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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (30 November) . . Page.. 3531 ..

MR STANHOPE (Leader of the Opposition) (3.55): I would like to respond to the statement that the Chief Minister has made. I am pleased that today the government has reasserted its commitment to reconciliation. It has been a pleasing aspect of Assembly debates over the years on reconciliation and the rights of indigenous people within our community that there has been a significant degree of bipartisanship in relation to some of the very significant and symbolic aspects of reconciliation-the formal apology that the Assembly has delivered to indigenous people and the statement the Chief Minister has made today on the government's commitment to the reconciliation process, to Corroboree 2000 and to the Australian Declaration Towards Reconciliation.

We acknowledge the significant steps the government and the Assembly have taken from time to time in relation to reconciliation and indigenous issues. The Attorney, in his statement, summarised a range of commitments and initiatives that have been undertaken in the ACT. The opposition applauds the steps that have been taken. A number of very practical measures have been implemented. There has been significant resourcing of specific programs directly relevant to indigenous people within the ACT.

There have been significant symbolic gestures of support for reconciliation and indigenous people that have also been readily embraced by the government on behalf of the people of the ACT. In particular, its support of functions such as NAIDOC Week and Bringing them home and the willingness with which the indigenous flag is flown within the ACT are symbolic gestures of support by the Assembly and the people of the ACT for reconciliation.

As the Chief Minister said, there is always so much more that can be done in furthering practical reconciliation through a recognition of the severe disadvantage indigenous people have suffered in Australia over the last two centuries and continue to suffer and a recognition of the terrible spiral of despair and disadvantage that are an incident of the abuse, the dispossession, the disenfranchisement and the disempowerment that indigenous people have suffered in Australia over the last 200 years.

There are a range of areas of disadvantage, a range of significant wounds, of sorrows and hurt that have not yet been healed. The reconciliation process is a very important part of the process of healing the wounds of the past. We need to appropriately identify areas of continuing disadvantage and to appropriately resource those areas of disadvantage, in a genuine attempt to break the cycles of disadvantage and the despair that springs from that disadvantage and is reflected in the continuing truly terrible range of health indicators and other indicators in relation to employment, economic position and education, interfaced with the criminal justice system and abuse of substances. The list of significant disadvantage is quite long and at times despairing. The indigenous population in Canberra suffers very much to the same extent as indigenous communities throughout Australia do in relation to each of these significant indicators of disadvantage, including health and average life expectancy.

I acknowledge the announcement by the Minister for Education today that the latest benchmarking of year 3 and year 5 literacy or reading rates shows that significant progress has been made. It has to be acknowledged that the progress that has been made in the last year-from a Labor base, admittedly-does indicate that educational disadvantage at least is recognised. Very pleasing progress has been made, and we look

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