Speeches

Wednesday, 20 March 2002

First speech as the member for Lingiari

Address-in-Reply to the Governor-General

Mr SNOWDON (Lingiari) (1.17 p.m.) —In the address-in-reply debate, uncharacteristically I will speak about my electorate rather than, as I have been doing over the last couple of appearances in this chamber and in the House, attack the government for its poor performance and its abuse of Australian institutions of government—particularly, as has been related earlier today, the defence forces, the judiciary and the Australian Public Service. It is my intention today to talk about the electorate of Lingiari. You will know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that since the last election my electorate has changed. Prior to the last election I was the member for the Northern Territory, which included all of the Northern Territory and the islands off the Northern Territory, including Christmas and Cocos Islands. As a result of a redistribution, I am now the member for Lingiari. Lingiari is of 1.34 million square kilometres and encompasses all of the Northern Territory, with the exclusion of Palmerston and Darwin, which together total 330 square kilometres. The electorate is the second largest in Australia by area, but it is the largest geographically, as it is bounded in the east by Borroloola and the Queensland border and in the west by Christmas and Cocos Islands, in the Indian Ocean. It has a wide range of communities, but 40 per cent or thereabouts of the electorate are indigenous Australians. That is the highest proportion of indigenous Australians of any electorate.

What I want to talk about in particular is the man Vincent Lingiari. Vincent Lingiari will not be known to many Australians, unfortunately. However, I believe he should be. Under any objective view there is no doubt that he is one of Australia's great leaders since settlement or, as indigenous Australians would argue, invasion by the British in the 18th century. Vincent Lingiari was truly a great man. You may recall the words of a very important and popular song, From little things big things grow, by Kevin Carmody and Paul Kelly. It explains the life of Vincent Lingiari and the struggle that he went through to achieve the recognition of rights for his people.

Perhaps one of the most significant events as a marker in the life of Vincent Lingiari was on 23 August 1966 when he led his Gurindji people and other people off the Wave Hill station owned by the Vesteys, situated 600 kilometres south-west of Katherine in the Northern Territory, to a riverbed nearby. Most Australians, certainly indigenous Australians, would not have known of the event at the time and, if they did, would have paid little notice to it. Yet the fact remains that the ripples from the Wave Hill walk-off and strike were to keep travelling across Australian society, gathering the force of a wave which would eventually reshape the agenda of relationships between indigenous Australians and the wider community.

The immediate catalyst of the strike was the refusal of the Vesteys' manager at Wave Hill to meet Vincent Lingiari's request that Aboriginal stockmen be paid $25 a week. But what was apparently an industrial dispute over appalling working and living conditions soon revealed itself to be something strikingly different: it was a demand from the Gurindji people for the return of their traditional lands. Months after the original strike began Vincent Lingiari led his people to establish a settlement at Wattie Creek, known to them as Daguragu, within the Wave Hill lease. When Lord Vestey attempted to get the Gurindji people to leave Wattie Creek and return to work on the station with inducements including money and wages, Vincent Lingiari told him: `You can keep your gold. We just want our land back.'

That strike lasted seven years. I am from a community where membership of a trade union is regarded as important—at least for me it is important, and it has been all my working life. I have been involved in industrial disputes and I have been involved in strikes for a day or two days. But this strike lasted seven years. I do not know of any other strike that started as an industrial dispute which has lasted for seven years in Australian history. It was a very significant event. But what happened over that time was a build-up of support and a significant movement linking in with the early beginnings of a renewed Aboriginal rights movement of the late sixties and early seventies. The end result of all this was an enormously important event in 1975—and you will recall, I am sure, when I tell you what it was—the graphic illustration and imagery of Gough Whitlam pouring the sand into Vincent Lingiari's hands when he handed the land back.

That is important not just because of the struggle that the Gurindji people went through but because of what it meant to Australian society, the support which it garnered against the establishment from a wide cross-section of the community and how it got to the heart of great Australians such as Frank Hardy, an author and poet of great note. With their support and the support of unionists such as those from the North Australian Workers Union and the then Waterside Workers Federation, typified by Brian Manning, they were able to sustain this community over the length of this struggle. This struggle came to epitomise the need for the wider Australian community to recognise the importance of land rights. There were subsequent events such as the bark petition which came from north-east Arnhem Land from the people who now own the Nabalco site—the traditional owners of the Nabalco site. This in itself was a very important event in Australian history.

We know that Vincent Lingiari was an extraordinary man. He was illiterate in the sense that he could not read or write European scripts. English was not his first language—as it is not the first language of a very large number of Australians who live on this continent now. They are not immigrants; they are the traditional owners of this country. English is a foreign language to them. It needs to be understood that even today for very large numbers of people English is not only a foreign language but a language that is very difficult for them to learn, because they do not have the wherewithal in terms of infrastructure to do so.

Vincent Lingiari's vocabulary was very limited. He described himself as a Kadijeri man, a man in charge of the secret and chief male ceremony of the Gurindji people. He retold the Dreamtime story of the beginnings of his people at Seal Gorge near Wattie Creek on the Gurindji tribal lands which were incorporated into the Wave Hill Station. The story is recounted in the corroboree dances of his people. These lands were a vital part of the identity of Vincent Lingiari and the Gurindji, by reason of their Dreamtime attachment, their traditional ownership of that country and more recent happenings.

There was a petition sent to a former Governor-General, Lord Casey. Vincent Lingiari was its first signatory. It records:

Our people have lived here from time immemorial and our culture, myths, dreaming and sacred places have evolved in this land.

As far as more recent happenings are concerned, the land at Seal Gorge near Wattie Creek was sacred to the Gurindji as a shrine to their many forefathers who were killed in the early days while trying to retain it. We need to understand that the acts of violence which were perpetrated against indigenous Australians in remote locations did not stop in the 19th century; they did not stop until late into the 20th century. There are many places around northern Australia where you can locate sites where there were massacres. Many of those are in the electorate of Lingiari. Vincent Lingiari was a very powerful communicator, despite the fact that he had difficulty with English. But he let his peoples' demands be known when he said:

We want them Vestey mob—

the station owners—

all go away from here. Wave Hill Aboriginal people bin called Gurindji. We bin here long time before them Vestey mob. This is our country, all this bin Gurindji country. Wave Hill bin our country. We want this land; we strike for that.

That reinforces the strength of the petition to Lord Casey.

Sitting suspended from 1.30 p.m. to 4.02 p.m.

Mr SNOWDON —Before being interrupted for question time, I was discussing the role of Vincent Lingiari as the leader of Gurindji people and his role in ensuring that the nation addressed, after a seven-year strike, the needs of his community for land and the way in which they combated the then mighty forces of Lord Vestey to ensure they got access to country. I am using as a reference a very important and very good document, which is the speech from the inaugural Lingiari lecture by the then Governor-General, Sir William Deane, in Darwin in August 1996.

It is important to understand that eventually Vincent Lingiari's battle was successful, because in December of 1972, when the Whitlam government came to power, it did so on a platform which included a promise to legislate for Aboriginal land rights. The new government appointed Justice Edward Woodward as the royal commissioner to advise it in relation to the grant of such rights. Contemporaneously with the Woodward royal commission there was a period of genuine negotiation between the government, Vesteys and the Gurindji in relation to the Gurindji claims and an offer by Lord Vestey to relinquish part of the Wave Hill lease. Finally, there was a consensus that the original Wave Hill lease would be surrendered by Vesteys and that two new leases would be issued, one to Vesteys and the other to the Muramulla Gurindji company—to the Gurindji people. The Gurindji lease would comprise an area of more than 300,000 square kilometres and it would include the most important parts of the ancestral lands.

On 16 August 1975 the then Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, who is acknowledged by the community as a very important person—`that big man'—came to Daguragu accompanied by other prominent Australians. It is worth repeating what he said on that day and you will recall that earlier in this speech I discussed that illustration, that great bit of imagery—the photograph of Gough Whitlam pouring sand through the hands of Vincent Lingiari. I quote from the then Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam:

On this great day, I, Prime Minister of Australia, speak to you on behalf of the Australian people—all those who honour and love this land we live in.

For them I want to say to you:

I want to acknowledge that we Australians have still much to do to redress the injustice and oppression that has for so long been the lot of Black Australians.

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 part of the earth itself as a sign that this land will be the possession of you and your children forever.

As he concluded his remarks, the then Prime Minister poured a handful of Daguragu soil through Vincent Lingiari's hands. Vincent Lingiari, having received the crown lease of his ancestral land with the symbolic handover of the land itself, simply replied, `We are mates now.'

This is a great story in Australian history. It is one that all Australians should learn in order to understand the privations suffered by the Gurindji people during this struggle, this confrontation, with the might of Lord Vestey. Through a seven-year strike, the Gurindji people finally won not only recognition of the injustice that they had suffered but also ultimately the prize: the establishment of the 300,000 square kilometres.

It should be noted that it is not just me or, indeed, the former Governor-General who has acknowledged the heroic deeds of Vincent Lingiari. It is acknowledged by the most notable of Australian commentators on indigenous affairs—perhaps the one for whom I have the greatest respect, someone with whom I worked for a number of years and co-authored a book—Dr H.C. `Nugget' Coombs. Nugget was a truly great Australian, and I have spoken to this House previously about him. As I said, I was fortunate enough to work with him. He described Vincent Lingiari as `a man who, among Aboriginal associates, appears to be recognised more fully than any other I know of as such a leader'.

Be that as it may, Vincent Lingiari was a leader of his people in every sense of the word. Vincent Lingiari was doubtless a great man, and it is with great pride that I represent the community of Lingiari—that is, the people of the seat of Lingiari, but particularly those descendants of Vincent Lingiari at Daguragu and Kalkarindji in the Northern Territory. Proudly each year they record a celebration to commemorate the handover and the win, the great victory, that was theirs, which was led by Vincent Lingiari.

Earlier in this contribution I spoke about a great piece of poetry, a great song, by Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly entitled From little things big things grow. I want to conclude my remarks by repeating the last verse of that song. It reads:

That was the story of Vincent Lingairi

But this is the story of something much more

How power and privilege can not move a people

Who know where they stand and stand in the law

Ends.

Copyright © 2004-5 Warren Snowdon MP. This page was last updated on 25 June 2009.