How long was neville bonner in parliament for

In his first speech he declared :. I crave your indulgence and the indulgence of honourable senators in that for a very short time all within me that is Aboriginal yearns to be heard as the voice of the indigenous peoples of Australia. For far too long we have been crying out and far too few have heard us.

I stand humbly in the presence of honourable senators to bring to their attention what I believe to be the lot of those of my race in It would be an understatement to say that the lot of fellow Aboriginals is not a particularly happy one. We bear emotional scars—the young no less than the older … Less than years ago the white man came. I say now in all sincerity that my people were shot, poisoned, hanged and broken in spirit until they became refugees in their own land. He campaigned during the referendum and months later joined the Liberal Party.

Neville Bonner died at Ipswich, Queensland in Back to News Centre. At the election, placed third on the Liberal—Country Party ticket, Bonner campaigned unsuccessfully for the Senate, only to be nominated to fill the casual vacancy the following year. During his 12 years in the Senate, Bonner was a highly respected parliamentary figure, known for his principled approach to politics in his campaign for Indigenous issues and the environment.

Among the issues he raised in the Senate were national symbolism, land rights, technological opportunities, East Timor, and social security entitlements. In Bonner moved a motion that the Senate acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the prior owners of the Australian continent and introduce legislation to compensate them for dispossession of their land. Bonner did not always vote with the Liberal Party and crossed the floor on some 34 occasions.

He later said,. I didn't toe the party line. I was a member of the party — fiercely, proudly, a member of the party — but I was not blindly a member of the party. I had a conscience, and political parties don't need people with a conscience. They want bottoms on seats, and hands in the air at the right time. He detested apartheid, yet firmly defended the right of the Springboks to tour Australia in In , he was remarried, to Heather Ryan, sometimes described as a white divorcee; it was not a description that appeared to worry the decidedly non-racist Bonner.

As his political career burgeoned he was easily re-elected in and in was given top place on the Liberal ticket he became increasingly critical of Joh Bjelke-Petersen's state Government on Aboriginal land rights, and of Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser's apparent accommodation of them. Much of was spent in squabbling over Aurukun and Mornington Island. In , with another election in sight, the Liberals perhaps fearing a white backlash dumped him again to third position on their ticket.

He ran, instead, as an Independent, not quite making it. His erst while party later, shamefacedly, attributed their miserable Queensland performance at that poll to Bonner's dumping. Labor had an offer for Bonner: a slot on the board of the revamped Australian Broadcasting Commission now Corporation. Despite perhaps because of being totally ethnically and politically balanced, the new board proved quite dysfunctional.

Bonner and several other people had been used again.