Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to address this chamber about very important Indigenous issues which have been profiled at large over the last week or so. I believe that one of the most important issues that faces our country is the disadvantage which has applied to Indigenous people for the last couple of hundred years in this country. When we look at the key stats and we hear about them regularly in this place. We do look at incarceration rates, we do look at mortality rates and we do look at the level of education attained. These are real bread-and-butter issues, which you'd have to say that for a country as wealthy and as successful as Australia we have not performed well on. In fact, I would say that we have failed Indigenous Australians.

I believe the framework that was put forward in 2017, which is known as the Uluru statement, does offer some significant opportunities for us to address these issues in a structural way. The statement itself calls for structural reform. It does seek a voice for Indigenous Australians which would provide the capacity for Indigenous people to have a say on policies and laws which affect them, which I believe is a good and a fair idea. There is, of course, a component in the Uluru statement around truth telling, and the minister, Ken Wyatt, has said this week that that is an important component. We have seen statues pulled down in other countries. There is a discussion about pulling down statues in this country. I think it would be a huge mistake to try to rewrite our history. We should take this opportunity to be honest with ourselves about what has been good and what has been bad. Minister Wyatt himself, the first Indigenous person to occupy the position of Minister for Indigenous Australians, has said:

These statues should remain as a reminder of a point in time in our lives – even when detrimental. They serve as prompts to encourage people to talk about history.

In schools today in Australia, people are told about our past. That is important, and that should continue.

The practical measures that I think we should continue working on include changing, with the agreement of the Indigenous communities, the Closing the Gap targets. Of course, there are very practical things that can happen at the local level. I've tried to spend the first year I've had in public office meeting with people in communities in my state of New South Wales in places like the Central Coast, Kempsey and Redfern, where there are large Indigenous communities, and asking them what is important to them. Often it is, especially in more remote parts of the state, the way that policing is done. There are significant changes, I think, which could improve relations and engagement between community and law enforcement. In places like Redfern, where there have been significant troubles going back with riots—even in the last few years—many of the elders today would say to me, 'We have broken down barriers between Indigenous groups and the police, and that has really improved things on the ground.'

I think comparisons between jurisdictions and countries are often unhelpful. I think that, in this case, the issues that we have in this country predate any of the activity over the last few weeks. We should own the mistakes and we should press on with this framework we've been given by the Indigenous community, which is this Uluru statement, as a practical way to address some of the challenges. My sense is that we should not fail in this task. If we were to fail on the commitments we've given Indigenous people, which have been enunciated very clearly and very well in the PM's Closing the Gap framework, then we would risk the cohesion of our country. So we can't afford to fail on Uluru.

Finally, today is 49 years since Neville Bonner was pre-selected as an LNP Senator. He was a trailblazer for everyone and he said:

I've seen more dinner times than I've seen dinners, I've known discrimination, I've known prejudice, I've known all of those things ... but some of that is still with us ... and it's got to be changed.

I think we still have much work to do. Thank you.