PM sings praises of ‘voice for unity’

The PM will tell a state funeral that Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians are making progress together but it ‘isn’t a journey we travel in a straight line’.

Anthony Albanese will tell mourners at the state funeral for Lowitja O’Donoghue that Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians are making progress together but it “isn’t a journey we travel in a straight line”.

The Prime Minister will face key Indigenous leaders for the first time since the failed voice referendum when he delivers a speech honouring Dr O’Donoghue in Adelaide on Friday.

Some of the highest-profile figures from the Yes campaign – Noel Pearson, Megan Davis, Pat Anderson, Rachel Perkins, Marcia Langton and Tom Clama – will be among distinguished Australians paying their respects.

South Australian senator Kerry­nne Liddle will represent Peter Dutton at the service.

The Malinauskas government offered Dr O’Donoghue’s family a state funeral in acknowledgment of her status as one the ­nation’s greatest leaders who lived through extraordinary change and helped shape it.

She was born in remote northwest SA in 1932, four years after Australia’s last frontier massacre at Coniston station. She was separated from her mother, raised by missionaries, became the first Aboriginal nurse trained at Royal Adelaide Hospital, rose through the ranks of the public service and co-ordinated negotiations between land councils and Paul Keating that resulted in Australia’s Native Title laws.

Three decades since that legislation came into effect, more than 4.2 million square kilometres of Australia’s land mass and 113,000sq km of sea is subject to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples rights or interests. This has allowed traditional owners to strike deals with industry and government for jobs, royalties and more recently shared ­equity in energy projects.

Dr O’Donoghue’s tenure as the inaugural chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission is acknowledged as a productive period of coherent policy and improvements in remote communities.

In his speech at St Peter’s Cathedral in North Adelaide, Mr Albanese will say: “We give thanks for the better Australia she helped make possible. Perhaps even more importantly, we reflect on the possibility of an even better Australia, which she placed so clearly before us.”

Mr Albanese’s speech invites Australians to celebrate Dr O’Donoghue’s life of compassion and courage. He will say her remarkable power was built on an abiding faith in the possibility of a more united Australia.

 “This was a faith she embodied with her efforts to bring about meaningful and lasting reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia, a faith underpinned by her unceasing work to improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people,” Mr Albanese will say in his speech.

“Yet consider the stony ground in which this faith somehow took root.

 Starting with a childhood that saw her separated from her family, her language and her own name, Dr O’Donoghue endured discrimination that would have given her every reason to lose faith in her country – but she never did, he will say.

 “The little girl who longed to be reunited with her mother somehow transcended the weight of her own experience and grew into a woman of grace, moral clarity and profound inner strength.”