Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to talk about the day known to many First Nations people as Invasion Day or Survival Day—that is, 26 January. As Greens, we acknowledge this land we call Australia was stolen and that sovereignty was never ceded. We acknowledge that we have a lot of unfinished business in this country.

For First Nations people, 26 January marks more than 230 years of ongoing dispossession and oppression, dispossession that saw brutal frontier violence and massacres, the forced removal of children from their families, indentured and slave labour, and violent attempts to wipe out First Nations' languages and culture—in fact, to wipe out First Nations people. The date is a potent reminder both of our history and of our failure to recognise the consequences of what settlement and invasion mean in our contemporary society.

The so-called debate around the day we celebrate this nation—Australia Day—is like groundhog day every single year. You can predict what every shock jock will say, but let me tell you what isn't up for debate. What is not up for debate is the fact that First Nations people live around 10 less years than our non-Indigenous community. We are still seeing First Nations people shot by police. We continue to see First Nations people die in custody. Their children are still being taken from their families. And we have one of the highest, if not the highest, rates of incarceration of first nations people in the world.

How can we even start to address these issues when the leaders of this country are in denial about what 26 January means to us as a nation? How can we move forward to address these issues when we are a nation in denial about the start of the nation and its contemporary consequences? Successive governments have failed again and again to address these issues; they've failed to implement so many findings and recommendations of royal commissions, reports and inquiries. They refuse to engage in a legitimate process of co-design on so many of these issues and to listen to the solutions offered by First Nations people.

Everyone agrees that we need to close the gap, but the fact is that we will not see justice until First Nations people are at the front of these discussions at all levels of government on all of these decisions. Successive governments have ignored First Nations people's repeated calls to have input into decision-making on issues that affect their lives. It is incomprehensible to have punitive and coercive policies—like the cashless debit card, income management, the Community Development Program, the Intervention, disgraceful levels of incarceration—and shamefully low rates of support and then expect to improve outcomes for First Nations people.

The government's top-down approach on those issues contradicts its commitment to the Closing the Gap Refresh co-design process, which I understand is going well. It is not consistent with Closing the Gap objectives, which they are applying co-design to, to then have these other policies in place that are not focused on self-determination. The Prime Minister needs to take a good hard look at the government's programs. The list of top-down approaches is endless, and they do not work. They further alienate and exclude First Nations people from participating in the community. First Nations people have told the government what they want many times, and have been ignored. They want to be at the heart of decision-making, to be consulted with, and to have and take control and leadership of their communities and of their lives.

It's time that all political parties acknowledge the truth of our shared history, listen to First Nations people when they tell this truth, and be a part of addressing the contemporary consequences of invasion and intergenerational trauma that have resulted in the dispossession and marginalisation that is part of our unfinished business—in other words, ensure we do truth telling. Justice for First Nations people must be at the heart of everything that we do.