Delegation from Central Australia

Gina Smith
"We’re a group of Central Australian delegates that represent our constituents back home in the Central Area. We just wanted to say that we welcome the child abuse report and intervention of child abuse, but we don’t want our permit system removed because it means so much to our protection of our lands and sacred sites and knowing who can and can’t go there. We had to get permits to come into parliament house – we’re bound by their rules, and our permit system works the same as this. We come here, we have rules that we have to follow, they come to our country they should have to do the same."

Harry Nelson
"We came down here to lobby to the Government about our rights and we’re not too happy about what the Government has done, bamboozling us with the army and the police. People were misled in a way. The presence of the army and the police upset many of our communities and we hope that our message of the last few days that we’ve been staying here in Canberra has been heard by the bosses. Our rights were taken away."

Walter Shaw
"This year’s supposed to be a commemorative year for Aboriginal people in Australia considering the 1967 referendum and NAIDOC. We’re down here in Canberra now fighting for our future existence. We want to be the third party as an equal partner with the Federal Government and the NT Government."

Valda Shannon
"We are particularly offended by the exclusion of the Racial Discrimination Act. We do support some changes to welfare like linking payments to school attendance and child neglect, but the proposal to hold back 50% from everyone is discriminatory and doesn’t encourage positive behavior, and there’s no plan beyond quarantining.
With the permits removed there going to be a lot more problems entering into the community. Who’s going to police the law, the people wandering into the places where they’re supposed to have a permit?"

Gilbert Corbett
"I’m a delegate that will stand by my people to stay on behalf of them, talking about all regions in the Central Land Council. We came here because of the permits. We need to keep strong for ourselves and our sacred sites so we can look after our country so that we can pass everything to our children so that they can carry on."

Lindsay Bookie, Chair of Central Land Council
"With the Land Rights Act everything started, doing land claims to get our land back. We had to go to prove that Australia was our country. We had to show our sacred stories to these governments. We only show that to our young people, not to white men, white women. Now the Government’s pulling it from under our feet and taking it from us again. What are we going to do? They took it away from us in the first place, then we had to prove that it was our country. And the new laws come in, now it’s all going to be taken away from us from under our feet."