It's not often that we continue to hear and read about a speech praised as one for the ages. So I went to find the eulogy that Aboriginal lawyer, land rights activist and founder of the Cape York Institute, Noel Pearson gave at former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's memorial service in Sydney last week. I wanted to read it. Even though it is being hailed universally it wasn't easy to find a full copy of the eulogy he gave. So having found it I thought I would share it with you.
I hasten to add that this is
NOT a political post. I encourage you to either read it below or listen to it
here - his voice is worth it! It is quite remarkable. (The actor Cate Blanchett also spoke -
listen here)
 |
| Noel Pearson speaking at the Whitlam memorial service in Sydney (Peter Rae - The Age) |
"Paul
Keating said the reward for public life is public progress.
For one
born estranged from the nation's citizenship, into a humble family of a
marginal people striving in the teeth of poverty and discrimination, today it
is assuredly no longer the case. This
because of the equalities of opportunities afforded by the Whitlam program. Raised
next to the wood heap of the nation's democracy, bequeathed no allegiance to
any political party, I speak to this old man's legacy with no partisan
brief.
Rather,
my single honour today on behalf of more people than I could ever know, is to
express our immense gratitude for the public service of this old man. I once
took him on a tour to my village and we spoke about the history of the mission
and my youth under the government of his nemesis, Queensland Premier Joh
Bjelke-Petersen. My home
was an Aboriginal reserve under a succession of Queensland laws commencing in
1897. These
laws were notoriously discriminatory and the bureaucratic apparatus controlling
the reserves maintained vigil over the smallest details concerning its charges. Superintendents
held vast powers and a cold and capricious bureaucracy presided over this
system for too long in the 20th century.
In June
1975, the Whitlam government enacted the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
Queensland Discriminatory Laws Act. The law
put to purpose the power conferred upon the Commonwealth Parliament by the 1967
referendum, finally outlawing the discrimination my father and his father lived
under since my grandfather was removed to the mission as a boy and to which I
was subject [for] the first 10 years of my life.
Powers
regulating residency on reserves without a permit, the power of reserve
managers to enter private premises without the consent of the householder,
legal representation and appeal from court decisions, the power of reserve
managers to arbitrarily direct people to work, and the terms and conditions of
employment, were now required to treat Aboriginal Queenslanders on the same
footing as other Australians. We were
at last free from those discriminations that humiliated and degraded our
people.
The
companion to this enactment, which would form the architecture of indigenous
human rights akin to the Civil Rights Act 1965 in the United States, was the
Racial Discrimination Act.
It was in
Queensland under Bjelke-Petersen that its importance became clear. In 1976,
a Wik man from Aurukun on the western Cape York Peninsula, John Koowarta,
sought to purchase the Archer Bend pastoral lease from its white owner. The
Queensland government refused the sale. The High Court's decision in
Koowarta versus Bjelke-Petersen upheld the Racial Discrimination Act as a
valid exercise of the external affairs powers of the Commonwealth. However,
in an act of spite, the Queensland Government converted the lease into the
Acher Bend National Park. Old man
Koowarta died a broken man, the winner of a landmark High Court precedent but
the victim of an appalling discrimination.
The
Racial Discrimination Act was again crucial in 1982 when a group of Murray
Islanders led by Eddie Mabo claimed title under the common law to their
traditional homelands in the Torres Strait. In 1985
Bjelke-Petersen sought to kill the Murray Islanders' case by enacting a
retrospective extinguishment of any such title.
There was
no political or media uproar against Bjelke-Petersen's law. There was no public
condemnation of the state's manouevre. There was no redress anywhere in the
democratic forums or procedures of the state or the nation.
If there
were no Racial Discrimination Act that would have been the end of it. Land
rights would have been dead, there would never have been a Mabo case in 1992,
there would have been no Native Title Act under Prime Minister Keating in 1993.
Without
this old man the land and human rights of our people would never have seen the
light of day. There
would never have been Mabo and its importance to the history of Australia would
have been lost without the Whitlam program.
Only
those who have known discrimination truly know its evil.
Only
those who have never experienced prejudice can discount the importance of the
Racial Discrimination Act.
This old
man was one of those rare people who never suffered discrimination but
understood the importance of protection from its malice.
On this
day we will recall the repossession of the Gurindji of Wave Hill, when the
Prime Minister said, "Vincent Lingiari, I solemnly hand to you these deeds
as proof in Australian law that these lands belong to the Gurindji people and I
put into your hands this piece of earth itself as a sign that we restore them
to you and your children forever."
It was
this old man's initiative with the Woodward Royal Commission that led to Prime
Minister Fraser's enactment of the Aboriginal Land Rights Northern Territory
Act, legislation that would see more than half of the territory restored to its
traditional owners.
Of course
recalling the Whitlam Government's legacy has been, for the past four decades
since the dismissal, a fraught and partisan business. Assessments
of those three highly charged years and their aftermath divide between the
nostalgia and fierce pride of the faithful, and the equally vociferous opinion
that the Whitlam years represented the nadir of national government in
Australia. Let me venture a perspective.
The
Whitlam government is the textbook case of reform trumping management.
In less
than three years an astonishing reform agenda leapt off the policy platform and
into legislation and the machinery and programs of government.The
country would change forever. The modern cosmopolitan Australia finally emerged
like a technicolour butterfly from its long dormant chrysalis. And 38
years later we are like John Cleese, Eric Idle and Michael Palin's Jewish
insurgents ranting against the despotic rule of Rome, defiantly demanding
"and what did the Romans ever do for us anyway?"
Apart
from Medibank and the Trade Practices Act, cutting tariff protections and
no-fault divorce in the Family Law Act, the Australia Council, the Federal
Court, the Order of Australia, federal legal aid, the Racial Discrimination
Act, needs-based schools funding, the recognition of China, the abolition of
conscription, the law reform commission, student financial assistance, the
Heritage Commission, non-discriminatory immigration rules, community health
clinics, Aboriginal land rights, paid maternity leave for public servants,
lowering the minimum voting age to 18 years and fair electoral boundaries and
Senate representation for the territories.
Apart
from all of this, what did this Roman ever do for us?
And the
Prime Minister with that classical Roman mien, one who would have been as naturally
garbed in a toga as a safari suit, stands imperiously with twinkling eyes and
that slight self-mocking smile playing around his mouth, in turn infuriating
his enemies and delighting his followers. There is
no need for nostalgia and yearning for what might have been. The
achievements of this old man are present in the institutions we today take for
granted and played no small part in the progress of modern Australia.
There is
no need to regret three years was too short. Was any more time needed? The breadth
and depth of the reforms secured in that short and tumultuous period were
unprecedented, and will likely never again be repeated.The
devil-may-care attitude to management as opposed to reform is unlikely to be
seen again by governments whose priorities are to retain power rather than
reform.
The
Whitlam program as laid out in the 1972 election platform consisted of three
objectives: to promote equality, to involve the people of Australia in the
decision-making processes of our land, and to liberate the talents and uplift
the horizons of the Australian people. This
program is as fresh as it was when first conceived. It scarcely could be better
articulated today.
Who would
not say the vitality of our democracy is a proper mission of government and
should not be renewed and invigorated. Who can
say that liberating the talents and uplifting the horizons of Australians is
not a worthy charter for national leadership?
It
remains to mention the idea of promoting equality. My chances in this nation were
a result of the Whitlam program. My grandparents and parents could never have
imagined the doors that opened to me which were closed to them. I share
this consciousness with millions of my fellow Australians whose experiences
speak in some way or another to the great power of distributed
opportunity.
I don't
know why someone with this old man's upper middle class background could carry
such a burning conviction that the barriers of class and race of the Australia
of his upbringing and maturation should be torn down and replaced with the
unapologetic principle of equality. I can
scarcely point to any white Australian political leader of his vintage and of
generations following of whom it could be said without a shadow of doubt, he
harboured not a bone of racial, ethnic or gender prejudice in his body. This was
more than urbane liberalism disguising human equivocation and private failings;
it was a modernity that was so before its time as to be utterly anachronistic.
For
people like me who had no chance if left to the means of our families we could
not be more indebted to this old man's foresight and moral vision for universal
opportunity. Only
those born bereft truly know the power of opportunity. Only those accustomed to
its consolations can deprecate a public life dedicated to its furtherance and
renewal. This old man never wanted opportunity himself but he possessed the
keenest conviction in its importance. For it
behoves the good society through its government to ensure everyone has chance
and opportunity.
This is
where the policy convictions of Prime Minister Whitlam were so germane to the
uplift of many millions of Australians.
We salute
this old man for his great love and dedication to his country and to the
Australian people. When he
breathed he truly was Australia's greatest white elder and friend without peer
of the original Australians."
