Universal Periodic Review Reception Address 9 November 2015

Thank you Ambassador Quinn for your warm welcome and thank you for generously hosting us here today.

I would like to begin by acknowledging all Ambassadors and Excellencies with us this evening.

I acknowledge the grandfather of our Parliament, the Hon Mr Philip Ruddock MP, Special Envoy for Citizenship and Community Engagement. Mr Ruddock you are well aware of the special place Aboriginal peoples bestow on our Elders and you are indeed an Elder of Australia having served our country in so many capacities in your 41 years in our National Parliament.

I also acknowledge Senator Anne McEwen, who with Mr Ruddock are Deputy Chair and Chair respectively of the Human Rights Subcommittee of the Australian Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade

I acknowledge my colleague Professor Gillian Triggs, President of the Australian Human Rights Commission and representatives of civil society organisations.

I cannot let this occasion to pass without paying my respects to a fierce advocate for Indigenous rights in Australia, Mr Brian Wyatt, who passed away on the 24th of October. Brian joined many of us many times here in Geneva and New York bringing together our mob from Australia and always brokering relationships to advance the Indigenous cause, particularly in the Pacific Region. I send my condolences to his family this week when he will be laid to rest in Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.

As a Gangulu man from Central Queensland in Australia, I pay my respects to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and all Indigenous Peoples from all around the world present here today. It is really comforting to look around this room and see images of our beautiful women when we’re so far away from Australia. Wayne Quillam is an award winning and much loved photographer, and it’s great to see his work recognised and exhibited here in Geneva. I am sure Brian would be suitably impressed.

Can I also acknowledge this place, the United Nations where States come together for, as its Charter says:

‘to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours’

As part of being a good neighbour, earlier this afternoon Australia underwent our second Universal Periodic Review, a mechanism where our human rights record is scrutinised and laid bare before the member States of the United Nations.

I believe the UPR, as it matures as a process, will provide the most clear and transparent means of holding governments to account on their human rights record and gives us a stake in the ground around which to build the arguments for a human rights based approach to Indigenous affairs back in Australia as a way of ensuring our Government meets the commitments it has made this afternoon.

It is in the giving of practical effect to human rights where their ultimate value to us will be realised, because human rights cannot be only abstract concepts set out in Charters, Treaties and Declarations. In striving for this practical effect of human rights we give life to the preamble of the UN Charter which:

‘reaffirms our faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small’

Finally, I acknowledge Mr John Quinn our Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations and to the Conference on Disarmament, Geneva.

John, earlier this year I had the pleasure to launch a very exciting initiative of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade which, in part, aims to increase the effective participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in its work at home and internationally.

The Department’s Indigenous Peoples Strategy is a 5 year plan which aims to align the Department’s work on issues affecting Indigenous peoples across foreign policy, aid, trade and corporate objectives. The Strategy commits the Department to a number of actions including:

• working in partnership and advocating for Indigenous people
• ensuring Department-funded programs strive to improve outcomes for Indigenous peoples
• encouraging Indigenous Australians to participate in Department-funded programs overseas; and
• ensuring the Department has an inclusive workplace culture using measures like a Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) and development of an Indigenous Employment Strategy.

I congratulate the Department on the Strategy and look forward to seeing more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, like our Ambassador Damien Miller, reaching their full career potential in the department.

Damien, a Gangulu countryman of mine, was the first Indigenous Australian to be appointed as a Head of Mission when he took up the post of Australian Ambassador to Denmark, Norway and Iceland in 2013.

Professor Megan Davis has also achieved great success in her work as Special Rapporteur, former Chair and current Expert Member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. 

People like Damien and Megan exemplify how Indigenous peoples have really extended their global reach over the last 50 years, articulating and asserting a human rights discourse in both domestic and international affairs. One of the most significant achievements of Indigenous advocates and their supporters was the adoption by the General Assembly of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007. I imagine that some of you here tonight may have had a role in the negotiations, the drafting or the passage through the United Nations processes.

The Declaration was many years in the making and we regard it as a foundational document, recognising our rights to self-determination, to our traditional lands, waters and territories, education, culture and health, and to pursuing a distinct vision of economic, social and political development. Importantly, the Declaration also emphasises our right to participate in matters that impact on us.

To raise awareness about the Declaration and encourage its broader domestic usage, at the Australian Human Rights Commission we developed a partnership with the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples and undertook a series of dialogue workshops for government, communities, business and individuals. As part of these dialogues, we identified four underlying principles which we use as fundamental benchmarks for assessing all policy and activities relating to Indigenous Australians. These are:

• Self-determination
• Participation in decision-making, underpinned by free, prior and informed consent and good faith
• Respect for and protection of culture
• Equality and non-discrimination

Then in 2013 the Australian Government and the Human Rights Commission, supported by the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples, issued a joint statement to the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues that in part said:

Recognising past injustices, the Australian Government and Indigenous Australians have seen Australia’s support for the Declaration as another opportunity to rebuild our relationship in a spirit of cooperation, based on good faith, goodwill and mutual respect.

The Australian Government is working with the Australian Human Rights Commission and the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples to increase awareness of, and encourage dialogue about, the Declaration in policy development, program implementation and service delivery as a way to embed the Declaration in how business is done.

When we consider our own work, or the work of government and business, we ask “how does it measure up against these principles?” “How can we strengthen the outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples by implementing one or more of these principles?” 

The statement also mentioned how the passing of an historic Act of Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples set in motion the process for a referendum where the Australian people will be asked to give similar recognition in the Australian Constitution.

In 2011, Professor Megan Davis joined me and 20 other Australians as a member of the Prime Minister’s Expert Panel on the Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the Constitution. The establishment of the Expert Panel was one of the first steps in a long journey towards a meaningful recognition of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders in the nations’ founding document.

The acknowledgement of the existence of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as a unique element of the nation will be something of which all Australians can be proud and once this is done it will send a  signal to the world of a mature nation that has come to terms with it’s past.

In 2012, the Expert Panel proposed a series of recommendations which would form the basis of amendments to the Australian Constitution. Further recommendations were made by the Parliamentary Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition in June this year. 

A month later, in an historic first for Australia, forty Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders met with the then Prime Minister (Tony Abbott) and Opposition Leader (Bill Shorten) to discuss the way forward. A number of practical steps were proposed including a series of community meetings across Australia and the establishment of a Referendum Council. The Referendum Council would be tasked with progressing the settling of a referendum question, the timing of a referendum and constitutional issues.

The Australian Human Rights Commission strongly advocates constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples at every opportunity and will be engaging in a series of targeted consultations with Indigenous Australians across the country to gain a better understanding of community views and provide information about the options and actions to date.

Critical to this process, is of course, development of the actual question that will be put to the electorate. I trust that once appointed, the Referendum Council will provide guidance on this issue, bringing together the ideas so far, taking account of the feedback from consultations and working in partnership to guide a constructive, if robust discussion across the entire community.

Again, we will measure the integrity of this process by the relevant principles from the Declaration.   Is it according self-determination for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples? And are they participating in the decision-making in a manner which is underpinned by free, prior and informed consent and good faith?

And when we are truly able to answer these questions in the affirmative, I believe we properly honour those that first worked on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and those that worked to establish this place, the United Nations.

Mr Ambassador thank you once again for hosting us here tonight, and I would like to pass the baton to the Hon Philip Ruddock MP. I had the pleasure of working with Mr Ruddock many years ago. And as I said earlier, Mr Ruddock has had a long tenure of Ministry portfolios in Australia’s Parliament including as the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs having responsibility for Reconciliation and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs.

I would like to close with a poem by one of the warriors of our struggle, Oodgeroo Nunkul, or Kath Walker, Quandamooka woman from Moreton Bay in South East Queensland. Oodgeroo wrote this poem for her son Dennis as way of explaining reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. It is titled Son of Mine.

My son, your troubled eyes search mine
Puzzled and hurt by colour line
Your black skin soft as velvet shine
What can I tell you son of mine

I could tell you of heartbreak and hatred blind
I could tell you of crimes that shame mankind
Of brutal wrongs and deeds malign
Of rape and murder son of mine

But instead I will tell you of brave and fine
When lives of black and white entwine
And men in brotherhood combine
This I’ll tell you son of mine