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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (30 August) . . Page.. 2609 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

It is also acknowledged that it is often difficult to obtain agreement on many issues within the groups that reside within the ACT. I am concerned that the phrase "subject to the agreement of all groups" will put a significant time barrier in the way of something we should be doing.

I am also concerned that we are saying "subject to the agreement of another group" when we, the Assembly, are supposed to be the leaders in this. We, in fact, represent not only the indigenous people in the ACT. We represent the non-indigenous people as well, and I believe that a lot of the non-indigenous people need to express their recognition of the lands in which they have their homes, their work and their recreation. The erection of these signs will do something for them as well.

I do not think we need to put the qualification on the motion. If you look at the motion, Mr Stanhope just uses the phrase "acknowledging the traditional owners of this country". Bringing to that the qualification that everybody has to agree means that there seems to be some approach to chopping up the area and saying, "This bit belongs to this person and this bit belongs to that one." Mr Speaker, that is a white man's concept. Borders are a white man's concept.

The fact is that the ACT and its region is made up of a number of countries. The people who lived here before us did not have a border staked out over which you did not cross. It may very well be that in the creation of signs acknowledging the ownership of these lands in previous times to greet people as they come into the territory there is this statement that the country in which the ACT is situated is made up of the countries of certain groups of Aboriginal or indigenous people. But if we stick a qualification in the motion it is making it subject to the agreement of all these people.

One of the reasons why they do not have agreement on where their lands were and who the traditional owners are is that their concepts of what is a border is different from our own. They believe that most of this particular piece of ground is theirs, or most of that particular piece of country is theirs. Perhaps, in the spirit of reconciliation and acknowledgment of ownership, we need to acknowledge that predominantly the ACT is situated in Ngunnawal land and it also has an overlap with other people's lands. The spelling matters not. We can spell it twice on a sign. We can acknowledge that there are two people in the same family who spell their names differently, as in my own family people pronounce our name differently.

I urge people to support Mr Stanhope's motion because, in my view, it does something real about recognising on whose land we sit. It addresses the fact that many, many moons ago somebody stole the land from these people. Whilst we are not going to go back to those times, we need to recognise their traditional ownership. Recognising the spirit of what Mr Smyth is trying to do, I nonetheless disagree with it and cannot give his amendment my support. I ask the Assembly to support Mr Stanhope's original motion.

MS TUCKER (11.00): The Greens will be supporting this motion moved by Mr Stanhope. As he said, it is based on a recent motion of the reconciliation committee. We see this motion and the idea of signage as a symbolic step to recognise that the human connection with this place did not begin with Lady Denman, nor even with the sheep farmers.

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