Aus Aborigine MP: Racism no worry
2010-08-30 12:05
Sydney - The first Aborigine to be elected to Australia's parliament on Monday said he was unworried by racist taunts that have followed his win, saying they were outweighed by messages of support.
Ken Wyatt won the seat of Hasluck in Western Australia for the conservative Liberal Party in August 21 polls, rising above childhood poverty to become the first indigenous person ever elected to the lower House of Representatives.
Since then, he has received at least 50 racist emails and phone calls from angry voters, with some saying they would not have voted for him had they known he was indigenous.
"They don't perturb me," 58-year-old Wyatt told Sky News of the jibes.
"Throughout my life I have experienced the sharp edge of some of the racist taunts that have come my way, but when I outweigh these by the hundreds and hundreds of emails and calls I've had, they are only miniscule in the bigger picture."
Precious gift
Wyatt rose from an impoverished childhood, during which he trapped rabbits and picked fruit for cash to help put food on the table for his family, to become a schoolteacher and later work in Aboriginal health and education.
When he recently attended the 70th birthday of his former primary schoolteacher, he brought her a gift that he would never have been able to afford as a child - an apple.
In claiming the seat on Sunday after a protracted vote count, he said he owed his success to his education which was made possible by a local charity that early on recognised his ability.
"I have come from a life of poverty and through my own individual efforts I stand now within the national arena," he said.
Wyatt said he was naturally inclined towards the right-leaning Liberal Party, despite the fact that this placed him at odds with his father.
Mom part of 'Stolen Generation'
But he said his first speech to parliament would pay tribute to the former leader of the centre-left Labor Party, Kevin Rudd, who made a historic apology to the nation's indigenous people in 2008.
"I think people really appreciate the fact that an apology was given," he said on Monday, adding that his mother and her siblings were members of the so-called 'Stolen Generations' - indigenous children removed from their families at a young age to be brought up by white people and in institutions.
"What made me extremely proud was the fact that her life, her experiences were recognised and the pain that she went through was acknowledged."
'Embedded' discrimination
Wyatt said he wanted to improve the lot of Aborigines, who have a lower life expectancy and generally poorer health than other Australians, with thousands living in poverty in remote Outback settlements where alcoholism is rife.
The United Nations last week warned that Australia faced a problem with "embedded" discrimination, citing the "unacceptably high level of disadvantage and social dislocation" for Aborigines in the Northern Territory.
Indigenous Australians have previously served in the Senate - with Neville Bonner appointed to the upper house in 1971 and Aden Ridgeway elected to the Senate in 1998 - but Wyatt will be the first to serve in the more powerful lower house.
Indigenous people were for decades denied the vote by officials, and until 1967 were not even included in the national census.