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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-02-07 Daily Xml
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ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS AND RECONCILIATION

The Hon. L.R. BREUER (Giles) (15:22): That is a very hard act to follow. I think we have had our theatre sports for the day. Mr Speaker, I rise today initially with a couple of requests for this parliament for the future. Again, I want to congratulate you on your elevation to the Speaker's position. I am sure you will do a very noble job in a somewhat garrulous role. Congratulations. Again, I want to thank members for the honour of allowing me to serve as speaker for the last few years.

I did leave before I was able to implement my plans for this year. I would ask the new Speaker to consider in the first instance the continuation of the acknowledgement of country after prayers at the start of each week. I noted that you did do that this week. I introduced this at the start of my speakership, and it had not been done before, but I really feel it is important to keep it in this place as recognition of our Aboriginal communities and Aboriginal people in the state. As a parliament, I believe it is essential for us to acknowledge this, and it is also somewhat of an insult that we have not ever done this in the past, so I do hope that you will continue with this and perhaps it can be part of our standing orders.

I had also hoped and planned that one of our new meeting rooms in Old Parliament House, when renovated, would be given an Aboriginal name and have a display of Aboriginal art and material in it. The name should be a word perhaps meaning a meeting place, a speaking place, or something similar. I think this would be an important tribute to Aboriginal heritage and culture in this state. I did have some discussions with the Clerk on this issue, and it was in planning, so I hope the parliament will understand the importance of doing this in the future and look at it once our renovations are completed in Old Parliament House.

I am very pleased to be appointed again as a member of the Aboriginal Lands Parliamentary Standing Committee. I spent many years on this committee prior to becoming speaker. It is a very important committee to me and to this place, and it is an absolutely vital channel for the Aboriginal communities in the state to bring their concerns to the parliament. I believe that in the time of this Labor government we have certainly made many advances for Aboriginal welfare. I see the difference in my own electorate where we have much more housing, we have more support services, we have a lot more educational support and many more health and police services, but I am not particularly happy because I still believe we have a long way to go.

We still have to remove racism in our society in South Australia. We need to be keeping our children at school. We need to get them into tertiary education. We need to develop leadership in the Aboriginal communities. We need to find meaningful employment for them, to improve their health standards. We need to stop removing children from families. We need to have Aboriginal people in leadership roles, in senior Public Service roles, in this parliament, in councils, in business and so many areas. We are not doing this. I wish I had an answer to how we can do this, but we cannot just give up because things are not always working.

I do not believe it is about money because millions of dollars go into our systems, both federal and state, but one asks where does it go? I do not believe we are consulting enough in a meaningful way with Aboriginal organisations and Aboriginal leaders. For example, we need a review in our Aboriginal education system. Why aren't children coming out with adequate education and literacy levels? Why aren't they going on and doing degrees? We need answers on why life spans for Aboriginal people, infant mortality, health programs for Aboriginal people are so much worse in Aboriginal communities than the rest of our communities.

Why do we have so many Aboriginal people in our gaols? Why do we have such a high crime rate amongst Aboriginal children? What is the problem? You can pump in money, you can come up with some good ideas, you can spin out statistics, you can be a bleeding heart, but it is not working and I think it is time for us to have a really good look at what is being done wrong. Let's sort it out. There must be ways and there must be answers. It is not palya for it to be like this, it is not okay. There is too much wangka, too much talk, and not enough constructive action that I believe should be going on.

I am no bleeding heart; I am certainly not recognised to be a bleeding heart. I am actually a realist about this but I want my Aboriginal brothers and sisters to stand tall in this state, to have an equal opportunity to succeed, to be able to get jobs, to be able to get an education, to have adequate lives, to have adequate health opportunities, to be able to do what they aspire to—but I believe we all have to take a part in doing this.

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