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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 10 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 3052 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

It is a sign of the way in which the Australian community was changed by the tent embassy and the way in which the agenda of indigenous issues was affected that the embassy has stayed for so long on that site and has been the subject of so much comment and attention since that time. In other words, many other protests have taken place around our parliamentary triangle. There are many other points of view of longstanding, but this one has had a special place in determining the outlook of Australians towards this issue and indeed in affecting the performance of governments. I believe that it has been at least partly responsible for goading action and pricking the consciences of white Australians about the needs of Aboriginal people.

Having put that on the record, I also have to say that I think that as a vehicle for raising and progressing legitimate issues the Aboriginal community might wish to raise the Aboriginal tent embassy on the lawns of old Parliament House has in many ways outlived its usefulness and that there is a respectable argument that the embassy may actually be hurting and damaging the cause of genuine reconciliation and genuine discussion and debate about the issues the embassy is there to raise.

It is worth acknowledging that in many respects the embassy is now out of sight and out of mind. The federal parliament no longer sits in the old Parliament House. It now sits in the new Parliament House. An equivalent facility has not been established there, and I think that many people simply forget that the tent embassy is there. It is certainly only remembered by many people when media attention attaches to it, such as when there is some kind of confrontation or some kind of act which is reported in the media or when an attempt is made to remove facilities or services there, as has been the case in the last few weeks.

I have to be cynical about this. I think on some occasions those items of publicity have been generated by the occupants of the site because of a sense of relevance deprivation, a sense of being outside the limelight, outside the mainstream of Australian political debate. Some of the acts we have seen in respect of that site have been attempts to bring the embassy and its associated issues back within the mainstream of debate in Australia about those issues. If one accepts that, I admit, slightly cynical view, that suggests to me that the embassy needs to rethink what it is trying to achieve.

I think it is worth reporting and recording that in the 30 years since the tent embassy was set up there has been dramatic and appreciable progress on a large number of issues which generated the original establishment of the tent embassy. I know people will say to me, "That is a complacent point of view. You are overlooking the fact that there are so many issues as yet unaddressed." I in turn would say back to my critics on that point that whereas it is possible for one person to say a glass is half-full it is also possible for someone to say it is half-empty. If the glass was empty in 1972, it is certainly, I would argue, well on the way to being at least half-full at the present time. I do not think the embassy has been aware of that fact or has accepted that that is an evolution in this debate.

Black and white Australians across Australia are these days talking to each other in forums like the former Council on Aboriginal Reconciliation, on countless bodies established to negotiate native title, and in a whole host of important social, legal and political debates that this nation is having. My view is that the embassy has ceased to be

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