96th NSW Teachers Federation Annual Conference

Acknowledgements

It is with respect and gratitude that I acknowledge that we sit today on the traditional owners of the land where we sit down today.

My people are the Gangulu from the Dawson Valley in Central Queensland. We all have Elders so on behalf of my Elders I also pay tribute to your Elders, both past and present, for their continued struggle for their country and their culture.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. Some of you may recall that I addressed your conference 2 years ago and 2 years before that I spoke at your Council meeting. Obviously, this shows the enormous respect and admiration that I have for all of you as educators. But I think it also shows just how crucial I think that teachers are to progressing our human rights and social justice agenda.

In looking back on these previous speeches, it has been it has been interesting to reflect on where I started out as Social Justice Commissioner. In my first address I outlined the priorities for my term, to build stronger and deeper relationships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the rest of the Australia, between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and all levels of government and between ourselves as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

By the next time I spoke with you in 2012, I was able to talk to you in detail about the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the importance of constitutional recognition. At that point, the Expert Panel had presented its report to Parliament and we were really starting to get the public education campaign going through Recognise.

And today, another two years on, I think we can claim some wins in all of these areas. But as the political landscape shifts, there are also significant challenges which potentially undermine our progress towards social justice and the enjoyment of our human rights.

But let’s start with the positive.

In February 2013 we witnessed a historic step toward a referendum when the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Act 2013 (Act of Recognition) was passed unanimously through Federal Parliament. The Act of Recognition provides acknowledgement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ unique place as Australia’s first peoples. It also prescribes that a review will be commenced considering proposals for constitutional change, their likely levels of support in the community and likelihood of success. ^[1] This report must be completed by 27 September 2014 and tabled in parliament within 15 sitting days.

The Act of Recognition is a welcome development but it is only a first step. I urge the Government to build on the work of the Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The recommendations acknowledge the need to couple recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as Australia’s first peoples with reforms to address the provisions of the Constitution which permit, enable or anticipate racial discrimination.

The success of constitutional reform lies in the hand of every day Australians. A public education campaign is being run by Recognise and is now mobilising large number of Australian from all walks of life. Recognise now has around 202 000 people who have pledged support for constitutional recognition. Polling has also shown that 81% of eligible voters support the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Constitution.

At the moment, before we know what the referendum question will be, the aim is to try and build popular support and momentum.

This will need to be a community movement; we will need to take the whole community with us. And that is where you as organisations and individuals come in. The more voices supporting constitutional recognition, the greater the chance of success.

There is a long way to go on constitutional reform. But I believe in the innate decency of the Australian people to walk with us on this next important stage of our national journey towards reconciliation.

Constitutional recognition is a beacon of hope for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples but it is not the only issue that should take our focus in achieving human rights. For me, as I outlined last time I was at this conference, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is the foundational document for our human rights and a powerful tool in achieving change.

The Declaration contains a number of key principles underpinning the rights it protects. Those key principles can be summarised as:

• First, self-determination
• Second, participation in decision-making and free, prior and informed consent
• Third, respect for and protection of culture
• Forth, non-discrimination and equality.

In my opinion, the Declaration and its key principles and rights can help improve all the types of relationships I talked about earlier.

The Declaration should also be used as a tool for reconciliation – for building relationships based on respect between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the broader Australian community. Just like constitutional recognition, it has the ability to lead to positive change for our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, while at the same time bringing Australians together.

So what does this mean in your daily work?

I think if you keep coming back to those four principles I just mentioned- self-determination, participation in decision-making and free, prior and informed consent, respect for and protection of culture and non-discrimination and equality you get a good idea about the what this means in practice.

I challenge people from all walks of life to apply these four principles to the work they do with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

At an organisational level, it might be as simple as making sure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and families people are involved in your school’s decision making and actively consulted about what makes education work for them. It might be seriously considering some of the cultural barriers that make accessing education challenging for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and then developing a plan to address this. It might be thinking of a way you can celebrate the vibrancy and resilience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture in your community.

These are just ideas, ultimately, what I am saying is that putting the Declaration into practice is not a program of work, nor is it a tokenistic checklist. It is an approach. It requires attitudinal shift, self-reflection and the willingness to actively listen and engage with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

If the Declaration is best practice, unfortunately I think we are seeing policy that is not meeting these best practice standards. Like many other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders, I have been vocal with my concerns about measures in the federal Budget.

Let me just focus on education for a moment. I am concerned by the proposed withdrawal of Commonwealth investment in education and hospitals. You all know better than me about the everyday stresses and strains in the education system. I am concerned Australia is heading towards two-tier education sectors which divide the haves from the have-nots.

However, it is the changes to the welfare system, particularly youth welfare, which could have a devastating impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

The proposal to deny young people access to the dole for six months of the year is cruel. It won't address what is a very complex issue in youth unemployment and disengagement from education and training. All it will do is further marginalise an already marginalised sector of the community.

Experts and welfare groups have argued, correctly, I fear, that the changes to the youth welfare system could lead to a spike in the crime rate. Young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are already 28 times more likely to be in youth detention than other Australians. And when the cuts to Aboriginal Legal Services are added to this mix, the multiplier effect means this crisis risks becoming a catastrophe.

Once a young person has been involved in the criminal justice system it is notoriously difficult to re-engage them with the education system and we so often see a trajectory of reoffending and imprisonment. I find it shocking that as a society we are ‘do better at keeping Aboriginal people in prison than in school or university’.^[2] The Aboriginal reimprisonment rate (58 per cent within 10 years) is actually higher than the Aboriginal school retention rate from Year7 to Year 12 (46.5 per cent).^[3]

What has been startling is that these proposals have been developed with little or no input from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their representative organisations. If we return back to the Declaration, which after all Australia has at least a moral obligation to implement, governments need to be actively involving us in decision-making.

I have said several times this year that there is a new maturity in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait leadership, one where we recognise there are major problems with Australia's economy, one where we recognise that every sector must contribute, including ours.

The Federal Government has outlined its intention for a new engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. To achieve this goal, I hope to see a much more constructive relationship with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples where we are active participants in decision that so profoundly affect us. This will lead to a dynamic where our communities can be in control.

This is the last year of my 5 year term as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner- I don’t think I’ll be here in another two years to address you in this capacity again! Let me take this opportunity to thank you for the hard work you do with our kids and principled advocacy that the Teachers Federation takes on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice issues. Now more than ever, as we face the challenges of the future, be it constitutional recognition, implementing the Declaration or providing a solid education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids, it is great to have supporters like the Teachers Federation on our side.

Thank you.

^[1] Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Act 2012 (Cth), s 4
^[2] C Cunneen, ‘Time to arrest rising Aboriginal prison rates’ (2013) Insight 8 p 24. Available at http://justicereinvestment.unsw.edu.au/node/34
^[3] C Cunneen, ‘Time to arrest rising Aboriginal prison rates’ (2013) Insight 8 p 24. Available at http://justicereinvestment.unsw.edu.au/node/34