Carrying the torch

Like her distinguished predecessor Neville Bonner, Jacinta Price fervently rejects the narrative of Aboriginal victimhood.

I am very, very, very honoured to be here tonight, certainly as a NAT, amongst wonderful Liberals, and to honour an incredible man. Being of course, the very first Aboriginal member of Federal Parliament, the Honourable Senator Neville Bonner. And of course, we're here to celebrate 50 years. I too feel incredibly privileged that I get to sit in the Senate, that I have also joined the Australian Council of Elders, as Mr Bonner had done, as part of the 47th Australian parliament.

Bonner believed in many cultures, languages, and heritages, but one people, Australian people. Sean Jacobs, who I recognise here tonight, in his biography, and may I remind everyone, captured perfectly the values and principles Bonner lived and worked by; that no doubt many here tonight like myself, also live and work by.

Robert Menzies, in an address to Parliament in 1967, listed five important principles that an intelligent, free and liberal Australian democracy shall be maintained by: parliament controlling the executive and the law, freedom of speech, religion and association, freedom of citizens to choose their own way of life subject to the rights of others, protecting the people against exploitation, and looking primarily to the encouragement of individual initiative and enterprise as the dynamic force of construction and progress.

These principles are as important today as the day Menzies listed them, and the day Bonner was sworn into the Senate on the 17th of August, 1971.

It is a rare feat being acknowledged and respected as an Indigenous conservative in this nation nowadays, let alone 51 years ago. If Neville Bonner had in fact been a representative of the Labor Party, the left would have made a legend and a hero of him.

He would be widely celebrated, venerated, and admired for the ground-breaking achievement of being the first Aboriginal senator of Federal Parliament. Instead, they merely make passing reference to him, or make little acknowledgement or public celebration for this remarkable man's achievements.

Bonner like myself, was no stranger to contemptuous Labor lambasting. The same Labor contempt that drove his determination to run in the Senate, is the very same contempt that has compelled me to stand and fight from the centre-right.

This contempt from Labor towards Bonner, I mentioned in my first speech to Parliament. The racial stereotype that has been embedded into the psyche of not just ignorant non-Aboriginal Australians, but sadly, within many Aboriginal Australians who from a young age are indoctrinated into the thinking that they are inherent victims of our nation's history.

Many Aboriginal people from childhood have been encouraged into accepting victimhood as a defining part of their identity. And it was the contemptuous exchange from the former leader of the Labor Party, which we have heard tonight, from Dr Nelson and from Neville himself, when Mr Bonner was handing out those How-to-Votes with the Liberal Party at that time.

So I won't repeat what he said because we have heard it tonight and we all very much know where Mr Bonner stood. Yes, you have been convinced of this, but more recently, our new Muslim senator of Afghan heritage, Senator Payman, stated incorrectly in her first speech that, it was Labor who abolished the White Australia policy to acknowledge, respect and celebrate the diversity of our growing multicultural society so families like mine don't feel ostracised.

I wonder what Bonner would've said with regards to such a poorly researched statement. Probably something along the lines of what he warned Australia about with regard to the behaviours and influences of the Black Panther Movement in the US: "Beware, there are those among us who will pit coloured against white and white against coloured, Australians, against Australians."

Sadly, no media picked up on Payman's ideological blunder, and equally sadly, I don't think any of Payman's party room colleagues corrected her either. The record tells us that Labor were the architects of the White Australia policy and that it tells us, in fact, it was the Holt Coalition government that delivered the first blows to the policy, effectively opening the doors to Australia to become a multicultural nation.

But let's not have truth telling with the facts get in the way of a good Labor story. Prior to Bonner's entry into Parliament he was passionately campaigning for the rights of Aboriginal Australians in support of the 1967 referendum; another significant step in our nation's history to advance Aboriginal Australians led by a Coalition government and rarely acknowledged in this way by Labor or the left.

Bonner recognised this was a pivotal moment in the course of our history and the efforts of the Holt government of the time. If only all Australians understood our history as Bonner did and as I do, they would understand that many accomplishments of Coalition governments towards advancing Aboriginal Australians, instead of allowing themselves to lazily be spoon-fed by Labor's mistruths.

I can confidently say that if progressive governments had applied more policy inspired by Bonner in efforts to advance Aboriginal Australians further, we would currently be experiencing very different circumstances, of this I'm sure. Bonner like myself fervently, reject the notion that because we are Aboriginal, we belong to the left, and that we must be treated differently to the rest of our fellow Australians.

And this was evident in his words that resonate even more so today. We as Aboriginal Australians have to fight to prove that we are straight out plain human beings. So I am deeply grateful to be continuing Bonner's legacy from the Australian Senate. That I have a remarkable, considered common sense example to follow who exemplifies the true Australian spirit, even 23 years after his death.

So thank you very much everyone in this room. Thank you to the Menzies Research Centre for putting this dinner on tonight and for recognising a remarkable, not just Indigenous person, but a remarkable Australian. Thank you.

This is an edited transcript of the remarks given by Jacinta Price at the Neville Bonner Gala Dinner on Tuesday. Jacinta Price is a Senator for NT.