Ms LEE - 2012-11-29
In your Address-in-Reply to the Administrator you mentioned that our Dreaming had become a nightmare. Could you expand on this?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question; I know she is passionate. We often have these talks in the lobby with our colleagues about how we have become passive. As Indigenous people we grew up watching our grandparents and parents working as butchers, bakers, woodchoppers, and furniture makers. We have been pacified by thinking that Labor - the opposition sitting across there - were our friends, would just throw money at us, that they would solve the problem. They gave us bad housing, education and health, and their federal counterparts are doing exactly the same thing.
Passiveness is not a way of moving people forward, it is about partnership. It is about making sure you realise what has happened in the past, picking up the good things and bringing them forward to our people. We are a people today who are disabled. We have been disabled by you. We are permanently on crutches because we are uneducated, unhealthy, we live the poorest life. That is because you opposite thought you were our great friends and just kept throwing all this money out to programs that were not working; programs that did not help us and that you never did in partnership with us. You ought to be ashamed of the results you have as our friends, and that is zero: zero in education, health, poverty and in living the way we do.
Aboriginal people want to be like any other Australian. We do not want to live in passive welfare and wait for our sit-down money every fortnight without having real jobs. You have not created any real jobs for remote Aboriginal people.
You have the audacity, Opposition Leader, to worry about jobs being cut by us in the public service when you failed to create any real jobs for remote Aboriginal people.
You have failed and that is why Aboriginal people have put you where you deserve to be, in opposition. You will always sit in opposition because Aboriginal people have gladly put you across there. You deserve to be there because we are sick and tired of passive welfare, of not being educated, and not being healthy.
It is so good and we are so pleased that Aboriginal people have put you, including you, member for Nhulunbuy, in opposition ...
Madam SPEAKER: Minister, your time has expired.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question; I know she is passionate. We often have these talks in the lobby with our colleagues about how we have become passive. As Indigenous people we grew up watching our grandparents and parents working as butchers, bakers, woodchoppers, and furniture makers. We have been pacified by thinking that Labor - the opposition sitting across there - were our friends, would just throw money at us, that they would solve the problem. They gave us bad housing, education and health, and their federal counterparts are doing exactly the same thing.
Passiveness is not a way of moving people forward, it is about partnership. It is about making sure you realise what has happened in the past, picking up the good things and bringing them forward to our people. We are a people today who are disabled. We have been disabled by you. We are permanently on crutches because we are uneducated, unhealthy, we live the poorest life. That is because you opposite thought you were our great friends and just kept throwing all this money out to programs that were not working; programs that did not help us and that you never did in partnership with us. You ought to be ashamed of the results you have as our friends, and that is zero: zero in education, health, poverty and in living the way we do.
Aboriginal people want to be like any other Australian. We do not want to live in passive welfare and wait for our sit-down money every fortnight without having real jobs. You have not created any real jobs for remote Aboriginal people.
You have the audacity, Opposition Leader, to worry about jobs being cut by us in the public service when you failed to create any real jobs for remote Aboriginal people.
You have failed and that is why Aboriginal people have put you where you deserve to be, in opposition. You will always sit in opposition because Aboriginal people have gladly put you across there. You deserve to be there because we are sick and tired of passive welfare, of not being educated, and not being healthy.
It is so good and we are so pleased that Aboriginal people have put you, including you, member for Nhulunbuy, in opposition ...
Madam SPEAKER: Minister, your time has expired.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016