Page 3079 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 23 August 2005
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If we go back through history and look at what some of the previous governments have done we will find that Gary Humphries established an Aboriginal justice advisory committee, Bill Stefaniak announced new scholarships for indigenous students, I was fostering better relations with the indigenous community through the police force, and Kate Carnell gave the indigenous business chamber a boost. That is an interesting one, Mr Deputy Speaker. We acknowledged back in 2000 that there was a need to foster jobs and independence and to build up the indigenous business sector. Where is the indigenous business chamber now? It was killed off by the Stanhope government. Michael Moore, for the ACT government, signed an indigenous housing agreement, and so it goes on.
The Chief Minister started by saying that he would like to see, he thought he might see, a gesture of reconciliation. That is what he wanted; he just wanted a gesture. We are not into gestures; we are into doing the real thing. I would like to remind members that it was Kate Carnell, a Liberal Chief Minister, who, on Tuesday, 17 June 1997, moved in the Assembly a motion of apology to the Ngunnawal and other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the ACT for the hurt and the stress caused to them. It was moved by a Liberal government.
We heard the call for leadership. It is interesting to cast our minds back to when the Chief Minister worked as the senior adviser and chief of staff in the federal parliament to the then Labor Attorney-General, Michael Lavarch. After that, he became the senior adviser on native title to the Federal Labor leader. I wonder what sort of advice the Chief Minister was then giving his colleagues, because they did not apologise. They did not say sorry. They fought Eddie Mabo into an early grave. Michael Lavarch did that. They resisted Eddie Mabo. It was not until six months after Eddie Mabo had died that the High Court finding granted his people title over Mer, or Murray Island, in the eastern part of the Torres Strait.
Mr Gentleman, you’re dead right about looking for leadership, but do not look to your leader because he had the opportunity to influence this debate and did nothing. All he does now is lament the passing of ATSIC. He is the only leader in the country that laments the passing of ATSIC. What has Clare Martin done in the Northern Territory? She has signed up to the federal government’s new programs and accepted the money so that she can help address disadvantage, not talk about it. All our looking at the light on the hill Chief Minister does is talk about it. He is out of step with the rest of the leadership of this country, who want to see things move on.
His fear is that we will lose the effectiveness of ATSIC as a body. At the time services were being delivered through ATSIC, not all services were being delivered. Education, for instance, has been mainstreamed for a very long time. As we heard the Chief Minister say, literacy and numeracy levels are coming up. Perhaps that is because it has been mainstreamed. Perhaps that is because there have been so many programs that have been funded by both sides of parliament, by Liberal and Labor federal governments, to give credit where credit is due. Chief Minister, you should learn to give credit where credit is due. Many have made efforts over time. Don’t just talk about it, Chief Minister. Don’t let Aboriginal issue in this territory languish like you have let the cultural centre at Yarramundi languish for the last three or four years. You are the minister responsible and nothing has happened.
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