In Macquarie we see NAIDOC week as an opportunity to heal, and there is much healing to be done. Author of People of the River, Grace Karskens, describes the first recorded massacre of Aboriginal people by the military at the Battle of Richmond Hill in the Hawkesbury in 1795 as 'a surprise attack in darkness during which seven or eight people were shot down and everyone else fled in terror'.
Read MoreThe world has enforced multiple treaties, but, from this year, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has not been signed by Australia. The ambition for a world free of nuclear weapons is one that Labor shares. I know it's an ambition that the students at Kindlehill in Wentworth Falls share, too, and I've been pleased to support their call to the government to sign the treaty.
Read MoreThe Morrison government's failure to roll out the COVID vaccine has just kicked the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury tourism sector in the teeth.
Read MoreWe can't say any louder than we have been that Labor wants to work constructively with the government on getting a decent set of environmental laws. We have reached out our hand to the government but we can't force the government to take our hand on this matter.
Read MoreThe only reason that this legislation, the COVID-19 Disaster Payment (Funding Arrangements) Bill 2021, is needed is because of the Morrison government's many failures to actually guide us out of the pandemic and to put the things in place that will see us through the next period.
Read MoreWhat a contrast with the culture of those opposite! Until now there have been only men lecturing to the women on this side about how little we must know about our regions. That'd be the regions that we live in—the regions that we've spent our lives in, have raised our kids in and are still raising our kids in. There is this absolute arrogance that, for some reason, only someone who's part of a national party or a liberal national party or, goo...
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