Address to Corroboree 2000ATSIC Chairman, Geoff Clark May 27, 2000 As is our custom, I acknowledge the traditional owners of this land - The Eora peoples. I thank you for your warm welcome to country and for permission to speak on your traditional lands. I'd also like to acknowledge the may dignitaries here today including His Excellency The Governor General, The Prime Minister, The Leader of the Opposition, State Premiers and other political and community leaders. Let me take this opportunity to thank all of those State Premiers and the ACT Chief Minister who have moved to ensure their parliaments have delivered unequivocal apologies to the Stolen Generations. I'd also like to extend a warm welcome to all my fellow members of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation and the large contingent of ATSIC Commissioners and regional councillors. I know they will join me in acknowledging that many of our indigenous brother and sisters have chosen not to attend here today. Their reasons have been well canvassed in the public arena in recent weeks. I understand and respect their decision. In turn, a number of them have made it clear they respect and understand my decision to attend. I do so because this occasion affords me an opportunity to send a special plea to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It also affords me an opportunity to send a strong message to our national political leaders and to non-Indigenous Australia. We must now step up our struggle for recognition, rights and reform. We must now consolidate the ten years of work by the Reconciliation Council. We must unify behind a bold new push for true reconciliation. We owe it to those who have come before us. We owe it to those who will follow. From the resistance of the harbour communities in 1788 to that lead by Jandamarra in the Kimberley in the late 1800s - our people have made their views known. From the Day Of Mourning in 1938 to the protests on Invasion Day in 1988 through to the High Court decision on Native Title in 1992 - we have pursued the rights and justice we have always known were due to us. True reconciliation means recognising we possess distinct rights. They arise from our status as first peoples, our relationships with our territories and waters, and our own systems of law and governance. Our right to self-determination is a core principle. The reconciliation process must lead us into a new era of constitutional consent. No constitutional or other document records our consent to the terms of our relationship with non-Indigenous Australians. There has been no treaties, no formal settlements, no compacts. There now needs to be. There is no mention of Australia's first peoples in the constitution. There now needs to be. The few rights we now enjoy remain vulnerable in the absence of constitutional protection. There are a range of contemporary agreements negotiated overseas between Indigenous and non-Indigenous and colonial states which we can draw upon. The Inuit in Greenland exercise home rule. There are Sami Parliaments in Finland, Norway and Sweden, the Maori have reserved seats in new Zealand. The Waitangi Tribunal investigates claims of infringements of Maori rights in under the 1830 Treaty of Waitangi. These developments in national legal systems have been accompanied by parallel recognition of the distinct rights of Indigenous peoples in International Law through the United Nations. As the elected head of ATSIC I can offer these commitments.
A commitment from Government to negotiate a treaty is essential As I make way for you on this podium, Prime Minister, I invite you not to speak about what you have decided for us, but what you will decide with us
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