We’re pleased to share Debra’s nominee speech from the 2025 AGM.
I begin by acknowledging the Whadjuk Noongar People of this land and all Aboriginal people
I am sorry for what has happened here in Perth.
Sorry for the fear experienced by Aboriginal people and their allies at the Invasion Day rally, when a credible threat of mass violence was directed at a peaceful act of truth-telling.
Sorry that this threat did not receive the seriousness, visibility, or collective response it deserved.
I am sorry that, once again, Aboriginal people were left to carry fear largely on their own.
And I am sorry for the moment we are living in after the referendum, a time when many Aboriginal people feel more exposed, more targeted, and less protected than before. When racism has been emboldened rather than challenged. When silence has too often replaced solidarity.
This harm is not abstract.
It shows up in who is heard.
In whose safety is prioritised.
And in which voices are treated as disruptive simply because they challenge the dominant story we are used to hearing.
We have also seen, in this same period, our capacity for collective empathy. The grief expressed after the Bondi massacre was real, and it mattered. That compassion should never be questioned.
But reconciliation requires us to confront a harder truth: that compassion is too often withheld from Aboriginal people precisely because they are Aboriginal—because their suffering is judged as less deserving of care.
Our capacity to hold multiple truths at once is not a diminishment of one voice over another. It asks us to confront how racism and prejudice have been normalised in shaping whose voices are prioritised.
If we can respond with urgency and care to some acts of violence, we must also take seriously the fear and danger faced by Aboriginal people when they gather to speak truth about this country.
To Aboriginal people: you should not have to explain why this hurts. You should not have to justify your fear. And you should not have to compete for empathy in your own country.
An apology, however, is hollow if it ends there.
So this is also a call—to allies, to institutions, and to those of us whose voices are more readily heard.
Reconciliation is not about speaking for Aboriginal people. It is about creating the conditions where Aboriginal voices are centred and taken seriously—and being honest about the fact that our own voices are often privileged because they align with familiar, dominant narratives.
Allyship asks us to listen more than we speak, to question why our perspectives are automatically validated, and to step back when our comfort is being prioritised over truth.
As Marcia Langton has reminded us for decades, reconciliation is not about goodwill alone. It requires truth, responsibility, and the courage of those with power to change what continues to cause harm.
As we are often reminded, the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice—but it does not bend on its own. It bends because people choose to act.
This is my action.
My deliberate decision.
My responsibility as an ally—to do this work, with integrity and persistence, as part of Reconciliation WA.
That is why I seek re-election as Co-Chair.
Thank you.