Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (12:41): My statement relates to the Premier’s new truth and justice commission. Every Australian I know wants Australian Indigenous people to have the best chance in life, the best possible education, health and economic opportunities and the security and freedom to excel in every dream they follow, but a universal assumption of hostility and guilt is not the way to do it. Opportunity will not magically flow from making the non-Indigenous population feel unjustifiably guilty simply because of who they are.

The Australians I know do not see colour, they see a person. They do not tell lies, they tell the truth. And they need a lecture on truth telling from this Premier, who has elevated amnesia to an art form, like they need hole in the head. Anyone who watched Mr Andrews and the ‘do not recall’ brigade at the hotel quarantine hearings or in front of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee will find his conversion to a passionate advocate for clarity, truth and justice breathtaking. I wish the commission well, but I look forward to hearing all the truths and not just some, the hard and uncomfortable facts as well as the platitudes. If the hotel inquiry has taught us anything, it is that an inquiry where truth becomes secondary to politics is doomed to pointless and divisive failure.