Page 358 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 1 March 1994
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It seems that two years after the tabling of the report the Government is still implementing its recommendations. I understand that the scope of the royal commission's recommendations was broad. However, it seems to me to be appropriate that we call on the ACT Government in 1994 to provide the Assembly with a status report as to how far these recommendations have been implemented, and what exactly remains to be done.
In summary, Madam Speaker, while there is no doubt that considerable achievements occurred during 1993, the International Year of the World's Indigenous Peoples, more will be achieved and can be achieved in 1994 and ongoing years. Two of these achievements will be shortly realised through the passage of our own native title legislation and through the establishment of a keeping place and cultural centre. We can do more, though, by resolving the perceived difficulties with the membership of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Council, by enhancing the role and the work of the Parliamentary Awareness Group, by revisiting the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, and by directly involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in decision making processes about issues which directly involve them.
Madam Speaker and members, we know what the International Year of the World's Indigenous Peoples has meant to the ACT Government, but the real test of the success of the International Year of the World's Indigenous Peoples must be measured by the indigenous peoples of the ACT themselves. The Government, to its credit, has recognised that many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people feel totally dispossessed, regardless of the Mabo decision and the provisions of the Commonwealth's Native Title Act 1993. Nonetheless, the effect of the rescission of the concept of terra nullius, which assumed that Australia was uninhabited before European settlement, is profound, and we as a community must ensure that the rescission of the concept flows into our current decision making processes in relation to the indigenous peoples of the ACT. I believe that it is important for our future well-being, Madam Speaker, that our ever growing ACT community effectively comes to terms with the issues of reconciliation in relation to our own indigenous peoples, for our mutual and advantageous benefit for many years to come.
MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (9.20), in reply: I would like to respond to some of the issues that Ms Szuty raised in her address on this matter. She raised a number of important points. I would like to emphasise again, at the outset, that the International Year of the World's Indigenous Peoples had a theme, and that theme was "Indigenous Peoples - a new partnership". I believe that that theme was very much borne out during the year. It is a new partnership and, like many a new partnership, it has a long way to go until it reaches maturity; but I think the international year made a very good start. A part of that very good start, the major part of that very good start, must be said to have been the establishment of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Council.
Members will be aware that the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody had as its central theme the empowerment of Aboriginal peoples themselves. I consider that having the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Council within our community really goes to the heart of empowerment of our local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
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