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

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.