With the Neville Bonner Bridge from South Bank to the CBD heading for completion later this year, Labor Opposition Leader Jared Cassidy has urged Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner to rethink his objection to flying the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags from the Story Bridge.
“Naming this bridge after Neville Bonner is a fitting tribute to the man who battled and overcame tremendous adversity to become the first Indigenous member of the Australian parliament.”
Neville Bonner AO: Australia’s First Indigenous Parliamentarian
“Reconciliation is an important step for our city, state and country and what a great gesture it would be if this LNP Lord Mayor was to say: ‘We’re going to do our bit and fly the flags’.”
“Our city is going to be the focus of the world in the years leading up to the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games so Lord Mayor, come on, do the right thing and get on the right side of history because I am certain it will be done in the not too distant future.”
“Just like the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum which you have also refused to support.”
“We received 2490 signatures supporting Labor’s petition to put those flags up on the Story Bridge and I am telling this LNP Council that we won’t stop until they are there.”
QUICK FACTS: Neville Thomas Bonner, AO.
BORN: 1922, Ukerebagh Island, Tweed Heads.
DIED: 1999, Ipswich.
In 1962 Indigenous Australians were granted the right to vote.
Neville Bonner, a Jagera man, was Senator for Queensland from 1971 to 1983.
He was born under a palm tree in a Gunya (temporary Aboriginal shelter) Ukerebagh Island in the mouth of the Tweed River because his mum was not allowed to give birth in a hospital.
At the time of his birth he was not considered an Australian citizen.
“There was nowhere else for my mother to go, in those days, people won’t know too much about it, but in those days, Aboriginal people had to be out of the towns before sunset. And they couldn’t get back into town again until sunrise the next day, my mother was not allowed to go to hospital to give birth to me, she gave birth to me in a little gunya under the palm tree, that still lives down there, on a government issued blanket. Those are the kind of things that we had to cope with when I was born and when I was a small child, right up into my teenage years and into my manhood.”
Source: SBS/NITV
