Gladys Elphick Portrait

The Hon. R.B. MARTIN (14:42): My question is to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. Will the minister please inform the council on the unveiling of the Gladys Elphick portrait to be displayed in Parliament House?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (14:43): I thank the honourable member for his question. I would be most glad to inform the council about the latest portrait that has been commissioned to be hung on the walls of Parliament House. It depicts Aboriginal trailblazer and leader, Gladys Elphick. I was very privileged last year to be the Glady Elphick orator to deliver a speech about Aboriginal representation in South Australia, and I am also a regular presenter at the Glady Elphick annual awards, which I have spoken in this chamber about. The Gladys Elphick annual awards recognise excellence and achievement of Aboriginal women in South Australia.

Gladys Elphick was certainly a remarkable Aboriginal activist whose name resonates with courage, determination and unwavering passion for her people. Aunty Glad achieved many things in her life which remain a legacy today to Aboriginal communities and organisations in this state. Most notably, way back in the 1940s, Aunty Glad was a member and contributor to the Aboriginal Advancement League South Australia and an active member of the Aboriginal Progress Association until a group of very committed Aboriginal women started an organisation, the Council of Aboriginal Women of South Australia, that only consisted of Aboriginal people, unlike some of the earlier organisations.

It was a remarkable group of trailblazers who started that Council of Aboriginal Women of South Australia. People like Ruby Hunter, some of the Colebrook girls—Faith Thomas, Maude Tongerie and Lowitja O'Donoghue—along with Aunty Gladys Elphick founded the Council of Aboriginal Women of South Australia.

The council in the 1970s amalgamated with the Aboriginal Cultural Centre, of which Aunty Glad was the inaugural president. That centre was instrumental in setting up and initially accommodating some of the most well-known Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs as we call them today), including such institutions that are now coming on half a century old: the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement, the Aboriginal Sobriety Group, the National Aboriginal Congress and Aboriginal Hostels, to name a few that came out of the Aboriginal Cultural Centre.

A few iterations of the Aboriginal Cultural Centre over the years has seen it today in a service delivery form to community members, and that centre has eventually evolved into what we know now as Nunkuwarrin Yunti, the Aboriginal health service providers in Adelaide. Aunty Glad was also instrumental in the establishment of the College for Aboriginal Education in 1973, which we now know today as Tauondi College, one of the three oldest centres for Aboriginal education anywhere in this country.

At the unveiling of the portrait today, Uncle Lewis O'Brien welcomed everyone to country, which is exceptionally fitting to have Kaurna elder Uncle Lewis O'Brien, who is now 94 years old. When you think about the creation of the colony of South Australia in 1836, Uncle Lewis has been here for exactly half of the time that this colony has been established on his Kaurna country, and it was fitting with Uncle Lewis welcoming people this morning. It was Uncle Lewis's mum, Gladys O'Brien, who had Gladys Elphick live with her when Gladys's first husband died at Point Pearce, and Gladys Elphick came to live for some time in Adelaide with her cousin, Gladys O'Brien, Uncle Lewis's mother.

Finishing the unveiling of the portrait today was Professor Paul Hughes, who has a direct link to Gladys Elphick and is, I think, the closest living relative today of Aunty Glad. I have mentioned some of the remarkable achievements of Aunty Gladys Elphick. Her son, Tim Hughes, was a trailblazing reformer himself, having returned from World War II after winning medals for meritorious service, settled in the Lucindale area—having originally come from the Point Pearce area—and was aghast at the treatment of Aboriginal returned soldiers compared to non-Aboriginal returned soldiers.

Tim Hughes was an activist who fought for the rights of Aboriginal people to do things like be able to leave mission communities without having to get a licence. Tim Hughes, Aunty Glad's son, eventually became the founding Chair of the Aboriginal Lands Trust, which was created in 1966 by Don Dunstan, who was Aboriginal affairs minister at the time and a very close friend and campaigner with Aunty Glad.

Tim Hughes's son, Paul Hughes, went on to become a teacher and returned back to where he grew up in the Lucindale area of the South-East. He was the very first Aboriginal person to become a professor at a South Australian university when he became the Professor of Education at the University of South Australia. Paul Hughes unveiled the portrait of Gladys Elphick today.

I look forward to when the portrait of Aunty Glad hangs right next to the portrait of Doug Nicholls, which was previously commissioned in this place, and we start seeing Aboriginal faces looking down at the kids who come through here in parliament. That idea of you can't be what you can't see I think will start to be reflected much more fairly in the diversity we see in South Australia.

I would particularly like to thank members of the art acquisition committee of this parliament, Nici Cumpston from the Art Gallery who, I think as we said today, what she doesn't know about Aboriginal art probably isn't worth knowing; the member for Unley in another place, David Pisoni; but particularly the Labor Party's member of that committee, the member for Badcoe, Jayne Stinson, who was instrumental in making sure that Aunty Glad was the person who was honoured with this portrait by the artist known as Blak Douglas, Adam Douglas Hill, who was the second Aboriginal person very recently to win an Archibald Prize.

I think the portrait of Aunty Glad that will hang in Parliament House is probably the first portrait we will have here painted by an Archibald Prize winner and it is very fitting that that is an Aboriginal person as well. So I commend that to the chamber and I encourage everyone to have a look and walk down the main corridor of the House of Assembly side to see those two Aboriginal trailblazers now adorning our walls.