Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I often speak about the war, genocide and apartheid against First Peoples. Most people understand how this happened in the past; missions and massacres are very straightforward to understand. But many people do not fully understand when I speak of the 2025 version of this war, genocide and apartheid against my people that is happening today. This colony continues to build and maintain systems that harm us. They deliberately make laws and policies that ignore the root cause of poverty; destroy our land and culture; and steal and lock up our babies, our women, our men, and torture and abuse them, resulting in deaths in custody.

First Peoples today are faced with a choice: assimilate or die. It is a slow and sophisticated second wave of genocide that is silent and covered up by government bureaucracy and PR spin. The violence of this system might not be as obvious as a massacre but it is just as dangerous. We are always consulted but our sovereign authority is not respected because they know we will never give consent to destroy our land, our culture and our people. This legacy will continue unless we reckon with the role that governments play in this country as the abuser. No-one tells a survivor of abuse to just keep asking politely, yet that's exactly what governments demand of us while they keep killing us. The colonial frontier massacres mapping project found that around half of all massacres of First Peoples were carried out by police and government forces.