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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 8 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 2478 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

it is essential that we give more than just lip-service to the steps involved in achieving these goals. We should take every opportunity to make reconciliation a living, breathing reality. Practical support and reconciliation must come not only from government initiatives but also from deep within the community.

Mr Speaker, I believe that the Government's commitment is reflected in the many positive steps it has taken towards reconciliation. The ACT Government has played an active role in contributing towards reconciliation, identifying it as important for Australia's heritage and identity. We have demonstrated in many ways that we have an attitude of goodwill and will continue to honour our commitment now and in the future.

For example, our goodwill is demonstrated by the Government's efforts to achieve a settlement of the native title litigation. As members would be aware, the Government has recently offered the Ngunnawal people a lease over those portions of Namadgi National Park which can be leased. While the legislative framework tightly controls major management matters in the park, the lease is an important symbolic gesture. The lease has the potential to foster reconciliation because it is a symbolic reversal of the dispossession process, and because greater indigenous involvement may help to promote understanding of the role of indigenous people in the natural environment and create new opportunities for users of the park to understand that relationship in context.

There have been many other achievements. We have provided over $20,000 to the Australians for Reconciliation coordinators to further reconciliation in the ACT through community meetings, public forums and workshops, and we have been active in funding and participating in a range of reconciliation activities and projects, including, most recently, the Journey of Healing and Reconciliation Week, a week of activities which helped to give recognition to the stolen generations and their experiences.

In June, as part of Reconciliation Week, Mabo Day celebrations were held in the Assembly reception room. To help celebrate this day, the Government arranged for the Torres Strait Islander flag to be flown from City Hill for the first time, a positive gesture which, I have been advised, was well received by the Torres Strait Islander community throughout Australia and the Torres Strait. It was at the end of Reconciliation Week that the draft document for reconciliation was released.

Mr Speaker, this Government has been assisting the council with the distribution of the document through the indigenous community and government agencies. Copies have been sent to community organisations and to members of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Consultative Council. Funding has been provided to the Australians for Reconciliation coordinators to enable them to hold two public meetings, one north side and one south side, in September this year. These meetings will provide a valuable opportunity for members of the Assembly and the wider ACT community to comment and provide constructive input into the development of the draft document. Therefore, I encourage all members of the Assembly and the wider ACT community to take an active interest in the draft document for reconciliation. Attend one of these meetings and have your say in the consultative process and what is, or should be, included in the document.

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