Page 2035 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 21 June 2011
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government initiated Australia’s first federal legislation on human rights, the environment and heritage. Whitlam laid the foundations of modern Australian life with the Family Law Act, the Australian Legal Aid Office, the Consumer Affairs Commission, the Racial Discrimination Act, Medibank, the Trade Practices Commission, and the Australia Council.
On 16 August 1975 Gough Whitlam as Prime Minister formally handed the Gurindji people at Wattie Creek in the Northern Territory title deeds to part of their traditional lands.
Could we imagine an Australia without these progressive social changes?
Progressive social change was also a hallmark of Jon Stanhope’s ACT Labor government with the long struggle to legislate for civil partnerships.
Jon spoke out against the Howard government’s attacks on personal liberties and human rights, describing the Northern Territory intervention as racist; and he justly criticised the mandatory detention of asylum seekers.
The ACT Human Rights Act, also a Stanhope initiative and an Australian first, introduced important new duties for the executive and the legislature to ensure all policy, administrative action and legislation could be compatible with human rights principles. Consideration and debate about human rights are now an integral part of government action and all Canberrans will benefit.
Jon Stanhope’s achievements for Canberra in economic development and social justice coupled with his championing of human rights have established his reputation as another great Labor leader. I now look forward with anticipation to being part of the new Labor team in the ACT under Katy Gallagher as Chief Minister.
The journey to where I stand today began a long time ago. My aunty, my father’s sister, celebrated her 78th birthday this year. It is remarkable to consider the Australia of her childhood. In 1928, five years before her birth, Mounted Constable Murray, a Gallipoli veteran, led a punitive raid against the Warlpiri in the Northern Territory. Seventy Aborigines were shot dead.
In Victoria and New South Wales Aboriginal protection laws were on the books; they controlled the movement, association and employment of Aborigines. The laws said where you had to live and whether your children could be taken away to state institutions to be trained as farm labourers or domestic servants.
My aunty completed her secondary schooling at Wangaratta high school in Victoria and then went on to Geelong Teachers College in 1953, the first of our family to achieve a tertiary education. She provided the example and inspiration for my father to follow in her footsteps. Together they inspired my cousins, my siblings and me to aspire and achieve.
My mother and father were committed to lifelong learning before it became a slogan. During the 1960s and early 1970s my father completed degrees in commerce and education at Melbourne university. My mother, who had only received a primary
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