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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 4 Hansard (7 May) . . Page.. 1022 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

My own party, I would have to say and concede, has contributed to those concerns that people express. The existing parties in government, both within the ACT and federally, have done likewise. That is a sad indictment, but it is true. People see political parties adopting policies which have meant less job security, which have meant higher unemployment and which have created a sense of insecurity within our community. We need to address those things; we need to accept that as a society we have an obligation to put people first.

What also needs to be addressed, I think, Mr Speaker, is the Prime Minister's and the Federal coalition's failure to tackle the views of Ms Hanson from the very beginning. Only now, when there seems to be concern about how successful she is, how popular she seems to have become and the threat that poses to the coalition's standing in the community, have Ministers started to speak out. Mind you, the Prime Minister still seems the most reluctant of them all. But the reality is that Pauline Hanson will not go away. We cannot hope that her bubble will burst because, unlike other people who have been created on a wave of media attention, such as Bronwyn Bishop, she is tapping into something far more deep-seated within our community. She is tapping into fear and insecurity, and we need to address that. We need to put the argument that the views put forward by Pauline Hanson are hateful, divisive and simplistic and will not solve the problems that face our nation today. That is why this motion is so important. This motion says that the elected representatives of the people of Canberra reject the views of Pauline Hanson and reject the divisiveness and the hatred that she propagates in our community.

Reconciliation, Mr Speaker, has continued to grow as an issue within our society, and the views that Ms Hanson promotes on reconciliation I find distasteful - completely and utterly distasteful - because she suggests that what happened to the Aboriginal people of this nation is not our responsibility collectively. She suggests that these people - the Aboriginal, indigenous people of this nation - did not own the land, did not have a relationship with the land and did not recognise how important the land was to them for their communities and that, overall, we can ignore what happened to them following European settlement in 1788.

The facts are that they were massacred; they died of disease brought with European settlers; they were dispossessed of their children; they were removed from their settlements; it was attempted to forcibly amalgamate them into our society. It is wrong to deny that happened. It did happen. These people were disenfranchised for over 150 years following European settlement. Aboriginal people were disenfranchised; they could not even vote. We did not even recognise them in the census. They did not exist. It has been only in the past 40 to 50 years that we have started to turn around those attitudes.

We have a lot more work to do; we have a lot more things to say to people like Pauline Hanson, such as that views that are simplistic and attempt to blame others because of the colour of their skin or their background are wrong. This motion is one step in achieving that. We all, as representatives, have to go out and talk to people and explain to them that the solutions that Pauline Hanson promotes are simplistic; they will not work; and they create an ever more divisive and intolerant society. I know that is something that none of us in this Assembly want to see.

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