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Ministerial Statement
Mr BOB CARR (Maroubra—Premier, Minister for the Arts, and Minister for Citizenship) [2.27 p.m.]: Two hours ago I was at the Australian Museum to perform a gesture of reconciliation to indigenous Australians. I had the honour of returning to the Gamilaroi people of the Northern Tablelands the remains of a 12-year-old girl who died about 150 years ago. Her remains have been kept at the museum since 1980, making this a double tragedy: the untimely death of a 12-year-old girl and the denial of burial in the traditional lands of her people. I am happy to say that the Government decided two years ago that the exile of Aboriginal remains from their ancestral lands had gone on for too long and that this incivility, this routine insult, must be brought to an end.
Since 2002 more than 40 sets of ancestral remains have been returned to Aboriginal communities across the State. They include the return and burial in May 2002 of the remains of 21 individuals brought home to the La Perouse community and the reburial of the remains, now 1,200 years old, of two Aboriginal people in Kosciuszko National Park in May last year. But many more sets of remains rest uneasily in museums and places of study, here and overseas. Their descendants, their tribal protectors, the guardians of their burial grounds, will rightly protest and demand their return until all of them are safely at rest, as this young girl's remains soon will be at rest in the native soil her ancestors walked for millennia, joining at last the spirits of her people, her enduring family.
Of all the tragic legacies of dispossession, few have been as irreverent as the retention of Aboriginal remains: Australians denied the songs and rites of mourning, the birthright and the final affirmation of burial in their ancestral soil. It is a wrong that we do well to remedy. It is an overdue act of reconciliation with the living and dead in a land where many foreshortened spirits rest uneasily and much remains to be put right.
Mr BRAD HAZZARD (Wakehurst) [2.29 p.m.]: The Opposition joins with the Premier in acknowledging the return of the remains of the little girl to the Gamilaroi people. We also acknowledge that, unfortunately, the past practice was to take away Aboriginal people's bones for the purposes of various museums around the world. To that extent, we support the endeavours by indigenous Australians to bring home their ancestors and to bury them in their homeland. This issue should be bipartisan, and I confirm that bipartisanship. I place on record that, for an issue that should be bipartisan—and the Liberal and National parties in this place have shown a great deal of bipartisanship on a range of issues to do with Aboriginal people—as shadow Minister for Aboriginal Affairs the first I heard about this was when the Premier made his ministerial statement about two minutes ago. If the Premier is serious about being bipartisan on these issues, and if he wants the New South Wales Coalition to support any steps the Government is taking to address Aboriginal disadvantage, he should give us some warning next time and let us know what is going on.
Mr Bob Carr: A courtesy never extended to me in seven years in Opposition.
Mr BRAD HAZZARD: Sitting to the Premier's left is the Deputy Premier, who shows such courtesies because he is serious about bipartisanship. The Premier does not have social justice as part of his agenda. At the end of the day, until Aboriginal people have better employment, education and health outcomes, the Premier is wasting the time of the House unless he delivers some real outcomes for Aboriginal people.