Page 2467 - Week 07 - Thursday, 3 August 2017
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I rise today to reaffirm my and the Greens’ support for, and commitment to, the following fundamental principles as the basis for meaningful reform. First, any proposal must be developed in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. As Dr Chris Sarra said, “Do things with us, not to us.” Secondly, the conversation about reconciliation must be based on building a relationship founded on truth and justice; and, thirdly, constitutional reforms need to be more than symbolic. Rather, they must be designed to empower Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and give them a voice in our democracy.
Today we have an opportunity to lend the support of this Assembly to meaningful reconciliation and constitutional reform. The Uluru statement clearly articulates a path forward, led and endorsed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders from across Australia. The Uluru statement sits alongside a strong history of Aboriginal advocacy and calls for reforms. What is being asked for is not new; it is simply presented in a new form and in the voice of today’s community leaders. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been advocating for a voice, for reconciliation, for treaty and for truth and justice for decades.
Even before they were recognised as Australian citizens through the 1967 referendum, Indigenous people were petitioning the Australian government to acknowledge and listen to them. The 1963 Yirrkala bark petitions stated:
The people of this area fear that their needs and interests will be completely ignored as they have been ignored in the past.
As mining encroached on the lands of the Yirrkala people, they sent two petitions to parliament, in both Yolngu Matha and English, protesting the excision of their land and their exclusion from the process. In 1988 the Barunga statement was presented to Prime Minister Bob Hawke, calling on the government to negotiate a treaty recognising Aboriginal peoples’ prior ownership, continued occupation and sovereignty over their ancestral lands and affirming their human rights and freedoms. The then Prime Minister said he wanted to conclude a treaty between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians by 1990, but his wish was not fulfilled.
In 1993 over 400 Indigenous people from across Australia gathered at Eva Valley, near Katherine, in the wake of the Mabo decision. They issued a statement calling for laws to advance first peoples’ rights to land and a lasting settlement recognising and addressing historical truths regarding the impact of dispossession, marginalisation, destabilisation and disadvantage.
In 1998 the Kalkarindji statement was developed by the Combined Aboriginal Nations of Central Australia and was signed by around 50 senior elders. It was developed at the Kalkarindji constitutional convention, near the site of the historic Wave Hill walk-off, and it called for a new constitution for the Northern Territory, based on equality, co-existence and mutual respect.
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