Burney tells parliamentary colleagues: ‘the Aboriginal part of my story is important, it is the core of who I am. But I will not be stereotyped’

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The first Indigenous female MP elected to the House of Representatives has delivered the opening of her maiden speech in her native language.

Donning a cloak detailing her personal story, Labor MP Linda Burney invited fellow Wiradjuri woman Lynette Riley to sing a traditional song from the gallery.

The cloak showed Burney’s clan totem, the goanna, and her personal totem, the white cockatoo, which she said was “very noisy”.

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She told the federal parliament on Wednesday she was deeply moved to have journeyed to a “powerful place”.

“I wish in this house … to be respectful, to be gentle and be polite,” she told parliament.

“However I say to my elders, that the last bit may not always apply in question time.”

Burney reflected on the February 2008 apology to Australia’s Indigenous peoples by the Rudd Labor government, carrying an empty coolamon – or wooden vessel – into parliament.

“These lands are, always were and always will be Aboriginal land,” she said.

Constitutional recognition in the nation’s birth certificate was the next step for the parliament and country in the reconciliation journey, she said.

She invited the chamber to imagine what it was like for a 13-year-old girl who was told at school her ancestors were the closest thing to stone-age men. But the chamber felt a long way from that, she said.

“The Aboriginal part of my story is important, it is the core of who I am,” she said. “But I will not be stereotyped and I will not be pigeon-holed.”

The former New South Wales MP joked it was ironic her federal seat of Barton – named after former prime minister Edmund Barton who introduced the white Australia policy – was now one of the most multicultural in the country.

She promised to push for education, a reduction in the rate of juvenile imprisonment and the end of domestic violence.

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There was never a question of being anything but a Labor member, she said.

“People in our community know that the invisible hand of the market cares little for the needs of the most disadvantaged.”

She paid tribute to her late partner former politician Rick Farley, saying the world was a worse place without him.

And she issued a message to young Indigenous Australians. “If I can stand in this place, so can they – never let anyone tell you, you are limited by anything.”