Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy has given a measured statement calling for respect, after One Nation senators turned their backs during an Acknowledgement of Country.
With the start of a new parliament on Tuesday, following a well-attended Welcome to Country from Ngunnawal Elder Aunty Violet Sheridan, the four One Nation senators turned their backs when the Acknowledgement was read out as part of the traditional ceremonial opening.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Tuesday celebrated the tradition as a powerful way to begin the new parliament and reflect on Australia's history.
Mr Albanese took a veiled swipe at the stance of former opposition leader Peter Dutton and some coalition MPs who branded Welcome to Country and Acknowledgement of Country proclamations as divisive and overdone.
"Like a lot of the more positive things about our nation, we shouldn't take it for granted," Mr Albanese said, adding the ceremony was not controversial.
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said the ceremony "set the tone as we re-commit ourselves to the taking of practical action to improve lives and expand opportunity for Indigenous Australians in every part of our great country".
On Thursday afternoon Indigenous Australians Minister Malarndirri McCarthy gave a statement to the Senate, calling for respect and saying the actions of the One Nation senators had been a deliberate act of disrespect.
"We've seen those senators come into the chamber for the Acknowledgement of Country, a longstanding part of the Senate order of business, purely to make an incredibly childish stunt and a very hurtful one of turning their backs on that proceeding," she said.
"Whether it is for attention or for click baits, whether it is to cause offence, whether it is to stoke division, these senators have made a deliberate decision to disrespect First Nations Australians.
"You'd think that they'd have heard the clear message from the Australian people in May: the politics of culture wars were rejected; the politics of disrespect and nastiness were rejected.
"The politics of punching down on First Nations people were rejected."
Senator McCarthy, a Yanuwa woman, explained that an Acknowledgement of Country recognises First Peoples in a respectful way.
"It is a reminder as well, while we all belong here together, that we are stronger together and we belong," she said.
"What a Welcome to Country does is hold out like a hand, warmly and graciously extended, an opportunity for us to embrace and to show a profound love of home and Country.
"Respect and acknowledgement goes both ways.
"I urge all senators to remember who you work beside, who you walk with and, even when we disagree, we have a chamber here where we can discuss in a manner that is far more respectful than we've seen in these previous days."
But Queensland One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson was unmoved, rejecting the minister's characterisation.
"This has not been a stunt that I pulled just this week, I have turned my back on it for the past three years," she said, claiming that she was representing the people who voted against a First Nations Voice to Parliament in the 2023 referendum.
"TThey don't want this division that's happening in our country, they are fed up with Welcome to Country ...
"I've seen the racism that's been thrown at me because I dare raise issues, and I call for equality."
Hanson was disendorsed by the Liberal Party for the Lower House seat of Oxley in 1996 after comments she made about Aboriginal people, and sat as an independent when she won.
In her First Speech to Parliament in 1996, Hanson infamously declared that Australia was "in danger of being swamped by Asians", railed against multiculturalism and made a series of factually incorrect slurs about Aboriginal people.
The Federal Court found in 2024 that Senator Hanson had violated the Racial Discrimination Act after a social media post in 2022 in which she told Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi to "pack your bags and piss off back to Pakistan".
The court found that Senator Hanson had a tendency to make racist, discriminatory, hateful, derogatory and Islamophobic statements, particularly in relation to persons of colour, migrants to Australia and Muslims. Hanson is appealing the decision.
"I'm supposed to be the racist in this nation, because I question things – that's not racism," Senator Hanson said yesterday, following up by accusing Aboriginal land councils of being corrupt.
Greens Leader Larissa Waters said she was looking forward to working with the Government on Closing the Gap and called on Labor to fully implement the recommendations from the 1991 royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody.
"It's a bit rich to get a lecture on First Nations culture from the likes of Senator Pauline Hanson, and it's also a bit rich to get a lecture about not wanting division from the likes of Pauline Hanson's One Nation, who seems entirely blind to her own privilege," she said.
"I note that we stand here on Ngunnawal and Ngambri land, over which sovereignty was never ceded, and that we should all take pride in the longest continuing culture on the planet, and that that is a source of strength for all of us.
"It enriches all Australians."
However Opposition Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, a Warlpiri Celtic woman who was recently demoted from being Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians, disagreed, saying while she understood that the actions of One Nation senators had been disrespectful, she is not in favour of Acknowledging Country.
Labor's Senate Leader Penny Wong returned to the theme of respect.
"Senator Hanson, you do not have to agree with the tradition of Acknowledging Country ... but it is part of the rituals and traditions of this Chamber and, as a senator, I think you should respect it," she said, adding she had been heartened by Opposition Leader Sussan Ley's words at Tuesday's Welcome to Country ceremony.
"Decency and respect cost us nothing, but it goes a long way to building a sense of unity."
