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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (24 May) . . Page.. 1715 ..

MR STANHOPE (Leader of the Opposition) (7.35): Mr Speaker, the motion that I moved is very straightforward. In recent years during this week we have recognised indigenous disadvantage in this nation through Sorry Day or the Journey of Healing. This year we are observing Sorry Day on the Friday of this week and Corroboree 2000 on the Saturday of this week. It is most appropriate therefore that we in this Assembly again focus on the importance of what it is that so many Australians are seeking to achieve in a reconciliation between indigenous Australians and non-indigenous Australians.

This is a process that has been formally pursued for the last 10 years through the work of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. They have been 10 difficult years in which there have been some heated debates fraught with difficult issues for indigenous and non-indigenous Australians to grapple with and struggle to come to terms with.

In that decade, for instance, we have seen the proceedings and the outcomes of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, a most significant piece of work. That royal commission drew to the attention of Australians the significant impacts on indigenous people of incarceration and the extent to which their disadvantage and the discrimination which they have suffered in Australia over two centuries has led to them being so appallingly represented in exposure to the criminal justice system. Indigenous Australians have been restrained in one form or another within the prisons of all the states and territories in Australia to the point where they are so incredibly over-represented. That circumstance, revealed through that inquiry into black deaths in custody, translated into the most appalling number of deaths of indigenous people in custody, people who represent one per cent or less of the Australian population.

Following that we saw the significant and traumatic inquiry into the stolen generations that culminated in the Bringing them home report. I think all members will be aware of how heart-rending, traumatic and trying that was for all those indigenous people affected by those programs, and how traumatic and trying it was for we non-indigenous Australians to become aware of the pain and the hurt that had been endured and which continues to be endured by indigenous Australians.

We have also seen the ongoing work and struggle of indigenous and non-indigenous Australians to come to some acceptance of reconciliation. It has been a very difficult road. In a formal sense Australians have been working for the last 10 years to develop a document of reconciliation. That culminates this weekend in the handing to all the state and territory leaders of Australia of a document of reconciliation prepared after enormous consultation and work by the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation over this last decade.

Yet in that context, the culmination of those 10 years of work, the final agreement by the council on a form of words that they are prepared to present to the representatives of the Australian people, the government, we find at the time that that document of reconciliation is being formally handed to the representatives of the people of Australia that we still have in place in Western Australia and in the Northern Territory mandatory sentencing laws that impact so dramatically and in a proven racially discriminatory way against indigenous people.

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