Senator Scott Ludlum: 'Prime Minister. See you out west' - 2014

3 March 2014, Senate chamber, Canberra, Australia

Tonight I rise to invite Prime Minister Tony Abbott to visit the beautiful state of Western Australia. I do this in good faith, because we are only a matter of weeks away from a historic by-election that will not just determine the final makeup of this chamber after July but also will decide much more of consequence to the people of Western Australia, whether they are thinking of voting for the Greens or not. Prime Minister, you are welcome out west, but this is a respectful invitation to think carefully about what baggage you pack when you make your next flying campaign stopover. When you arrive at Perth airport, you will alight on the traditional country of the Whadjuk Nyoongar people, who have sung this country for more than 40,000 years. This is 200 times the age of the city that now stands on the banks of the Derbal Yerigan, the Swan River. Understand that you are now closer to Denpasar than to Western Sydney, in a state where an entire generation has been priced out of affordable housing. Recognise that you are standing in a place where the drought never ended, where climate change from land clearing and fossil fuel combustion is a lived reality that is already costing jobs, property and lives. Mr Prime Minister, at your next press conference we invite you to leave your excruciatingly boring three-word slogans at home. If your image of Western Australia is of some caricatured redneck backwater that is enjoying the murderous horror unfolding on Manus Island, you are reading us wrong. Every time you refer to us as the 'mining state' as though the western third of our ancient continent is just Gina Rinehart's inheritance to be chopped, benched and blasted, you are reading us wrong. Western Australians are a generous and welcoming lot, but if you arrive and start talking proudly about your attempts to bankrupt the renewable energy sector, cripple the independence of the ABC and privatise SBS, if you show up waving your homophobia in people's faces and start boasting about your ever-more insidious attacks on the trade union movement and all working people, you can expect a very different kind of welcome. People are under enough pressure as it is without three years of this government going out of its way to make it worse. It looks awkward when you take policy advice on penalty rates and the minimum wage from mining billionaires and media oligarchs on the other side of the world-awkward, and kind of revolting. It is good to remember that these things are temporary. For anyone listening in from outside this almost empty Senate chamber, the truth is that Prime Minister Tony Abbott and this benighted attempt at a government are a temporary phenomenon. They will pass, and we need to keep our eyes on the bigger picture. Just as the reign of the dinosaurs was cut short to their great surprise, it may be that the Abbott government will appear as nothing more than a thin, greasy layer in the core sample of future political scientists drilling back into the early years of the 21st century. The year 2014 marks 30 years since the election of the first representative of what was to become the Greens-my dear friend and mentor Senator Jo Vallentine. She came into this place as a lone Western Australian representative speaking out against the nuclear weapons that formed the foundations of the geopolitical suicide pact we dimly remember as the Cold War. Since the first day of Senator Vallentine's first term, the Greens have been articulating a vision of Australia as it could be-an economy running on infinite flows of renewable energy; a society that never forgets it lives on country occupied by the planet's oldest continuing civilisation; and a country that values education, innovation and equality. These values are still at the heart of our work; nowhere stronger than on the Walkatjurra Walkabout, which will set off again later this month to challenge the poisonous imposition of the state's first uranium mine on the shoreline of Lake Way. As the damage done by the nuclear industry is global, so is our resistance. Mr Abbott, your thoughtless cancellation of half a billion dollars of Commonwealth funding for the Perth light rail project has been noted. Your blank cheque for Colin Barnett's bloody and unnecessary shark cull has been noted. Your attacks on Medicare, on schools funding, on tertiary education-noted. The fact that your only proposal for environmental reforms thus far is to leave Minister Greg Hunt playing solitaire for the next three years while you outsource his responsibilities to the same Premier who presides over the shark cull has been noted too. You may not believe this, Prime Minister, but your advocacy on behalf of foreign biotechnology corporations and Hollywood's copyright-industrial complex to chain Australia to the Trans-Pacific Partnership has been noted. People have been keeping a record of every time you have been given the opportunity to choose between predator capitalism and the public interest, and it is bitterly obvious whose side you are on. So to be very blunt, the reason that I extend this invitation to you, Mr Prime Minister, to spend as much time as you can spare in Western Australia is that every time you open your mouth the Green vote goes up. You and your financial backers in the gas fracking and uranium industries have inspired hundreds of people to spend their precious time doorknocking thousands of homes for the Greens in the last few weeks. Your decision to back Monsanto's shareholders instead of Western Australian farmers has inspired people across the length and breadth of this country to make thousands of calls and donate to our campaign. As for the premeditated destruction of the NBN and Attorney-General George Brandis's degrading capitulation to the surveillance state when confronted with the unlawful actions of the US NSA-even the internet is turning green, 'for the win'. Geeks and coders, network engineers and gamers would never have voted Green in a million years without the blundering and technically illiterate assistance of your leadership team. For this I can only thank you. And, perhaps most profoundly, your determined campaign to provoke fear in our community-fear of innocent families fleeing war and violence in our region-in the hope that it would bring out the worst in Australians is instead bringing out the best in us. Prime Minister, you are welcome to take your heartless racist exploitation of people's fears and ram it as far from Western Australia as your taxpayer funded travel entitlements can take you. What is at stake here, in the most immediate sense, is whether or not Prime Minister Tony Abbott has total control of this parliament in coming years. But I have come to realise that it is about much more than that. We want our country back. Through chance, misadventure, and, somewhere, a couple of boxes of misplaced ballot papers, we have been given the opportunity to take back just one seat on 5 April, and a whole lot more in 2016. Game on, Prime Minister. See you out west.

Josie Farrer: 'We are one step closer to recognition of all Aboriginal people in our State's Constitution' WA Parliament - 2015

VIDEO of this speech can be accessed here

17 June, 2015, Parliament House, Perth, WA, Australia

Madam Acting Speaker, I seek leave to pay my respects in the Gidja language, which will contain nothing unparliamentary. I will then provide the house with an English translation.

[Leave granted.]

Ms J. FARRER: Thank you.

[Words spoken in Gidja language — Kilingen jarrak ngenen ngenengka, Noonga-m pe taam warringarrem-pe — ngarri / ngayen kulu kulu ngenan perrem purru marnum.
Ngayen ngarra ngenau Gidja-m warringarrem-pe jijiyilem-pe, ngali ngalem pe of Western Australia.]

In English, I said —
I pay my respects to this land and to the Noongar people, the original inhabitants and traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today.

I also acknowledge my people the Gidja tribe in the East Kimberley, and all the Aboriginal nations of Western Australia.

I stand here today with mixed feelings. I am happy that we are one step closer to recognition of all Aboriginal people in our state’s Constitution. I feel buoyed by the findings of the Joint Select Committee on Aboriginal Constitutional Recognition that my original 2014 bill was correctly drafted. I thank the members of that committee for their hard work and, in particular, for their support of me. I feel encouraged by the indications of bipartisan support from government members for this Constitution Amendment (Recognition of Aboriginal People) Bill 2015 and feel that we are moving closer to us not being timid and reaching out to be magnificent. But there is also a feeling of frustration that it has taken more than a year since I introduced the 2014 version of this bill to get to this point. However, if this new bill is passed, the wait will have been worth it.

The human history of Western Australia commenced between 40 000 and 60 000 years ago with the arrival of Indigenous Australians to our north west coast. My ancestors expanded the range of their settlement to the east and south of the continent. They were visited time and again over the last 500 years or so by your mob, although your history says a white explorer, Dirk Hartog, was the first recorded contact in 1616. Let me make this clear: this is your mob’s version, not my ancestors’ history. I always laugh when some scientist claims to have made a “new” discovery such as a lily, a plant or an animal or some rangeland feature. But seriously, our history, our cultures, will remain separate forever until we recognise who was here first. This is what this bill does. It means that once we have amended the Constitution to recognise the original people who occupied this land—so long ago that we could walk here—our collective history joins at that point and history becomes our history from now on. We can join and walk together—all of us.

As a reminder to members of where this journey has taken us, I introduced the 2014 bill on 11 June 2014. My colleagues and I then began extensive consultation, contacting more than 400 stakeholder groups and receiving feedback that extended into October 2014. On 12 and 19 November we debated that bill in this house. Some members opposite gave expressions of support, for which I congratulate them. However, the Parliament also expressed concern that the bill may not be properly drafted and there may be legal ramifications. On 26 November 2014, this house passed a motion directing the matter to a joint select committee. On 2 December our colleagues in the other place appointed their members to that committee. The committee met through the summer and tabled its report on 26 March this year. The report’s 16 findings concluded that the words in the 2014 bill were a suitable starting point for considering an appropriate form of words for constitutional recognition in Western Australia and recommended some minor amendments to improve readability. The report supported the removal of section 42 of the Constitution Act 1889 (WA). In addition, the report recommended the amendment of section 75 to remove the definition of the Aborigines Protection Board. The report found that the continued presence of these spent provisions within the Constitution Act 1889 would be inappropriate and inconsistent with the spirit of reconciliation inherent in a statement of recognition by the Parliament.

The report contains two recommendations: first, some minor amendments to the 2014 bill’s wording for the Constitution Act 1889 preamble; and, second, that the 2014 bill appears to be an option available to the Parliament should it wish to consider a bill to recognise Aboriginal people in the Constitution Act 1889 (WA).

I would just like to say that the Constitution was formed back in 1889. My mother’s grandmother, her dad’s mother, was alive then. So we have had 126 years to be the subjects of this Constitution.

Importantly, the report found that if the 2014 bill were passed, the risks of unintended legal consequences appear to be negligible. As I pointed out when I tabled the bill a few months ago, the report provides strong reassurance on the following points: firstly, it finds that the addition of these words of recognition could be enacted by ordinary legislative procedures—in other words, we do not need a referendum; secondly, it finds the suggestion that such an addition could limit the legislative power of the state can be discounted; thirdly, it finds that the risk of the addition having any impact on the interpretation of other Western Australian legislation or legislative powers is exceedingly low or negligible; fourthly, it finds that the addition will not have any substantive effect on native title law or pastoral leases, and I think we need to be clear on that; and, finally, and very importantly, the report finds that a non-effects clause should not be incorporated into any statement of recognition and notes that a non-effects clause would undermine the spirit in which the statement of recognition is made. As a result, this 2015 Constitution Amendment (Recognition of Aboriginal People) Bill 2015 is substantively the Constitution Amendment (Recognition of Aboriginal People) Bill 2014 with the Joint Select Committee on Aboriginal Constitutional Recognition’s recommended changes incorporated.

In opening this debate I will reiterate some of what I covered in my second reading speech on the 2014 bill. It is worth restating for the sake of posterity and should be included in the second reading speech for this amended 2015 bill. Early in 2014, I raised the issue of official constitutional recognition of Western Australia’s Aboriginal people and invited the Premier and the Leader of the Opposition to step forward with me and deliver a great act for all Western Australian Aboriginal people. Today, I ask again that all members of this Parliament also step forward and provide their support to pass this bill. This bill amends the Western Australian Constitution Act 1889 to officially recognise Western Australia’s Aboriginal people as the first people of this land. Make no mistake, this is important. Recognition, acknowledgement and acceptance are necessary steps to true and lasting reconciliation, and this bill is just one of those steps. In a way it is more than a step, it is a confident stride forward. As I said earlier, when European settlers came to Western Australia, there were people here before them; people with rich, beautiful languages, culture and art, people who had complex laws and protocols, and people who fought wars and negotiated peace. These people—my people—had been here for thousands of years.

This year will mark 126 years since the Constitution Act was passed and so it is long overdue that recognition is given to Australia’s first people. The Constitution Act 1889 has been amended 24 times in the last 126 years. Until the 1967 referendum, Aboriginal Australians were excluded even from being counted in the tally of citizens under section 127 of the Australian Constitution. Moving forward in an equal future together we must all remove acts of discrimination against one another. We are a strong and vibrant people and we share with you a beautiful country and unique culture and languages. However, we continue the pursuit of true reconciliation. Other mainland states have provided constitutional recognition of Aboriginal Australians as the first people of our country. We heard South Australia was the most recent state to recognise Aboriginal people in its Constitution through the Constitution (Recognition of Aboriginal Peoples) Amendment Bill 2012, which was introduced into the South Australian Parliament on 29 November 2012, passed on 5 March 2013 and assented to on 28 March 2013. The New South Wales Parliament introduced the Constitution Amendment (Recognition of Aboriginal People) Bill 2010 on 8 September 2010, passed the bill on 19 October 2010 and it received royal assent on 25 October 2010. Queensland introduced the Constitution (Preamble) Amendment Bill 2009 on 24 November 2009, which was passed on 23 February 2010 and received assent on 25 February 2010. The first state in Australia to give constitutional recognition to Aboriginal people was Victoria, which introduced the Constitution (Recognition of Aboriginal People) Bill 2004 on 26 August 2004, passed the bill on 4 November 2004 and it received assent on 9 November 2004. At a federal level, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Bill 2012 was passed by the House of Representatives on 13 February 2013 and read into the Senate on 25 February 2013. Passing this bill will make Western Australia the last mainland state to recognise Aboriginal people in its Constitution.

This Western Australian bill recognises that Aboriginal people are the original custodians of Western Australia. I will not reiterate the 2004 Solicitor General’s advice on the lack of unintended legal consequences. The joint select committee’s findings endorsed that advice by coming to the same conclusion. Recognition of Aboriginal people as the first people of Western Australia through our Constitution is vital in addressing the ethical issues that face all Australians. The task of government is to show leadership and advocate unity; acknowledgement is not a distraction. I agree with Paul Keating who spoke about these ethical and moral issues when he said —

The distraction comes when we fail to address them, when we avert our eyes from these core moral issues of national responsibility and pretend we can shuffle towards the future without acknowledging the truth of our past. That is what impedes our ability to move forward as a nation. And none of these issues is more central than addressing the place in our society of indigenous Australians.

I say to my fellow members of Parliament here today that this is the opportunity for us to stride into the future, not to shuffle forward with eyes closed from the truths of the past. This is the chance to come together as a Parliament and as a community in a sincere, mature, heartfelt spirit of reconciliation. Members, I said earlier this year that true reconciliation means bold action, brave people and meaningful dialogue. I also challenge members to not be afraid—do not be timid just be magnificent! Despite all our differences, I believe that Western Australian people, and, for that matter, all Australian people, will understand better than anyone the need for the recognition, acknowledgement and respect of ancestral lands. Today, I am asking all of you who like to reminisce about your connections to Australia and your ancestral links overseas, wherever that may be, to join me to seize this opportunity before us as parliamentarians to do something remarkable.

Members, when this bill is passed by this Parliament, I believe an appropriate acknowledgement of the significance of this bill needs to be held here in the Parliament building. The event should include the traditional owners, the Noongar people, and other representatives. I will be writing to the Presiding Officers and the Premier about this event in due course. So please assist me with passing this bill and let us make history in Western Australia by acknowledging Aboriginal people as being the first people of Australia. I invite you again members to be magnificent and support this bill. I would like to now commend the bill to the house.

[Applause.]

Debate adjourned, on motion by Mr A. Krsticevic.