration and recognition. This is about so much more than bringing our country together after chapters apart. It is about recognition. Like native title, it is about respect and recognition of the Aboriginal people's relationship with country. The relationship of Indigenous people to country is a great national asset. It is celebrated in the best art in the country, in dance, in culture, in language and, today, in the very fabric of what it means to be Australian.

For me, it is a principle that brings me closer to my own attachment to the land of our great country. It is not just about lines on a map. It is not just about property rights—although that is important, especially for native title holders. It is about our social relationships with each other and our relationship with the land. Recognition of Indigenous peoples in our Constitution puts these very, very Australian values at the very, very heart of our Constitution, our most important national document.

To give promise to these kinds of values, to hold true to the promise of this bill—the promise we are making in this bill as we pass it through this place—we will need to continue the work required to ensure that Indigenous people have a place in all levels of decision making in this nation, especially in decisions that affect their communities and decisions that are made as this bill is implemented. I am really privileged to see on a daily basis Indigenous communities around the state of Western Australia, and I see the best possible outcomes for communities emerging when they are empowered and in control. So, once this bill passes, the real work will continue to ensure that a future referendum on the question of recognition is successful.

We all know that the history of constitutional change in this country has not been an easy one—few of them get up—but, if I could wave a magic wand and change the Constitution tomorrow, I would not. We need this nation to vote, to understand in their hearts and minds what this means, for Australians to vote to say we are a confident and united country that wants to recognise our first peoples. The act of constitutional recognition of Australia's first peoples will be an expression of who we are as a nation and who we want to be in the future. It is not just about reconciliation; it is about recognition. It is a great opportunity for all Australians to be able to participate in saying something important about our national identity and our national wellbeing. This is not just a few lines in our Constitution; it is a statement about the importance of Indigenous Australians and Indigenous culture to the fabric of our nation.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to speak on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Bill 2012 tonight but not for the full allocated time. In particular, I want to associate myself with the speech given by the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Tony Abbott, on this bill, in which he said:

I believe that we are equal to this task of completing our Constitution rather than changing it.

Along with the rest of the coalition, I welcome this bill, which is an important step towards constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians. Mr Abbott said:

… our challenge is to do now in these times what should have been done 200 or 100 years ago to acknowledge Aboriginal people in our country's foundation document. In short, we need to atone for the omissions and for the hardness of heart of our forebears to enable us all to embrace the future as a united people.

This bill provides a mechanism for the continued work of the Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, whose formation was originally announced in December 2010. The preamble to this bill affirms this whole parliament's commitment to building the consensus necessary to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in our Constitution through a referendum. The preamble recognises that 'the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were the first inhabitants of Australia; that the parliament is committed to placing before the Australian people at a referendum a proposal for constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; and that the parliament is committed to building the national consensus needed for the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in our Constitution'. I think the key words in there are 'building the national consensus needed for such recognition'.

The bill recognises the hard work of the expert panel but also recognises that much more consultation and consensus is necessary to enable a referendum to be successful. The coalition is very thankful for the work completed so far by the panel, which is co-chaired by Professor Patrick Dodson and Mark Leibler AC and includes my colleague in the other place the member for Hasluck, Ken Wyatt, who is the first Indigenous Australian to be elected to the other place. This bill provides for an act of recognition by the parliament of the unique role of Indigenous Australians as the first inhabitants of this nation. This is in response to recommendation 3 of the expert panel's report. The bill aims to promote awareness and support in the community towards a successful referendum, which the coalition and Tony Abbott support and, indeed, have pushed for.

In relation to the coalition and Indigenous affairs, I think it is important to place on the record our proud history when it comes to advocating for Indigenous Australians—indeed, ever since the Liberal Party was established, in the 1940s.

Firstly, the coalition introduced the 1967 referendum which proudly gave constitutional recognition to Indigenous Australians and removed racially discriminatory provisions from the Constitution. This referendum, of course, was sponsored by both Harold Holt and Gough Whitlam. It was the coalition government under Malcolm Fraser that passed the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act in the mid-1970s. Indeed, during the 1998 election campaign, former Prime Minister John Howard also promoted a constitutional amendment to recognise the prior occupation of Australia by Indigenous Australians, as well as their contribution and place in Australian society, as part of the 1999 republic referendum. The coalition then committed to hold the referendum that this bill aspires to achieve at the 2007 election, which Labor did not match until 2010. We have indeed, therefore, maintained our commitment to this cause.

The coalition supports the bipartisan nature of this bill and wants to see this referendum succeed. The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, in taking a bipartisan approach recognised the work also completed by the Australian Labor Party in Indigenous affairs, recognising 'the stain on our soul that Prime Minister Keating so movingly evoked at Redfern 21 years ago', as well as the national apology jointly made by the former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the former Leader of the Opposition Brendan Nelson.

Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that little progress is being made by the current government to build the community consensus needed for this referendum to succeed given that we are so close to the next election. It is necessary that much more work be done. It is proper for this referendum to be put only when wide community support and consensus has been achieved, given the difficulty in achieving successful referenda in Australia's history—noting that only eight out of 44 proposals to amend the Constitution have been successful. That is why much more work needs to be completed now in order to achieve this consensus as soon as possible.

Accordingly, we must build a national consensus on this issue to achieve a successful consultation, a successful referendum and appropriate words recognising Indigenous Australians in the Constitution. This will obviously involve extensive consultation with Indigenous Australians and also with Australians across the board, as we want to see that the words in the Constitution recognising the First Australians are such that we can all be proud of them. What we want to see is not something that is divisive but something that unites all Indigenous Australians, and Australians as a whole, in working towards a common future and common goals in a united Australia. As the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, said:

It will … be a challenge to find a form of recognition which satisfies reasonable people as being fair to all. It will not necessarily be straightforward to acknowledge the First Australians without creating new categories of discrimination, which we must avoid because no Australians should feel like strangers in their own country.

The Leader of the Opposition is committed to achieving this recognition in the Constitution, saying:

The next parliament will, I trust, finish the work that this one has begun.

As I come towards the end of my contribution, I want to quote the words of my friend and colleague in the other place Ken Wyatt, who proclaimed:

Because a time has come, well and truly come, for all peoples of our great country, for all citizens of our great Commonwealth, for all Australians—those who are Indigenous and those who are not—to come together to reconcile and together build a new future for our nation.

I think it is fair to say that recognition in the Constitution is no substitute for addressing Indigenous disadvantage, and I note with some interest that there are those who walk the walk in relation to this matter and there are those who talk the talk. I think it is very important to put on the public record the engagement of Mr Abbott in Aboriginal communities since 2008. Indeed, that has culminated in Mr Abbott making it quite clear that if he is given the enormous honour of being elected as Prime Minister of this country then he will take a contingent of about six public servants engaged in Indigenous policy, including the head of the Indigenous affairs department and senior Treasury and Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet officials, to work with him for at least a week a year in Aboriginal communities.

Those who are aware of the work that Mr Abbott has done will be acutely aware that he does not arrive in those communities in a suit and is not a visitor for a day from Canberra but gets down and get his hands dirty. He works with the men and women and children in those communities and makes a real contribution. I think that is the sort of leadership that we need. Indeed, looking at some of the comments of Mr Abbott in some of his Press Club speeches, in his 2013 Press Club speech he said in talking about this issue:

That’s why I’ve tried to spend serious time in Aboriginal communities rather than rely on flying visits.

It’s why I’ve tried to be useful in remote communities as a teacher’s aide and builder’s assistant rather than just a glorified tourist from Canberra.

He went on to say:

This won't stop should the Coalition win the election.

I have already indicated the comments about where Mr Abbott will be.

I will finish on that note and I will say again that mere words are not going to achieve the recognition that both this place and the other place, through their bipartisan support for this bill, desperately want to achieve. It will not be achieved unless we take all Australian people with us. The only way that can be achieved is with a lot of hard work from everyone in this place and the other place. It is going to require leadership and it is going to require political leadership. It is going to require Indigenous leadership. It is going to require people like Mr Wyatt from the other place to take a lead role in relation to this. No-one should underestimate the challenge of this task, and if we do underestimate it we are doomed to failure. So the important thing for us in this place and the other place is to appreciate the magnitude of the challenge and to set ourselves the challenge of bringing the rest of the Australian community with us. I have no doubt that the majority of Australians want to achieve this goal. In the words that we ultimately choose we must provide them with a level of comfort so that they will come with us. As I said before, there is no point talking the talk in relation to these matters; we have got to walk the walk. I very much support this bill and particularly reinforce associating myself with the comments of the Leader of the Opposition.

Matt Thistlethwaite (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am proud to support the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Bill 2012, an important step towards constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in this country. Like Senator Bob Carr, I was born and bred in Maroubra. I have lived there my entire life. I have a connection with that community. I have surfed at that beach all of my life and if you get stuck in a rip at Maroubra I can generally show you the way to get out of it, because I grew up surfing there. I have got a connection with that environment and with those waters. My father has lived in that area all of his life and his father, my grandfather, also lived in that area for most of his life.

That is three generations of Australians that have a connection with that community that I love so much.

I have friends in the Indigenous community around La Perouse and Maroubra whose connection with that area goes back 40,000 years. That is 40,000 years of nurturing and caring for that environment, of managing relations between people who have lived in that area and of developing customs and laws to care for that particular part of our wonderful country.

In modern Australia, the Commonwealth parliament makes laws which dictate how we live on this wonderful land, how we co-exist, how we relate with each other. The power to make those laws is derived from this document, our nation’s Constitution. It is this document which dictates the principles and values for how we live as a people in this wide brown land we call Australia. Yet this principal document, this embodiment of who we are as a nation, says nothing—not a thing—about the people who have inhabited and cared for this country that we all love for the last 60,000 years. In fact, up until 40-odd years ago, our Constitution specifically excluded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from recognition and actively discriminated against them. Thankfully, since 1967, as a nation we have made progress. We have removed those discriminatory provisions in the Constitution that excluded recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. We have made policies of self-determination. We have recognised land rights and native title. And only a couple of weeks ago we celebrated the fifth anniversary of the apology to the stolen generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

Despite this document embodying our values, it does not recognise and reflect the progress we have made as a nation and it does not reflect who we are as a people in modern Australia and, importantly, how we want the world to view us and how we want to view ourselves. That is why, in 2010, the Gillard government established a process of working towards amending our Constitution to remove racist provisions and to fully recognise and acknowledge our relationship and the relationship that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians have with this nation, with this land and with its customs and values. To do that we established an expert panel. It was made up of politicians representative of all the parties in the federal parliament. It was made up of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. It was made up of community leaders. They consulted widely throughout our country about this question of how we recognise Australia’s first peoples in our principal and pinnacle document that sets the tone for law-making in this country. They consulted widely, not only with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community but with non-Aboriginal and non-Torres-Strait-Islander Australians.

The report of the panel is extensive. I encourage members of the public to read, in particular, page 18 of that report, the executive summary, which contains the crux of the work of the panel. There are five recommendations and processes to remove racist provisions in our Constitution, notably in section 25 and section 51(xxvi) of our Constitution and, importantly, a process for recognising the contribution, the values, the traditions and the connection that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have with our land and our nation. This is a step towards a referendum, and referendums in Australia are not easy. The framers of our Constitution made it deliberately hard for referendums to be successful. Only eight of 44 have succeeded, so 82 per cent of the time we fail as a nation to get a referendum up.

In 1999 we tried to insert a preamble which recognised the contribution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to our nation, and it failed. It failed in every single state in this country. Quite simply, we cannot afford as a nation to fail again. We simply cannot fail again. That is why the Gillard government takes this issue so seriously. That is why we established the expert panel and that is why we have moved this bill in this parliament—to ensure that we do not fail again; to ensure that there is genuine multiparty support for this issue; to ensure that there is genuine unity not only at a national level but also, importantly, with the state and territory governments throughout the country to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.

I do not believe that we are at a point yet where we can go to our nation and put a question associated with recognition as it is contained in the recommendations. We do need to work with the states, with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and with the wider Australian public to explain why this amendment to our Constitution is so important and to build momentum for change and to build momentum for recognition.

Some months ago the Gillard government determined that, as a process of building that momentum and explaining that change to the Australian people, we would introduce the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Bill 2012 into this parliament. It has passed the House of Representatives and we are debating it here this evening. I believe that the crucial provision in this bill is these words:

The Parliament is committed to building the national consensus needed for the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in our Constitution.

That is the crux of the aim behind this bill. It is to build that critical momentum, that critical unity, that critical agreement at all levels of government and with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the wider Australian community for this very important constitutional change.

It is with that in mind that the government has established a joint parliamentary committee, which I am very proud to be a member of, working with representatives of all parties in this parliament and with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and the wider Australian public to achieve a successful referendum. That is why the government is investing $10 million in this campaign to promote public awareness about this issue. I encourage all Australians to visit RECOGNISE.org.au, the website of Reconciliation Australia that has been established to promote and campaign for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander recognition in our Constitution. Visit the website, sign up to the newsletter and, most importantly, discuss this issue in your workplaces, at your family gatherings and in your wider communities. This is such an important issue for the future of our nation. It is too important for us to fail. We need to recognise, finally, the contribution that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have made to our nation's development, to our democracy and, most importantly, to the nurturing and caring of this wonderful land that we call Australia.

Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The coalition is committed to full and complete recognition of our Aboriginal people in our society. We do acknowledge that prior to white settlement—now more than 200 years ago—the land we now call Australia was inhabited by Indigenous people. It was thought that these people most likely came from Indonesia—after all, there was a land bridge to Indonesia many thousands of years ago—and even possibly from India, because I gather there are some similarities in blood groups and so on between the Aboriginal people and the Indians. Interestingly, in trying to understand where the Aborigines came from, there are very old cave paintings in the Kimberley called the Bradshaws which, according to some people, resemble African paintings and raise the interesting possibility that in the long-distant past people of African origin could have come to the north-west of Australia.

Of course, it was the landing of the First Fleet in 1788 which brought the first wave of European culture to Australia on the east coast and the first settlements. However, it is interesting that in the Gascoyne district in the mid-west of Western Australia, where Carnarvon is now located, many of the Aboriginal languages include Dutch words, and the numbers of red-headed Aboriginals in the area rather suggest that they may have been descended from Dutch sailors wrecked on the cliffs around Carnarvon. The Dutch ships came around the Cape of Good Hope and sailed east towards the Australian coast before turning north to go to Batavia, which is now Jakarta, in the Dutch East Indies, which are now Indonesia. There was quite a lot of significant contact between the Aboriginals of the mid-west coast of Western Australia and the Dutch and perhaps the Portuguese as well.

European culture, with its formal settlements and farms and keeping of crops and herds, was certainly at odds with the Indigenous way of life. Most Indigenous people were hunters and gatherers who wandered from place to place without set villages, and they did not keep herds or crops. They have been a part of Australian society, mostly on the periphery of Australian society, since the times of early settlement and well on into the 20th century. It has only been in the latter half of the 20th century that there has been any movement to have constitutional recognition of Indigenous people as part of the Australian society. In 1967 it became the route of the reconciliation process when there was a referendum to grant Aborigines the right to vote, to enfranchise Aborigines and to have this written into our Constitution. It was a Liberal Prime Minister, Harold Holt, who first paved the way to reconciliation with that historic move to enfranchise Aborigines.

When I was a medical student I was a member of the University of Western Australia Liberal Club. Interestingly, the president then was someone who subsequently became a senator and, in fact, the Leader of the Liberal Party in this chamber—and that was Fred Chaney. I was the freshman committee member back in 1960, and at our first committee meeting he suggested that, rather than the Liberal club putting up all sorts of clever motions about great public issues, the Liberal club should perhaps choose a project and seek to achieve a specific outcome for that project as its activity for the year. Fred Chaney suggested that the university Liberal club look into what could be done to improve the status of Aborigines in our community. So we used to go out to a place near Midland, near the airport in Perth, called Allawah Grove—not very far out of Perth—where there was an Aboriginal community and discuss issues with the Aboriginal leaders there. I found it quite confronting—having come from a fairly ordinary middle-Australian family—to see drunken Aborigines, fights with broken bottles, people sometimes being very aggressive to women and so on and so forth, but that was what the Aboriginal community at Allawah Grove embodied.

Every year from 1960 to 1962 the UWA Liberal Club held a seminar about what could be done to improve the lot of Aborigines in Western Australian society. In the end, Fred Chaney again gave leadership in suggesting that the only way to make Aborigines matter to politicians in government was to give them the vote: to enfranchise them. At the 1962 seminar, held by the Western Australian University Liberal Club, the Minister for Native Affairs, as he was called—a Country Party minister—announced that the Western Australia government would give Aborigines the option to enrol to vote in state elections. That happened in 1962, five years before the federal referendum, and it was therefore an important step in the process of reconciliation with Aborigines and accepting them as members of our society.

Harold Holt instituted the referendum on Aborigines being enrolled to vote in 1967, and another Liberal Prime Minister—John Howard, in 1999—continued down the pathway of recognition of the role of Aborigines in our society when he attempted to introduce an important preamble to the Constitution to recognise Indigenous Australians. As we all know, the referendum on that preamble failed; we also know that, if we are to continue the process of reconciliation with our Indigenous people, we need to build a real consensus in the community.

My first real contact with the Aboriginal community occurred when I went to the Pilbara in 1974. I used to see Aboriginal patients at the Port Hedland Hospital outpatient department while I worked there. I always treated the Aborigines with great respect, and they responded with respect to me. Perhaps because of this mutual respect, in 1975 I was invited to an Aboriginal bush meeting on the banks of the Coongan River near Marble Bar. These bush meetings were held every quarter. Aborigines came to them from all over the Pilbara—including from the Western Desert and as far west as Onslow and the area around it—and the meetings were almost always held on the banks of a river. About 100 people were gathered, cooking under the trees on open fires, at the meeting I went to in Marble Bar, and to me it was a very eye-opening experience.

The meeting was chaired by a man whom I cannot name because he is since deceased. He was the chief Aborigine of the Pilbara. He sat at a table in the middle of a clearing with tables on either side of him, at which sat his white advisers from Perth and Canberra, including lawyers and people who knew about the social security system, housing, education and so on. This chief Aborigine was a very impressive person: he had a great mane of white hair and a stetson on his head, and he controlled the meeting very skilfully. Not everybody had the ability to present a case very clearly, and he was very gentle in drawing out the points the people wanted to make—everybody had the right to raise any issue they wanted to—and in arranging for translators for the desert Aborigines who attended the meeting. By the end of the day, my perception of Aboriginal people in the Pilbara had changed completely. Whereas before I had seen them as people who did not really understand our society, I realised that these people well and truly understood our society and how our system of government worked.

I have met many other Aboriginal leaders, such as Peter Yu in the Kimberley, who was the head of the Kimberley Land Council; and people like Joe Ross in Fitzroy Crossing, who is the leader of the 300, I think, Aboriginal communities in the Fitzroy River Valley—and they are very impressive people. These are, of course, Aboriginal people in the north, close to their origins. But I understand that these days around 85 per cent of Aboriginals live in big cities and towns—Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and the big towns of Queensland, New South Wales, WA and South Australia. Many of them have jobs, many of them are educated—increasingly, there are large numbers of Aboriginal graduates—and they simply fit into our society as members of our society.

I think it is now very appropriate that we do recognise that the Indigenous people were here first and that that fact is acknowledged in our Constitution. It does not necessarily mean that it carries any particular implications in terms of additional rights and benefits above those which any other Australians have, but I think it is appropriate that that kind of recognition be given.

This bill is not a token gesture. It is an important building block of unity and of recognition of the long history of Aboriginal people in Australia and will carry a message of all of our community, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, migrants from all over the world as well as those Australians whose history goes back 40,000 years, that we are moving forward as one people in one country. I support this bill.

Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Eggleston for that very interesting history lesson. There are fascinating perspectives that we all have about what we are debating here today—a really important issue, in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Bill 2012.

Just a few weeks ago, coinciding with the fifth anniversary of former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations, this bill was presented, debated and passed in the House of Representatives, recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the first inhabitants of Australia. I am very proud to speak as part of the group of speakers contributing to this debate in the Senate. So often a debate can happen in the House of Representatives, where all the publicity and discussion is reported upon; but, of course, we know the legislation then comes here—so it is timely that this is a week when the House of Representatives is not sitting, and perhaps the contributions to the debate in this chamber will actually get some coverage in the media as well and continue the message of the importance of the legislation that is in front of us.

I want to congratulate people who have contributed to the debate, because we have heard the passion that has been brought to the debate by all sides of politics and all sides of the parliament. People bring their own perspectives and their own experiences about how they have interacted with Indigenous peoples. If you ask someone like those of us who have actually lived in and worked with Aboriginal communities, you will know that there is so much that remains to be done in terms of addressing Aboriginal disadvantage; but you will also know the importance of the bill that is before us today.

Constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples generally does have support and is seen by many as an important further step that should now be taken towards full recognition of the unique place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in 21st century Australian society. It is really interesting that we are having a conversation now that is so different from the conversation that was held in 1999. Senator Thistlethwaite remarked on the failure of the referendum in 1999 and the fact that we cannot afford to fail again to have this constitutional recognition agreed upon.

Prime Minister Gillard has called the legislation before us an 'act of preparation and anticipation', because it is an important step on the way towards a referendum for constitutional change; it seeks to foster the momentum for a referendum—so many of us here have talked about the importance of building the consensus, of building the momentum. It is one thing to have politicians and parliamentarians supporting this constitutional reform; it is a very big thing for us to take the Australian people down this path with us.

I said before that in 1999 the conversation and the debate were very different. When I talk to young people about the importance of this piece of legislation, they just cannot fathom why this could be the situation now. They cannot believe that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are not recognised in the Constitution, so we actually have a huge job to educate voters across Australia about the importance, the significance, of the change that we are trying to engender.

The bill before us today is essentially a parliamentary statement that recognises some facts of our history that have never been formally acknowledged before—the fact that Australia was first occupied by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people; the fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have a continuing relationship with their traditional land and waters; and the fact that their continuing cultures, languages and heritages are worthy of respect. When the Prime Minister spoke of this bill as a gesture, and a sign of good faith, she too was acknowledging that there is still a long way to go.

I was pleased that Senator Siewert, who is here in the chamber, talked about the importance of the sunset clause that is in this bill. That is what gives us the time frame in which this work should be carried out; it gives us a sense of urgency. This not something that is on the never-never. There is a definite time frame, one that sets us a very ambitious goal but a goal that we know that we can achieve. The expert panel that was appointed to investigate the issue highlighted the importance of this. It recommended a series of constitutional changes and made it very clear that bipartisan agreement would be necessary before those recommendations could be put to a referendum for exactly the reason that Senator Thistlethwaite raised: referendums in Australia do not have a very strong history of success. Constitutional change is quite difficult here in Australia. It can only be done if we have a majority of votes in every state and territory. The work that needs to be done across state and territory governments and in the community is really very critical.

What we need—the point of contention—is a non-discrimination provision in the Constitution. At the moment, that is the problem. The opposition regards a non-discrimination provision as akin to a bill of rights and will not agree to move in that direction. But that does not mean that the cause is lost. There is so much goodwill on all sides. We are all charged with the responsibility to represent the people of Australia and we should not expect that to be easy in this case. The challenge facing all of us—and the next parliament as well—is to find a form of words that is going to satisfy all sides of politics and to make this constitutional reform something that we can all be very proud of.

Today, I read a post on Eureka Street by Father Frank Brennan about this bill congratulating both government and opposition members for their contributions to the debate in the House of Representatives. He made a really important point. He said that a new generation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders were gathered in the public gallery for the passage of the legislation, with many of the leaders from earlier campaigns over the Northern Territory land rights legislation, Mabo, Wik, native title and reconciliation. There was a group of young people ready to take up the challenge and become the leaders most actively engaged in the discussions that we are going to be part of.

They all then went to the National Press Club where two of those young people, two emerging leaders, spoke. They were fantastic. Those young people were Tanya Hosch and Jason Glanville. Each spoke very proudly of their diverse heritage. I would like to read a little of what Tanya had to say, because it puts this into context. She said:

I was blessed to be raised in a family that is a model for the kind of nation I want Australia to be. A family where race isn't a divide, but an enricher ... that is proud of the many strands of its heritage, and particularly of our Indigenous heritage ... that integrates the best of all of our traditions and cultures, and which has nurtured me to play a part in bringing about this big moment in the life of our nation.

Her speech was very powerful. I recommend it to you all.

Then Jason Glanville went on to tell the story of how his great-grandmother left the mission with her two-year-old child to go to Cootamundra and build a home. This is what he said:

In the Cootamundra Town Hall, where once my great grandmother was barred from being able to vote, a stained glass window now hangs. It's a picture story. In it, she is telling bedtime stories to her grandchildren in the language of their ancestors. The town that once excluded this amazing Aboriginal woman has now immortalised her remarkable story. At long last, it has recognised her, and regards her story as a source of pride. It's time our Constitution did too.

That generational change is important in the debate that is ahead of us all. Father Brennan made the point, as many speakers have, that there is much work to be done if the referendum is to get up in the next parliamentary term and that we have a responsibility as elected members of parliament to engage Australians in understanding what constitutional recognition means, not just for Indigenous Australians but for all of us. In the wake of the national apology, there is a new generation of Indigenous Australians able to show us the way, and I very much look forward to working with them.

I want to congratulate everyone who has got us to this position. It is an issue whose time has come. This is political work at its best. It is the work that we all enjoy the most: the people's representatives putting their minds and experience to work to together create the Australia that people want to live in. I have no doubt that we will reach a satisfactory form of words. We will debate the matter robustly, I am sure. We will hold a referendum. That is the right thing to do. It will be a milestone along the route I want this country to take in the interests of human rights and of the dignity of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for COAG) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the words of many of the previous speakers in the debate on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Bill 2012 in this chamber. In many cases, they have made compelling and salient points about the importance of this piece of legislation. I want to say from the outset from a personal perspective that I very strongly support the bill and support the constitutional recognition for our first peoples that this bill will, with the passage of time and much more debate in this nation, hopefully bring about. I am confident that with cross-parliamentary agreement and with cross-political support, we can realise this objective to give our objectives the recognition that they absolutely deserve.

Just briefly, the coalition has a long and proud history of advocating for constitutional recognition of Aboriginal Australians.

With other senators from this chamber who have both spoken in this debate—Senator Siewert and Senator Thistlethwaite—I attended a recent Recognise event here in Canberra just two weeks ago, held in conjunction with GHD and Carey engineering, at which these issues were much discussed. I want to commend the work of Recognise—the organisation that was formerly known as You Me Unity. The work they are doing now and the work they will do for some years into the future in relation to the question of constitutional recognition is very important. It is important that it is community based, it is important that it is community networked and it is important that it is recognised as such.

Recognise itself is part of Reconciliation Australia. As was recommended by the expert panel report, it was given the very fundamental task of raising awareness amongst community members and building community support for the constitutional recognition of Australia's first peoples. To date they have worked extremely diligently to promote the cause to Australians. Their activities include but are by no means limited to recruiting over 125,000 Australians who are supporting this recognition, holding street stalls in every major capital city, spreading the message to thousands of Australians in that way, and funding over 100 community groups to run public awareness campaigns of their own. They have generated media coverage across print, radio, television and online platforms, and they have developed a schools kit that was distributed to every high school in the country.

I think the work of Recognise matches well with the longstanding commitment of the coalition to bring this issue to a referendum and to gain the necessary support to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in our Constitution. As other speakers have indicated and as the shadow Attorney-General, Senator Brandis, did in his contribution to the second reading debate earlier today, it was the coalition government that was responsible for the historic 1967 referendum, with a result of just over 90 per cent in that case. That was a watershed achievement in this country. It received support from all sectors of the community and political parties of all colours. As I mentioned at the Recognise event the other week, who could forget the black and white photographic images of young campaigners like Shirley Peisley pinning their 'vote yes for Aborigines' badge onto the suit jacket of Senator Reg Bishop on that referendum day? I suspect there will be many more similar photographs—but in colour—across social media of all forms and in traditional forms of media to mark the progress of this bill and ultimately a referendum as well.

They have a huge impact. To actually meet Shirley Peisley, as we did on that occasion at AIATSIS recently, and to compare her smiling face with that seen in the photograph from 1967, and to think that she and members of her generation are in a position of still waiting for this next step, is actually quite confronting—for me personally, at least. As I think Senator Stephens alluded to, when you discuss it with young Australians—and, as desperate as I might be to include myself in that group, I am not completely delusional!—and they say, 'How is it possible that we are at this point and this next step has not been taken?' and then to be able to see that photograph from 1967, to meet Shirley Peisley today and to know that with the will of an Australian community united together on this issue she will be able to see that next step is a particularly important thought that I hold as we continue these discussions.

As I said, on that day just over 90 per cent of Australian citizens voted yes in the referendum. I want to see that extraordinarily positive result repeated, preferably exceeded. But we must work together to get this particular process right, to get the question right and to ensure that, above everything else that we put before us, we ensure that it is indeed a unifying moment for the nation. This is not something with which to take political risks. It is not something with which to play political games. It is in fact a very serious engagement by the Australian people as the referendum process, which is outlined in part in this bill, continues.

The current proposal for Aboriginal reconciliation came initially from the coalition, who first raised it in 1999, when the former Prime Minister, Mr Howard, penned and advanced the preamble, which was considered at the 1999 referendum.

Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired.

Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for COAG) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.