Page 2682 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 21 September 2022
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In setting the tone for this speech, I would like to quote from a speech made by Stan Grant earlier this year. He said:
Reconciliation is about truth, and it is about justice, and it is about recognition in this country. It asks more of all of us. We have to bring real substance to this idea of reconciliation. We have to honour the memories of the people who have come before us. We have to live up to Peter Yu’s challenge to all of us to make reconciliation mean something, to give it back its sense of moral purpose.
He continued:
If reconciliation is going to mean anything to us, then we need to live up to the traditions of those who have come before us, those great warriors, men and women, who have fought for this country and are still promising a new future for this country—Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who are asking Australians to walk with us to a better future, a future where we don’t turn away from the past, where we don’t silence our voices, but the voices of First Nations people are heard.
Reconciliation is a verb. Reconciliation is up to each and every one of us, each and every single day. There are actions that we can take in our personal and professional lives to do more. We have way too many statistics on how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are disadvantaged and discriminated against in the ACT and across our country. Our criminal justice system has significant over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders also experience significant health disadvantage, substantially greater than other Australians, particularly in relation to chronic and communicable diseases, infant health, mental health and life expectancy.
In the ACT we have the highest youth Indigenous incarceration rate in the country. According to the Report on Government Services, the proportion of prisoners in the ACT who are Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders has doubled over the last 10 years. The ACT also has Australia’s highest rate of recidivism, with 91 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander detainees having experienced prior imprisonment. Twenty-eight per cent of children entering out of home care are Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders. In the ACT, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people represent 17 per cent of people seeking support for homelessness services, despite making up just 1.3 per cent of the ACT population. The list goes on, and the data collected represents only part of the picture of the ongoing injustices faced by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.
The path to justice is one that I know we as a government are deeply committed to. It is essential that effective solutions are developed with and by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Change will be achieved through many different aspects of reconciliation, including cultural integrity and identity, principles of an inclusive community, full economic participation, justice, community connections, lifelong learning, information sharing, respectful interactions, and leadership and decision-making from within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.
I commend the work of colleagues in this Assembly, including Minister Stephen-Smith, and particularly her work on and responsibility for the Aboriginal and
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