We must all act to build on the legacy of Senator Neville Bonner

Monday, 8 September marked the 22nd anniversary of the maiden speech of the first Indigenous Australian to take a seat in Federal Parliament. The late Senator Neville Bonner of the Jagera people of south-east Queensland was a distinguished Liberal senator from that state and it is fitting at this time to acknowledge his contributions to the parliament.

The similarities between the issues he raised in 1971 and the issues which concern us in 2003 are striking.

Neville Bonner came to the old Parliament House as a Liberal Senator for Queensland without the benefit of a university education or a high school education and with only a brief stint at primary school. At that time the education system was officially segregated and there were no schools for Aboriginal children where he lived in Northern NSW. When the family moved to southern Queensland his grandmother was able to convince the local authorities to allow him to attend a school with non-Indigenous children. By the time he attended primary school he was 14 years of age. He went to school for a year.

That was the end of his formal education - yet he went on to become extensively involved in administration, business, Aboriginal politics and mainstream politics - eventually filling a Senate vacancy for the Liberal Party in 1971.

In his first speech, Neville Bonner broached the subject of skin colour as an indicator of Aboriginality - a debate that was still firmly entrenched in the eugenic racism underpinning the stolen generations - and one which, unfortunately, has not advanced greatly in the past 32 years. He said:

In my experienced opinion, all persons who desire to be so classified, regardless of hue of skin, and who have flowing in their veins any portion, however small, of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Island blood, are Indigenous people ... It does not necessarily follow that the degree of one's emotional scars matches the darkness of personal pigmentation or that the lightness of one's skin necessarily indicates a lessening of knowledge of and belief in Aboriginal or Torres Strait Island culture and tradition.

Some are shocked by the intensity of the then Senator's passion for his people - as history has generally cast him as a conservative with little political conviction or teeth. Yet despite being a fundamentally conservative man and a well-known monarchist, the then Senator Neville Bonner crossed the floor several times to vote with the Labor opposition on Aboriginal issues.

Bonner's time in the Senate highlighted the unique difficulties facing Indigenous people when they need to choose between their political parties and the priorities of their people. His ability to stay true to his personal and cultural views as an Indigenous person, while also being a representative of a mainstream political party, makes him something of a role model for me. These are very different times and, thankfully, I do not represent the Liberal Party but the Australian Democrats - a party with a honest and open record in Indigenous Affairs.

In his speech, Neville Bonner also spoke at length about the issue of communal moral rights and the importance of economic development for Indigenous people - still ongoing issues. He searched for somewhere in the copyright or patents acts that would allow the design of the boomerang to be registered and /or protected - of course that space does not exist - even to this day. As a former maker of boomerangs, Mr Bonner felt both culturally and economically offended by the cheap overseas boomerangs that flooded the Australian tourist market - again a too familiar story today - but with a wider range of art and cultural objects now subject to this treatment.

The then Senator said in his first speech:

I have made inquiries about the possibilities of a patent over the boomerang and have been advised that, as it is by no means a recent scientific invention, it would not be possible for anyone to take out a patent for it.

Likewise, I understand, the law of copyright would apply only to individual design on an artefact. I have been told that the word "boomerang" cannot even be registered as a trade mark as the term is probably too deeply entrenched in the English language to be legally registered now as distinguishing the goods of particular manufacturers or traders. If some solution to this problem can be found it may one small way of fostering an Aboriginal enterprise which I know surely has considerable potential.

He then became the first Senator to give a boomerang-throwing demonstration outside the building illustrate the superior quality of the local product.

But Bonner wasn't all boomerangs and big hair and in 1975 he passed a resolution in the Senate urging the then government to admit Indigenous prior ownership and introduce legislation to compensate Indigenous people.

When Senator Bonner was at the peak of his Federal political career, in 1983, the Liberals dropped him to an unwinnable spot on their Senate ticket. And the rest is history.

The Federal parliament was without an Indigenous Australian representative until 1999 - when I took my seat in the Senate.
Bonner's home state of Queensland has only seen one Indigenous person elected to its parliament - Eric Deeral, who held the northern seat of Cook from 1974 to 1977.

More genuine efforts must be made on the part of our political parties to attract Indigenous people into the political life of the nation - by pre-selecting them for safe seats, or via the consideration of dedicated seats for Indigenous people as in New Zealand, or the Canadian example of Aboriginal electorates.

First, there must be an acknowledgement of the historically derived nature of Indigenous disadvantage, and of the requirement to adopt special measures to provide Indigenous people with equality of opportunity. Special measures are necessary and fair so that Indigenous people can "catch up" - and governments need to do more than simply pass non-discrimination legislation if they are serious about removing disadvantage. Special measures do not lead to separate rights, rather they are only temporary measure designed to remove disadvantage.

As Aristotle said, "There is nothing so unequal as the equal treatment of unequals".

But in an interview in 1995 Bonner cautioned:

I would not recommend with a clear conscience that Indigenous people join any one of the major political parties, because political parties in this country want bottle-drawn seats, hands in the air at the right time. You have no freedom to express yourself against the party.

Twenty-two years later, on the anniversary of his maiden speech, we must never forget the path Neville Bonner blazed in the political life of the nation, the price he paid, or his legacy for those who have followed.