Introduction by Croakey: Linda Burney, the first Indigenous woman elected to the House of Representatives, and the former Minister for Indigenous Australians this week farewelled Australian political life, delivering a moving valedictory speech filled with hope.
Burney talked about her long career in New South Wales and federal politics, after growing up “as a freshwater girl in the Riverina, the daughter of an Aboriginal man and a white woman” in a “small wooden house with no carpet or paint inside, no running water, and an outhouse”, never dreaming of what would come ahead.
She marks achievements and setbacks, including last year’s Voice referendum, reflecting that Australia sometimes struggles with its identity “because we never came to terms with our own story, never embraced the breadth and depth of it, and certainly not its truth”.
“The generosity we pride ourselves on is rarely extended to the people in this nation who have occupied these lands for countless generations.
“You take the whole, not just the bits that suit you. I believe that community-led truth-telling can help with that. There is nothing to fear or lose from the truth,” she said, urging Parliament also to not be a place for “punching down….where minority groups are demonised”.
Burney, who lost her husband Rick Farley nearly 20 years ago, and more recently her son, said her life had been “both harsh and kind”.
“I have known loss I would never wish on anyone, but I have never, ever lost hope.”
Read her speech in full below.
Linda Burney speech
I acknowledge the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples. Thank you for allowing us to be on your Country. As I stand here today, I am deeply reflective and immensely grateful for the journey I have shared with you all in this Parliament.
When I first entered this House, I knew I was walking a path that had never before been walked by someone like me, the first Indigenous woman elected to the House of Representatives — a path paved with hope, with responsibility and with a deep commitment to representing not just my own community of Barton but all Australians, including, of course, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
I am humbled by the trust and the ownership of me shown by First Nations Australians, many of whom are still paying a heavy price for dispossession and exclusion from our nation’s foundation and, too often, exclusion from the institutions which exist to serve us all.
All up, I have been a member of parliament for 21 years. It has been the most profound honour to serve and to work towards a more just and inclusive Australia.
My commitment has been to serve with fairness, compassion and integrity. I have never seen public service as a way to be liked or popular. Anyone who does will get a rude shock. But I hope to leave having earned respect for the way I have worked and the work that I have done.
When I was growing up as a freshwater girl in the Riverina, the daughter of an Aboriginal man and a white woman, raised by my great aunt Nina and her brother Billy, we didn’t have much — just a small wooden house with no carpet or paint inside, no running water, and an outhouse — up in the back corner of the yard, thankfully. They were two very old people who sacrificed so much to raise me and instilled in me the values of compassion, integrity, resilience, truth and love.
I never dreamt I could grow up to be a Member of Parliament, let alone a minister in the Federal government. Nina and Billy, I hope I made you proud.
Being elected to this place was the greatest honour of my life, from fighting against the unfair and illegal Robodebt scheme during my time as Shadow Minister for Human Services to securing landmark commitments to remote housing, justice reinvestment and remote jobs; delivering justice to the families affected by the collapse of Youpla; and doubling the number of Indigenous rangers.
Most importantly, I have been part of a Government that is building new dialysis units in remote Australia; rolling out hundreds of new Indigenous health workers; rolling out amazing new infrastructure, delivering a pipeline of improvements to remote drinking water supplies as well as better digital connectivity; revitalising First Nations languages; and growing opportunities for education, and now, with the leadership of the Prime Minister, our economic development.
Shifting silos
But there is so much more. We’ve also committed to establishing a national children’s commissioner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people and children.
These steps forward are a team effort, with ministers stepping up, ministers taking responsibility for delivering for Indigenous people in their portfolio and the whole Labor Cabinet doing its bit. This is a profound and incredibly important improvement.
When I arrived in this place in 2016, it felt like issues affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had been pushed into a silo to be dealt with only by the Indigenous affairs minister, who, quite frankly, will never have their hands on the levers of employment, health, education and other portfolios where the big changes will be made in closing the gap.
I’ve seen the difference a proactive Labor Government can make on the ground in communities. I am so proud of our achievements over the last eight years in this place.
New South Wales reforms
I am proud too of my 13 years in the New South Wales Parliament, of making important reforms to child protection, delivering on the findings of the Wood Special Commission of Inquiry into Child Protection Services in NSW and introducing the Aboriginal child placement principle.
There are few areas in public policy more complex, more fraught and more difficult than child protection. I only had to read the files; I didn’t live the horror.
Despite the many challenges that remain, I know those changes and the work of people on the front line have saved families and saved lives. When I had the responsibility for the prevention of family violence, New South Wales led the way with the Staying Home Leaving Violence program, which flipped responsibility for family violence and supported women and children to stay in their homes. It was a just approach which is now the norm across the country.
Before I came into the federal Parliament, I said I would miss the close connections state governments have with people’s lives, like when we fitted chocks into the windows of flats, which stopped them opening more than a few inches and prevented children falling out. There had been a spate of children falling out of windows.
I was also pleased to lay the groundwork for stronger laws to protect tenants, and, of course, I had the honour of being elected the deputy leader of the New South Wales Labor Party.
Before entering state Parliament, I was first a teacher and then I worked in Aboriginal education, heading up the Aboriginal Education Consultative Group and eventually becoming the director-general of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, where it was an honour to be part of organising the historic bridge walk in the year 2000, when over 250,000 Australians marched in solidarity with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Walk in others’ shoes
My time at the Department of Aboriginal Affairs was the first time I truly had to grapple with the policy challenges and cross portfolio disparity that became known as Closing the Gap. But, before Closing the Gap, there was Gayle, who worked on reception at DAA.
One fell Friday afternoon, I heard Gail sum up the human cost of the gap when she answered a call about special benefits allegedly going to Aboriginal people.
“I’ll tell you what we get,” said Gayle. “We get diabetes. We get a shorter life expectancy. We get to see our kids drop out of school and go to jail. We get turned away from jobs. We get to go to too many funerals. That’s what we get.” That caller never rang back.
In my first speech to the New South Wales Parliament, I spoke about the importance of walking in someone else’s shoes. It is a lesson I took from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.
So walk in the shoes of the next generation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians because more than half of our population is under the age of 25.
Despite significant improvements in many areas, First Nations young people still don’t start on a level playing field.
Our people are more likely to have experienced homelessness than to hold an undergraduate degree, and, as our Prime Minister has said, in 2020, the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people locked up in a prison cell was four times higher than the number who celebrated graduating uni that year.
Walk in those shoes.
On the Voice referendum
I also want to share some thoughts on last year’s Voice referendum. The referendum did not achieve the outcomes many of us — all of us here — wanted. But I believe it can and will be a catalyst for progress and positive change in our nation and that, in the years to come, it will be looked on more kindly by history because constitutional recognition has been championed for decades by many of you here.
The Government and Parliament finally had the courage to put the question to the people because of the role it played in inspiring a new generation of young Indigenous leaders to emerge — also some of you here — and to push the change for a better future.
It showed that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in remote communities overwhelmingly wanted their voice to be heard, and 6.3 million Australians said yes.
It highlighted how far we’ve come and how far we still must go to be a truly reconciled country. I acknowledge the many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and fellow travellers who opened their hearts and minds and put their shoulders to the wheel, including people from across the Parliament who I’m looking at now. Thank you all, and, particularly, thank you, Julian, for your brave stand.
Friends, progress doesn’t always move in a straight line. The road is rocky. There are obstacles in the path. We have our stumbles and our setbacks, but our overall direction is towards progress, and, with each passing generation, we bend the moral arc of the universe closer to justice.
Nothing to fear or lose from truth
I think Australia sometimes struggles with its identity because we never came to terms with our own story, never embraced the breadth and depth of it, and certainly not its truth. The generosity we pride ourselves on is rarely extended to the people in this nation who have occupied these lands for countless generations.
Why? Part of the answer is that we don’t have a shared narrative. If you consider our nation’s story like the strata of a rock, there is an extraordinary foundation of First Nations people, the layer of European settlers — and, of course, many convicts amongst those numbers — and then there is layer upon layer of people who settled in Australia because of conflict and the search for a better life.
Many of you are children of those people. All of us live in that cross-section. All of it and all of us — what a story. You take the whole, not just the bits that suit you. I believe that community-led truth-telling can help with that. There is nothing to fear or lose from the truth.
I am heartened by the Prime Minister’s ongoing commitment to addressing the challenges facing First Peoples, particularly on Closing the Gap. I’m heartened to see my friend Senator Malarndirri McCarthy become the new minister and hit the ground running. The baton has been passed on.
Phony argument
I also make these points about Indigenous affairs. Having a roof over your head and a job is vitally important. That’s why we are investing $4 billion in remote housing in the Northern Territory and overhauling the failed CDP program, replacing it with real jobs and real wages in remote communities.
Also important is having pride in our culture, identity and language; so too is a sense of belonging, and so too is knowing the true history of our country.
We don’t have to choose between so-called practical and symbolic reconciliation. It’s a false choice; it’s a phony argument. The notion that somehow governments and Indigenous communities must choose between so-called practical and symbolic reconciliation is an old and tired debate that belongs in the 1990s, not the 2020s.
It is now up to everyone here — and I know you will; I really do — and in the other place to ensure that reconciliation and Closing the Gap are policy areas of bipartisan cooperation, of common ground, not division.
In 2000, following the Walk for Reconciliation across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the dozens of events that I know many of you were involved in across the country, it was a historic moment on the journey to the apology some years later.
Michelle Grattan asked me for my thoughts on reconciliation. I said: “Healing in Australia is a profound, long-term, incremental thing. It’s about people. It’s a tough road, but I think we will get there.”
Everyone: 24 years later, I still believe that. Let us remember that this is about people. Let us remember what those increments are: a secure home for a family, a new job, clean water for a community and a place at uni — life-changing steps forward.
Friends and mentors
I have a few people to thank. To the Prime Minister: you have always been my friend and mentor, always by my side and on my side. To my Labor colleagues: thank you for your unwavering support. Politics has not been a lonely place for me because of you. You have been a source of strength when I have needed it most. To leaders under which I have had the honour of serving — prior to the Prime Minister, of course —Bill Shorten, Bob Carr, Morris Iemma, Nathan Rees and Kristina Keneally, I thank you all.
I also thank my dear friends that are here. You have kept me standing when I couldn’t stand on my own. You mean the world to me. Thank you for travelling all the distances that you have. I thank the First Nations members of the caucus, including Patrick Dodson.
I thank Gordon, Marion, Malarndirri and Joanna for their camaraderie and for being there. To my family, Willurai and her partner Elle, you will be seeing a lot more of me over the next few months. Thank you for being the remarkable people that you are. You inspire me.
To those at the NIAA who work in the Parliament, including the media, and the Public Service more generally: the Public Service is a noble profession, and you deserve far more recognition for what you do.
And to all my staff in the electorate and the ministerial office: over the years, thank you; you are the true stars. To Tim Watts and Maria Pasten, in particular: I recognise your service and your leadership. What we have been able to achieve has been multiplied through your efforts.
To those watching online: thank you. To the branch members and volunteers in New South Wales Labor: it is you who carry our movement. You are the engine of progress and fairness in this country.
To you, Mr Speaker—we started on the same day; look where we are now—I recognise and thank everyone in this Parliament. I do that through you.
Finally, to the amazing constituents of Barton and Canterbury: thank you for giving me the opportunity of a lifetime.
Heart filled with hope
Working in this house of democracy is a great honour — a place of vigorous debate, a place where the contest of ideas plays out. But it should not be a place for punching down. It should not be a place where minority groups are demonised. Reasonable people can disagree, and our democracy will be better if we can disagree agreeably.
As I prepare to move on to the next chapter of my life, I do so with a heart filled with hope. Both my first speech in the New South Wales Parliament and my first speech in this place contained the same two promises: first, that I will always work hard, and, second, that I will always do my best. I think I’ve kept those commitments.
My life has been the both harsh and kind. I have known loss I would never wish on anyone, but I have never, ever lost hope. While there are those who believe that political success depends on discovering your humanity or locking it away, I say to all of you who follow me and to my friends and colleagues who carry on the fight: never lose your faith in others. Never lose your trust in the people who brought you here.
Twenty-one years: 10 years in government, 11 years in Opposition. And let me tell you: you can do more in one day in government than you can in a whole term in Opposition, so don’t waste the days. Big change is still possible in this country. Do not waste a day.
As I finish my speech today, I take you back eight years. Lynette Riley sang me into this House. Today, as I close this chapter on my life, her daughter Garra will sing me out. Thank you, Garra.
In conclusion, I say in Wiradjuri these words: I am proud to be Wiradjuri. This has been a great journey. Thank you; it’s been an honour. We will make progress when we all work together. We have a strong and bright future.
See Croakey’s archive of articles on cultural determinants of health.
