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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (19 November) . . Page.. 3804 ..

MR WHITECROSS (Leader of the Opposition) (9.34): I am pleased to rise to speak to this motion because I, like a great many Canberrans, have been very troubled by some of the debate that has gone on in the Australian community, before I left, while I was away and since I have been back. It is indeed an unsettling debate which Australia could well do without.

While I was overseas recently I visited a number of parts of America. You will be aware, I am sure, Mr Speaker, that in parts of America racial tensions are particularly high. One particular part of America which I visited was southern California and there issues of racism are used openly in the public debate. The public debate centres around arguments that welfare services and social services, government services, are about this racial group taking away from the dominant white racial group. To me, Mr Speaker, it would be a tragedy of the first order if Australia were to descend to the point where we were not able to look at issues of justice, fairness and equality of opportunity in a way which ignored the racial origins of people and instead took the view that we were not going to provide services which people from other races were going to benefit from. That is an awful situation which I witnessed in parts of America. It is a situation which I would like to see Australia avoid.

Mr Speaker, I want to speak a little about Aboriginal reconciliation because I believe that this is something which we have to pursue actively. This motion states points of principle about affirming our commitment for the ongoing process of reconciliation and achieving a greater understanding between Australians of Aboriginal background and Torres Strait Islander background, and those of non-indigenous background, and addressing the profound social and economic disadvantages there.

The key word to me in this is the word "process". Reconciliation between the indigenous peoples of Australia and others of non-indigenous background in Australia is indeed a process. It is not simply a matter of our saying we are all friends. It is something that we are going to have to work at. It is a matter of building relationships. It is about understanding history and sharing history between people of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds and others because, Mr Speaker, we have to understand the points from which we are coming if we are indeed to be reconciled and to be able to move forward. It is about understanding that much of the history is a history of oppression and of injustice. Mr Speaker, it is impossible, for instance, to deal with the question of Aboriginal reconciliation and to ignore issues like the stolen generation inquiry and families being broken up by state intervention. Nor is it possible for us to ignore the injustice caused by the high rates of incarceration of people of Aboriginal backgrounds in our prisons. These are things we have to understand and these are problems we have to grapple with if reconciliation is to be meaningful.

Similarly, Mr Speaker, we have to value cultures. This is something which applies equally to people from multicultural backgrounds and to people from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds. The valuing of cultures is essential to mutual understanding and to our progress as a community. It is not good enough for us to say that people who come to Australia should accept the dominant cultures. We have to have a culture of tolerance, one in which we all see the values in each other's cultures and in which we all work together to create a strong and diverse community.

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