PRIME MINISTER
CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER
ROCKHAMPTON ABORIGINAL CULTURAL CENTRE
ROCKHAMPTON 9 APRIL 1988
Your invitation to me to open the Rockhampton ~ boriginal
Cultural Centre was welcome because it gives me an
opportunity to deliver two important messages.
First, I want to congratulate you on the tremendous spirit
of co-operation and endeavour with which you have created
this new Centre.
Second, I want to talk about a spirit of co-operation and
endeavour at the national level namely,; the new process of
consultation currently taking place between the Federal
Government and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people of this nation.
Today is truly a proud day for Rockhampton because we are
celebrating the opening of a new centre in whose creation
many parts of the Rockhampton community have played a role.
The Rockhampton City Council, the local College of TAFE,
service clubs and individual citizens can all take a share
of the credit.
The Federal and Queensland Governments each contributed more
than $ 450,000 to the cost of the Centre, as part of the
Commonwealth-State Bicentennial Commemorative Program.
But all these efforts depended on the original idea and the
determined commitment of the local Aboriginal community
and in particular the members of the Central Queensland
Aboriginal Corporation for Cultural Activities.
What all these efforts have combined to produce is a
building of very great significance:
it will be an important tourist attraction for local,
interstate and international visitors;
it will help ensure that Aboriginal people retain their
culture as a living thing for the inspiration and
education of us all; and 005650
2.
through the cooperative spirit with which the Centre was
built, it will serve as a lesson on how to get things
done, together a lesson from which all Australians in
our multicultural nation could learn.
As I said, the Federal Government has contributed money to
this Centre under a joint Commonwealth-State Bicentenary
program. The Rockhampton Aboriginal Cultural Centre thus belongs to
the significant group of projects being funded for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as part of the
Bicentennial celebrations.
We ought to be under no illusion that for the Aboriginal
people, 1788 signalled the end of an era.
It brought to an end the more than 40,000 year long era of
continuous unchallenged occupation of this land by
Aboriginal people 40,000 years during which there
flourished here a rich civilisation, which many of the first
European settlers and many of their successors were
simply not equipped to appreciate adequately or even to
understand. So it is significant that at Rockhampton today we are in a
small way correcting those failures. We are celebrating the
public commencement of a building which will be. a lasting
display case for that civilisation, in which its
achievements and its richness can be fully recognised and
more widely understood.
So it is very appropriate that this Centre has received
Bicentennial funding, and I am very pleased as
Prime Minister, on behalf of all Australians, to be able to
participate in this opening.
But the Bicentennial holds a wider meaning for those of us
I hope all of us who are concerned about a proper
recognition of the role of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander people in Australia today.
Because I have made it clear right from the start of this
Bicentennial year, and before, that Australians could not
properly celebrate the Bicentenary without coming to a
better understanding of, and understanding with, the
Aboriginal people.
By that I mean that the two hundred years of European
settlement of Australia have been characterised by all too
frequent failure, on the part of the Governments and the
non-Aboriginal community, to meet the legitimate needs of
the Aboriginal people.
In our Bicentenary year, we should not only reflect on the
richness of a 40,000 year old culture. 005651
We should also, more fundamentally, respond to the real
needs of the Aboriginal people:
to participate more equitably in the affairs of our
community, and
to benefit more effectively from the fruits of our
prosperity.
The groundwork for such a response was laid two decades ago
when the Australian people voted overwhelmingly in a
referendum to give the Commonwealth the power to make laws
regarding the Aboriginal and Islander people.
The essential feature of such a Government response must be
that its elements are agreed to, through consultation, by
the Aboriginal and Islander people themselves.
Accordingly the Federal Government is undertaki& I~ a number
of initiatives aimed at increasing Aboriginal
self-management and economic independence.
As the Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Gerry Hand, said in a
Statement to Parliament last December outlining these new
initiatives, Aboriginal people need to decide for themselves
what should be done not just take whatever governments
think or say is best for them.
So underlying our proposed new measures is the most
extensive series of consultations with Aboriginal people
undertaken by any Government.
Gerry Hand recently concluded the first round of these
consultations.
Between January 23 and March 10, he attended 46 meetings
involving an estimated 6,000 people representing some 1,200
organisations. Preceding these meetings were 450 community
meetings held in 415 locations which enabled Aboriginal and
Islander groups to work through the proposals Mr Hand would
put to them.
Many of you here will have been present at the Rockhampton
meeting on February 27.
Foremost among the subjects discussed in these consultations
was the proposed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Commission, which I believe offers a new and exciting era in
Aboriginal Affairs in this country.
For the first time, under this new Commission, Aboriginal
people will be involved in setting the priorities and making
the decisions that affect them.
This will largely be achieved through a national network of
Regional Councils, whose representatives will be Aboriginal
and Islander people elected by their own communities. 0 0 56( 52
4.
These Councils will then elect their own Commissioners
withV-specified zones. The Board of Commissioners will be
entirely made up of Aboriginal and Islander people and the
majority will be elected by the people, not appointed by the
government as is currently the situation.
The result and it is an encouraging result from Mr
Hand's consultations with Aboriginal and Islander people is
that the overwhelming majority endorsed the new Comnmission
" in principle" even though they suggested ways in which the
proposal could be improved.
As a result of this first round of consultations an Options
Paper is now being circulated in a series of follow up
meetings which will continue over the next few weeks.
The second principal subject of consultation was the
proposal to reach a compact or treaty between Aboriginal and
non-Aboriginal Australians.
Mr Hand found in his consultation that Aboriginal people
were discussing the idea of a compact or treaty on,, an
informal level.
He stressed that the first step towards establishing such an
agreement is for Aboriginal people to convey to the
Government their view on how the process of discussing the
concept should be set in place.
We hope to get that process of formal discussion underway
this year but the Minister has also stressed and I agree
with him that we will not rush anybody into this.
I have always believed that the Bicentenary provides an
appropriate context in which serious work towards an
agreement should be begun.
But the matter is too important to be jeopardised by
unnecessary haste.
While work on this restructuring takes place, the Government
is also making progress on issues of immediate relevance to
Aboriginal living standards.
Aboriginal unemployment persists at unacceptably high levels
five or six times higher than among non-Aboriginals.
Aboriginal incomes remain on average only half those enjoyed
by other Australians.
Accordingly the Federal Government has established the
Aboriginal Employment Development Policy. With a
substantial financial commitment by the Commonwealth, we
seek to achieve employment equity for Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islanders.
in the area of health, Aboriginal people are again severely
disadvantaged by comparison to the wider-community. infant
mortality rates, while declining, are still about three
times higher, and life expectancy rates are some 20 years
lower, than for non-Aboriginals. 005653
We have established a-joint Federal-State working party to
prepare a strategy to tackle these and similar health
problems. In neither the employment nor the health field will it be
possible to find easy or rapid solutions.
But both of them demand action. Indeed, since ultimately
the root cause of both of them can be traced back to that
day in 1788 when European settlement of Australia began, it
is essential that we take steps this year to begin resolving
them.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The legislation with which the Federal Government, subject
to approval by Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders,
proposes to establish the new Commission, wifl contain a
very important introduction.
This introduction, or preamble, is written in formal
Parliamentary style so I won't read it out here. But its
basic points, as currently proposed, are easy to summarise
the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
were the prior occupiers and oqriginal owners of
this land and they were dispossessed, without
compensation, of that ownership;
Aborigines consequently are the most disadvantaged
group in Australia; and
Australians want policies and programs which will
overcome the economic and social disadvantage of
the Aboriginal people, which will entitle them to
enjoy their culture and their traditional laws
where practicable, and which will enable them with
pride and dignity to achieve full recognition and
status within the Australian nation.
This is not a mere assembly of words. It is important
language describing important goals.
Achieving those goals will require continued co-operation
and understanding by all Australians the same kind of
co-operation and understanding which allowed this Cultural
Centre to be built.
It is my hope that a wider application of that spirit will
help create the conditions for a fuller realisation of the
proper relationship between the Aboriginal and
non-Aboriginal people of Australia.
It is with that hope that I now declare this Cultural Centre
open. I 005654