Page 2896 - Week 08 - Thursday, 17 August 2017
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National Reconciliation Week aims to give people across Australia the opportunity to focus on reconciliation, unity and respect between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous Australians. As Reconciliation Australia describes it, National Reconciliation Week is a time to “reflect on achievements so far and on what must still be done to achieve reconciliation”.
National Reconciliation Week is bookended by significant milestones in the reconciliation journey. As I said, 27 May marks the anniversary of Australia’s most successful referendum and a defining event in our nation’s history. The 1967 referendum, the 50th anniversary of which we marked this year, saw more than 90 per cent of Australians vote to give the commonwealth the power to make laws for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and to recognise them in the national census. The end of Reconciliation Week, 3 June, commemorates the High Court of Australia’s landmark Mabo decision in 1992. This case legally recognised that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have a special relationship to the land—a relationship that existed prior to colonisation and still exists today. This case and this recognition paved the way for native title.
In introducing this bill today, I must acknowledge the work of my predecessor, Dr Chris Bourke, the former Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs. I acknowledge his presence here in the chamber today. This time last year, Dr Bourke tabled the outcomes report from the public consultation process on this proposal to establish a Reconciliation Day public holiday. In the consultation, a total of 94 written submissions were received, 150 people responded to an online survey and 25 participants attended community forums to discuss the proposal. The report found that people who participated in the consultation overwhelmingly support the proposal to establish a Reconciliation Day public holiday in the ACT.
Most of the engagement activities during the consultation process addressed the core questions of whether the Canberra community supported the proposed Reconciliation Day public holiday and when a Reconciliation Day public holiday should be held. While there was no consensus on a preferred date in the focus groups or the interviews, it was generally agreed that the day needed to have a strong link that is something culturally or historically significant. Participants in the focus groups emphasised the need to get it right and to not rush things, noting that it was important that the day be on the right date, at the right time and with the right name. Members will recall that on 11 August 2016 the ACT Legislative Assembly resolved to work with the ACT community to establish a Reconciliation Day holiday, to commence in 2018.
As I did in response to Mr Rattenbury’s motion about the Uluru statement, which we debated earlier in the month, I acknowledge that the impact of colonisation on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples since 1788 has been profound. The resulting intergenerational trauma is deeply affecting, and lies at the heart of contemporary disadvantage. For non-Indigenous Australians, reconciliation is the opportunity to acknowledge what happened in the past, to recognise the impacts of colonisation on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and to move forward together.
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