(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)
Australia's oldest political party has never had an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander take up a seat in the House of Representatives.
But Labor leadership aspirant Bill Shorten says he is determined to change that.
Mr Shorten has put forward plans to establish quotas for Indigenous candidates if he wins this month's leadership contest against Anthony Albanese.
But as Michael Kenny reports, the issue has triggered considerable debate, including within the Australian Indigenous community itself.
Mr Shorten believes the Australian Labor Party does not accurately reflect the country's diversity in its choice of parliamentary candidates.
He says the party has had a lot of success in preselecting more women in winnable seats since it introduced a 40 per cent quota for women in preselections in 2002.
Mr Shorten believes it is now time to expand the quota system to cover minority groups such as gays and lesbians and Indigenous Australians.
"Australia doesn't need to be just run by white Anglo-Saxon men aged in their 50s and 60s. There are more brains in the country than just that group. So we need to make sure that our country reflects the abilities of all Australians."
Mr Shorten's comments come after Labor preselected its first Indigenous Australian to a Senate position.
Olympian Nova Peris won a Northern Territory Senate seat at this year's federal election and became the first Indigenous woman to take up a seat in federal parliament.
But her preselection was marred by controversy after she was personally selected by former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, forcing the resignation of veteran Senator Trish Crossin.
Mr Shorten's opponent for the Labor leadership, Anthony Albanese, questions the need for a quota system for Indigenous candidates.
He says Labor has preselected a number of Indigenous candidates on merit, including Senator Peris and Labor's Deputy Leader in New South Wales, Linda Burney.
Mr Albanese also questions the merit in expanding quota systems in general.
"The problem you've got I think is that if you've got a quota system for women and a quota system for Indigenous people and a quota for gay and lesbian candidates and other quotas as well for different groups- potentially for people who have disabilities, for people of ethnic background or for people who might fill more than one of those criteria, you do end up I think having a real issue with the community who want to know that their candidate is the best candidate for that community."
The Coalition has argued that it has a better record than Labor in preselecting Indigenous candidates.
West Australian Liberal MP Ken Wyatt became the first Indigenous Australian to win a House of Representatives seat in 2010 and he retained his seat at this year's election.
Another Liberal, Neville Bonner, made history in 1971 when he became the first Indigenous Australian elected to federal parliament when he won a Senate seat.
And earlier this year, the Country Liberal Party's Adam Giles made history in the Northern Territory when he became the first Indigenous Australian to lead a government when he defeated Terry Mills in a ballot for Chief Minister.
An Indigenous Labor MP in the Australian Capital Territory Assembly Chris Bourke concedes the Coalition has made some good progress on boosting Indigenous participation in politics.
However he believes a lot more effort is needed and both sides of politics should consider a range of options to achieve that.
"Quotas could work across the nation. But first we really need to resource and support the internal party structures within the Labor Party including the overarching National Indigenous Labor Network as well as local state and territory Indigenous Labor Networks to encourage people to consider joining the party, to recruit people and then to provide support to them once they have joined."
Mr Bourke says the Indigenous Labor Network holds regular meetings and public forums where Indigenous members of the Labor Party can exchange ideas and where more senior MPs can act as mentors for junior MPs and candidates.
The ACT MP believes Labor could also put more effort into recruiting future MPs from within the representative body- the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples.
Veteran Tasmanian Indigenous activist Michael Mansell disagrees, claiming the Congress has not fulfilled its role as a representative body that well since it was established in 2010.
He believes the major political parties should instead work towards setting up dedicated seats in parliament for Indigenous Australians, just as seats have been set aside for the Maori community in New Zealand since 1867.
Mr Mansell, from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, believes Indigenous Australians alone should have a say on who is elected to a dedicated seat, just as Maoris do with the five dedicated Maori seats in the New Zealand parliament.
He believes past experience has shown that Indigenous Australian MPs have had to fit in with the platform of one of the major political parties and this has then restricted what they can achieve for their people.
"Aborigines who are elected by Aborigines are able to freely represent the interests of Aboriginal people, instead of having divided loyalty with the party who put them there. If we remember, (Liberal Senator) Neville Bonner was put into the federal parliament by the Liberal Party. But when he became outspoken about the racial discrimination against Aboriginal people, his party dumped him."
Mr Mansell says Neville Bonner was ostracised within the Liberal Party when he crossed the floor to vote with Labor on a number of occasions.
And he believes Indigenous Labor MPs who contradict the party platform could find themselves in a similar position.
Australian Greens member and Alice Springs town camp resident Barbara Shaw agrees.
Ms Shaw contested the Northern Territory seat of Lingiari for the Greens at the recent federal election.
She believes the rights of Indigenous Australians could be better protected through setting up a separate Indigenous parliament, similar to ones that currently exist for Sami people in Sweden, Finland and Norway.
But she concedes the Sami parliaments have limited power and act like advisory bodies on Indigenous policy matters.
Ms Shaw believes what could work better in Australia would be to set up dedicated Indigenous seats in the House of Representatives or Senate which could be elected through a vote conducted by the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples.
"I would prefer it if seats were allocated for Indigenous peoples because then there's a space for us, especially around Indigenous policy. At the end of the day, the National Congress was set up to be a body for our people and there is an election process as well in that."
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