"I guess our country owes its existence to a form of foreign investment by the British government in the then unsettled or, um, scarcely settled, Great South Land." Senator Nova Peris: "British settlement was not foreign investment. It was occupation." Credit:Glenn Campbell Mr Mundine said it was ''a silly thing to say.'' ''I just thought it was a bizarre comment,'' he said. Labor Senator Nova Peris, the first indigenous woman to be elected to federal parliament, said Mr Abbott's comments were ''highly offensive, dismissive of indigenous peoples and simply incorrect''.

''British settlement was not foreign investment. It was occupation,'' Senator Peris said. Senator Peris, the deputy chair of the parliamentary committee on constitutional recognition of indigenous Australians, said the Prime Minister's comments had set back efforts to recognise the first Australians in the nation's founding document. Senator Peris said she wanted Australians to celebrate ''50,000 years of our nation's history, not just the last 226 years.'' Mr Abbott has said he wants to be a ''Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs'' and wants to make a ''new engagement'' with indigenous people one of the ''hallmarks'' of his government. Mr Mundine praised the Mr Abbott's commitment to improving the lives of indigenous Australians, but added ''we just need to do a bit more education, within the government, on this area.''

''There's a few things we still have to work on,'' he said. Mr Mundine said ''I know his heart is in the right place,'' but Mr Abbott was sometimes guilty of ''rambling on.'' ''If I was him I would have said that the nation was built on foreign investment since 1788 and left it there. We all know Australia was full of people living here when the British arrived.'' Megan Davis, the director of the Indigenous Law Centre at the University of NSW described Mr Abbott's comments as ''unfortunate and insensitive''. ''I am not sure 'colonialism' is an appropriate analogy for 'foreign investment' nor is 'foreign investment' the most correct way to describe the motives of the British government in 1788,'' Professor Davis said.

''This may be an opportunity to urge those Australians who remain confused about whether Australia was 'settled' or 'scarcely settled' to read the High Court's decision in Mabo (No 2) or Bill Gammage's book The Greatest Estate on Earth, which won the 2012 Prime Minister's Literary Award for best Australian History.'' Asked about Mr Abbott's comments on Friday, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said ''when you're a leader, I think you do have an obligation to pick your words carefully''. Mr Shorten joked that he was not sure that his great great great great grand uncle, who was transported to Australia from London, would have seen himself as being ''part of a settlement and foreign investment program''."I would have probably picked different words,'' Mr Shorten said. ''Foreign investment has been part of Australian life since European colonisation, that's a fact, so he's not wrong. Loading

"I'm just wary of sort of saying there was nothing there beforehand.'' Follow us on Twitter