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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (30 August) . . Page.. 2614 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

There are a couple of other points that I will make. The Attorney has some inside information on the activities of the reconciliation committee that were not available to me. I guess it is always disturbing to hear a government criticise the operations of an organisation such as the Reconciliation Committee for the Australian Capital Region. My awareness in relation to that committee's attitude to this issue was that they supported it.

The Attorney comes along now and says that perhaps it was not a very satisfactory process that arrived at the decision. That is news to me. I do wonder how the Attorney's intelligence on how the reconciliation committee operated on the day that it considered this issue and decided to support the notion of the erection of signs actually advances the debate. The Attorney says that neither of the co-chairs were in attendance at the meeting, but I am very aware of the views of Ms Matilda House, which I mentioned in my address to this motion.

Ms House, one of the co-chairs, is enthusiastic in her support for this notion. So the Attorney raises as an issue the fact that the co-chairs were not at the meeting of the reconciliation committee that said that they wanted this process to proceed, that they wanted signs erected.

Ms Matilda House, one of those co-chairs, is on the record as saying that she would like the signs in place before the Olympics in two weeks time. That is the view of one of the co-chairs. It is also the view, coincidentally, of the chair of the Ngunnawal Land Council, which role she also occupies. So I think there are some responses one can make.

The fact of the matter is that the Reconciliation Committee for the Australian Capital Region has endorsed the erection of signs at each of the borders of the ACT and in other appropriate locations throughout the ACT to indicate prior occupation of this area by the Ngunnawal people. That is the position of the reconciliation committee, it is the position of, as I understand it, both of the co-chairs of the reconciliation committee, and it is the position of the Ngunnawal Land Council.

I am pleased at the level of agreement within the Assembly about the appropriateness of this form of acknowledgment of prior occupation, and the particularly strong symbolic importance of this sort of action in the reconciliation process. I am pleased that the Assembly acknowledges that.

I am a little bit intrigued about the Attorney raising the issue of the Namadgi joint management plan and the need for us all to act in a bipartisan way. Two weeks ago I asked, through the Attorney's office, for a briefing by his department on progress with arrangements in relation to Namadgi National Park and I was refused. Quite frankly, Attorney, for you to stand here today and talk about the need for a bipartisan approach, and in that context raise the Namadgi National Park, when my staff approached your office two weeks ago and asked for a briefing on progress in relation to the Namadgi National Park joint plan of management and were told I could not be briefed because the issue was commercially confidential and too sensitive, does beggar your commitment to a bipartisan approach on indigenous issues within the territory.

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