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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-05-25 Daily Xml
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Edwards, Reverend Dr W.H.

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:09): I acknowledge that parliament meets on Kaurna land, and today I want to remember and acknowledge the life of the Reverend Dr Bill Edwards AM. Born in Victoria's Wimmera district in 1929, he died in Adelaide in July 2015, and I want to pass on some of the information printed in The Advertiser on 2 January this year.

Bill started his working life in the banking industry and enjoyed the sporting life in country towns, where he was also involved with the Presbyterian Fellowship of Australia. That involvement led to graduation from Ormond College, which is in the University of Melbourne, with a diploma in theology and then a diploma in education and, eventually, a Bachelor of Arts in 1957.

Bill moved to Adelaide in 1954 and witnessed the performance of the Ernabella Choir for the new young Queen who was visiting Adelaide at the time, which formed the foundation of his future relationship with the Pitjantjatjara people. Three years later, he was appointed assistant to the superintendent of the Ernabella Mission, then acting superintendent and, finally, superintendent, a position he held until 1972.

Bill trained and conducted the Ernabella Choir for 22 years, from 1958 until 1980, and was involved with them in their visits to Sydney, Alice Springs and Adelaide. He facilitated the process of land rights for the Anangu as the minutes secretary for the Pitjantjatjara Council, something he could do because of his fluency in Pitjantjatjara and English. That allowed him to be a very important teacher and mentor for some 50 years. He played an integral role in the land rights claims and the royal commission into British nuclear testing.

In 1981, Bill settled in Adelaide with his wife, Valerie Ramm—who was actually the mission nurse at Ernabella, where they met—and their two sons, David and John. This moved him into a new career as a lecturer at the South Australian College of Advanced Education (to become the University of South Australia), where he pioneered the teaching of the Pitjantjatjara language. He earned his doctorate, his PhD, in 2008, studying Moravian missions, in Victoria and Central Australia, and the Presbyterian missions, along the Gulf of Carpentaria in Queensland. He was awarded the Order of Australia in 2009.

I met Bill on many occasions, and one of them was annually on Sorry Day, an event that has been held in Australia since 1998, on 26 May, when we remember and commemorate the mistreatment of our Indigenous people, Australia's first nation. This year, Sorry Day will be tomorrow, a Thursday. The date 26 May carries great significance for the stolen generations, as well as for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and non-Indigenous Australians alike.

On 26 May 1997, the Bringing Them Home report was tabled in parliament. The annual national Sorry Day commemorations remind and raise awareness among politicians, policy-makers and the wider public, about the significance of the forcible removal policies and their impact on not only the children who were taken, but also on their families and communities. On Friday 27 May, Reconciliation SA will hold its annual National Reconciliation Week breakfast at the Adelaide Convention Centre from 7 o'clock. Reconciliation SA will be featuring the newly-trained Recognise youth reps from South Australia speaking about their hopes for the future at the breakfast. The keynote speaker this year will be Tanya Hosch, the joint campaign director of Recognise.

Recognise is part of the Reconciliation Australia movement. It is a people's movement to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Australian Constitution and to ensure that there is no place in the constitution for racial discrimination. Recognise strives to raise awareness of the need to end the exclusion of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from the constitution and to deal with the racial discrimination that exists in it. Recognise is working towards words for a referendum to be put to the Australian people—something that is required to change our constitution.

I urge all members to get involved in Reconciliation Week activities this year, not only in the city but in the regional and suburban areas. Reconciliation Week is held every year between Sorry Day and 3 June, which is Mabo Day, the day that of course recognises the landmark decision in the Mabo case, something that Eddie Mabo strove for all his life. It is a very important week in the calendar of Indigenous Australians, and it is something that reminds us to think about Indigenous Australians and the impact our settlement has had on them and on their families ever since. I certainly hope that we will be able to do something very special here tomorrow to recognise Sorry Day.

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