Page 601 - Week 02 - Thursday, 6 March 2008
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incapacity to agree on anything, even right down today where, not only is it not the whip putting forward the amendments, not only is it not the member who is sitting on the admin and procedure committee, it is, in fact, the two previous occupants of the role of whip. Everybody is doing everybody else’s job. Mr Smyth, whom I used to refer to as the shadow minister for shadow ministers, is an expert on doing everybody else’s job. I am sure Mrs Burke, despite him telling her to get out of the deputy’s job, appreciates the tutelage and sponsorship that he is providing in doing her job with these changes.
MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Gentleman): Mr Mulcahy, come back to the amendment, please.
MR MULCAHY: Of course, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker. My mind wanders back to these remarkably memorable days.
I would also like to highlight another point which has not been addressed, and that relates to the changes on page 10, under chapter V, standing order 30. It relates to the acknowledgement at the beginning of each period of sittings and says:
… “The Speaker shall also acknowledge, at the beginning of each period of sittings, that the Assembly is meeting on the lands of the traditional owners.”
I do not purport to be an anthropologist or a leading authority on Indigenous matters, but one of Canberra’s leading academics, who in fact does hold various appointments made by the Stanhope government, has raised with me the fact that that terminology is wrong and that it demonstrates a lack of appreciation of the fact that ownership of property was not a concept understood by the original inhabitants of this country.
Whilst I am not going to propose an amendment, it does come back to me, every time I hear this said in this place and sometimes at government presentations, that certain leading academics—and I am not talking about people who are on the radical side of the political spectrum but people for whom I think even this government would have a lot of regard—have said to me that the appropriate term ought to be “custodians” because there is a distinction in ownership. If you do your work and research on the customs and practices of the original inhabitants, the concept of ownership, I am told, was not part of their culture and it is being inaccurately reflected in this acknowledgement. I am not proposing an amendment, but I would hope that maybe the Speaker or the Clerk could make appropriate inquiries from experts—and I am not one—to see whether that ought to be more accurately reflected with what I understand is custom.
I think the fact that this has turned into the sort of disastrous discussion that it has today—and I know Ms MacDonald is very frustrated about the level to which it has descended—means you have to ask yourself why has this happened. I have indicated one reason, and that is the disarray that not only has existed but continues, as we can see with these multiple amendments today, in the opposition ranks. That is all unfortunate for the democratic process, but I think that also there is another fundamental reason: I do not think the members collectively have been engaged in this process as well as they ought to. Dr Foskey made the point that she had not been
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