Linda Burney made history in Australia recently, when she won the election to the Lower House of the Federal Parliament. She was the former deputy leader of the New South Wales Labor Party.
Linda belongs to Wiradjuri, an indigenous Australian Aborigine.
When she heard that she had won, she said, “Barton has created history tonight in Australia by electing the first indigenous woman to the House of Representatives.”
Linda attended the local primary school in Whitton. She went to Leeton High School and Penrith High School for her secondary school. She was the first Aboriginal graduate from the Mitchell College of Advanced Education, from where she got a Diploma in Teaching.
Her political career began in 2003 as the Member for Canterbury. She was the first Aboriginal person to serve in the New South Wales Parliament. Her rise in politics was remarkable and steady. in March 2016, she announced her intention to stand for pre-selection to contest the federal seat of Barton.
The former schoolteacher says education would be a top priority, with specific focus on policies surrounding early childhood learning, and vocational education, and the deregulation of university fees. “I want to have a role in the formulation of education policy. I know what education can do, I know the power of it.”
She says she is passionate about fighting for constitutional recognition for indigenous Australians. “I want to see the birth certificate of this country tell the truth.” But she would fight being pigeonholed as the ‘Aboriginal representative’.
“This is not ancient history,” she says. “I was a child. It still staggers me that for the first 10 years of my life, I existed under the Flora and Fauna Act of NSW.”
Prior to 1967, indigenous Australians were said to be governed and managed under the same portfolio as Australian wildlife. (However, Special Broadcasting Corporation (SBS) has said that this is not true.)
In the 1967 referendum, Australians voted to extend full citizenship to Aborigines. Now, just a year before the 50th anniversary of that vote, Burney’s station has been lifted from fauna to Minister.
Burney remembered being taught as a 13-year-old that “my people were savages and the closest example to Stone Age man living today”.
“I vividly recall wanting to turn into a piece of paper and slip quietly through the crack in the floor,” she says. “Growing up as an Aboriginal child, looking into the mirror of our country … your reflection was at best distorted and at worst non-existent.”
It has been a long, tough journey for her. And today, sitting with victory, she says, “As a proud Wiradjuri woman, sitting with Patrick Dodson (senator) and Malarndirri McCarthy (journalist and politician) in the caucus room is going to be a great moment,” she says. “It’s going to be a great moment for the ALP, a great moment for Parliament, and a great moment for Australians.”
