 | |
| Industry | Policy and advocacy |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2010 |
| Website | https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20150411171519/http://nationalcongress.com.au/ |
The National Congress of Australia's First Peoples was the national representative body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians from 2009 to 2019.
Planning to establish National Congress was undertaken by a committee established by then Social Justice Commissioner of the Australian Human Rights Commission, [1] Tom Calma. The organisation was announced in November 2009. [2] Its first elected co-chairs were Jody Broun and Les Malezer. Subsequent chairs included Kirstie Parker, Jackie Huggins and Rod Little.[ citation needed ]
It was registered as a charity in December 2012, [3] but in June 2019 went into voluntary administration. [4]
National Congress was a public company limited by guarantee. [5] [6] Membership was open to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals and organisations. Two important features of National Congress' organisational structure were gender parity, and oversight of elections and day to day operations by an ethics council [7] .
National Congress consisted of a Board of 8 directors (four women and four men) of which two (one woman and one man) were elected directly by the members to serve as co-chairs for a term on two years. [8]
There were three membership categories: peak and national organisations which formed Chamber 1; Chamber 2 (i.e. regional, state, territory or other organisations) and Chamber 3 (individual members). [9] Members of each chamber elected 20 female and 20 male delegates, who in turn, elected one female and one male director to sit on the board. [10]
Each year, all of the delegates were invited to attend a two-day National Congress meeting which established broad policy positions. [11] The Board met monthly.
National Congress maintained a secretariat in Redfern, Sydney, headed by a CEO who was responsible for day to day operations related to media, membership services, event management, public relations, financial and human resources management, and policy analysis and development services. The first CEO was Lindon Coombes, who was followed by Geoff Scott and Gary Oliver.[ citation needed ]
The first National Congress meeting of 120 delegates was held in June 2011. [12]
According to its 2017 submission to the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission:
National Congress of Australia's First Peoples ("National Congress") is the national elected and representative body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in Australia. Established in 2010, National Congress has grown from inception to comprise and serve over 180 organisations and almost 9000 individual members. National Congress advocates for self-determination and the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples. National Congress believes it is essential that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are central participants in decisions impacting on our lives and communities, and in all areas including our lands, health, education, law, governance and economic empowerment. We promote respect for our cultures and recognition as the core of our national heritage. National Congress has focused its energies on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander recognition and status of our rights, including the areas of health, education, land and sea rights, social justice, Constitutional reform and sovereignty. Additionally National Congress has been heavily involved in a wide range of other matters, including political relations, cultural maintenance and development, revitalisation of our languages, treaty discussions, employment and economic empowerment, housing, family violence, children and youth safety, disabilities, governance and leadership. In our role as the voice of Australia's First Peoples and as a product of consultation with our members and communities, National Congress provides expert perspectives on important issues affecting our Peoples. National Congress has been centrally involved in providing context and articulating the importance of: the 1967 referendum 50th Anniversary, Closing the Gap, the Federal Budget, the 'Change the Date' campaign and consultation with various arms of the United Nations amongst others. [13]
Australian Human Rights Commissioner Mick Gooda welcomed the formation as a milestone moment for Indigenous Australians. [14] Northern Land Council CEO Kim Hill also welcomed the formation of the Congress. [15] Aboriginal activist Noel Pearson criticised the Congress as "a blackfella's wailing wall". [5]
In 2013 the Australian Government withdrew funding of National Congress. [16] It was forced out of operation in July 2019 after its reserves had been exhausted. At that time the company had about 10,000 members and 180 affiliated community organisations. [17]
Ken Wyatt, then the recently appointed Minister for Indigenous Australians in the Morrison government, made a decision not to revive the organisation. [17]
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) (1990–2005) was the Australian Government body through which Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders were formally involved in the processes of government affecting their lives, established under the Hawke government in 1990. A number of Indigenous programs and organisations fell under the overall umbrella of ATSIC.
Lowitja Lois O'Donoghue Smart, is an Aboriginal Australian retired public administrator. In 1990-1996 she was the inaugural chairperson of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC). She is patron of the Lowitja Institute, a research institute for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing.
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The Redfern Park Speech, also known as the Redfern speech or Redfern address, was made on 10 December 1992 by the then Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating, at Redfern Park, which is in Redfern, New South Wales, an inner city suburb of Sydney. The speech dealt with the challenges faced by Indigenous Australians, both Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It is still remembered as one of the most powerful speeches in Australian history, both for its rhetorical eloquence and for its ground-breaking admission of the negative impact of white settlement in Australia on its Indigenous peoples, culture and society, in the first acknowledgement by the Australian Government of the dispossession of its First Peoples. It has been described as "a defining moment in the nation's reconciliation with its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people".
Indigenous Australians are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in areas within the Australian continent before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples of the Australian mainland and Tasmania, and the Torres Strait Islander peoples from the seas between Queensland and Papua New Guinea. The term Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples or the person's specific cultural group, is often preferred, though the terms First Nations of Australia, First Peoples of Australia and First Australians are also increasingly common; 812,728 people self-identified as being of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander origin in the 2021 Australian Census, representing 3.2% of the total population of Australia. Of these Indigenous Australians, 91.4% identified as Aboriginal; 4.2% identified as Torres Strait Islander; while 4.4% identified with both groups. Since 1995, the Australian Aboriginal flag and the Torres Strait Islander flag have been official flags of Australia.
Indigenous Australian customary law refers to the legal systems and practices uniquely belonging to Indigenous Australians of Australia, that is, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
The Aboriginal Land Rights Commission, also known as the Woodward Royal Commission, was a Royal Commission that existed from 1973 to 1974 with the purpose to inquire into appropriate ways to recognise Aboriginal land rights in the Northern Territory of Australia. The Commission was chaired by Justice Edward Woodward, who was appointed to the role by Gough Whitlam. It was not long after the 1971 defeat of the Yolngu claimants in the Northern Territory Supreme Court, in Milirrpum v Nabalco Pty Ltd, in the first Aboriginal land rights case in Australia.
Indigenous Australians are both convicted of crimes and imprisoned at a disproportionately higher rate in Australia, as well as being over-represented as victims of crime. As of September 2019, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners represented 28% of the total adult prisoner population, while accounting for 2% of the general adult population. Various explanations have been given for this over-representation, both historical and more recent. Federal and state governments and Indigenous groups have responded with various analyses, programs and measures.
Thomas Edwin Calma,, is an Aboriginal Australian human rights and social justice campaigner, and 2023 senior Australian of the Year. He is the sixth chancellor of the University of Canberra, a post held since January 2014, after two years as deputy chancellor. Calma is the second Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person to hold the position of chancellor of any Australian university.
Mick Gooda is an Aboriginal Australian public servant. He has particularly served as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner of the Australian Human Rights Commission from 2009 to 2016 and as Co-Commissioner of the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory from 2016 to 2017. He is a descendant of the Gangulu people of Central Queensland.
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Kirstie Parker is a Yuwallarai journalist, policy administrator and Aboriginal Australian activist. From 2013 to 2015 she served as the co-chair of the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples and during her tenure pressed for policies that allowed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians to gain the ability for self-determination.
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