The message I bring today is a whitefella’s perspective on indigenous tourism. It is even a little more skewed given that I am a North Sydney boy with Palestinian and Irish blood in my veins. However I am amongst the first to admit that my knowledge of Australia’s varied and culturally rich indigenous communities is limited. But since becoming Minister for Small Business and Tourism I have had the opportunity to travel extensively across this vast continent.

This has given me the chance to visit a number of indigenous communities and I have been enriched by the Aboriginal people that I have met. I have been inspired by their tenacity, I have admired their love of their culture and I have been moved by their stories. The most profound words were from Jimmy Crombie.

I met Jimmy in Mungarannie while droving 200 head of cattle on the Great Australian Outback Cattle Drive as part of the Year of the Outback. Mungarannie is on the Birdsville Track near Maree. It has a permanent population of three people. The pub, petrol station, corner store and caravan park are all one establishment. There is a set of traffic lights outside the town on the Birdsville Track but thankfully they don’t work. Jimmy is a specialist drover but he doubled as an indigenous tour guide during the Cattle Drive. As a tribal elder for the Wangkangurra people - the traditional custodians of the area- he was well qualified to do so. To the first time visitor, the landscape around Mungarannie may look barren and desolate. There are very few trees, no mountains, seemingly no water and you wonder how any creature, let alone a human being could possibly survive the harsh environment. But Jimmy showed me a different Mungerannie. He led me through the scrub explaining bush tucker. He showed me how the dried shrubs and the discreet insect life formed part of the ever so fragile eco-system. More significantly he shared with me stories not just about his land but also about his people. He told me the good and the bad. Both modern and ancient.
One afternoon we sat on a hill as the enormous outback sun set on the distant horizon and I asked Jimmy what tourism meant to him. "Joe, he said," for the first time in my life people are interested in my story." He said when he started as a drover many years ago he like other aboriginals were sometimes whipped by the white stockmen with the foreleg chains that were used to shackle the horses at night. "Now the whitefellas ask me questions about my land and my people."

His story illustrates how Australia can successfully marry the two laudable objectives of reconciliation and economic progress.
Tourism is not a panacea for the economic and social disadvantage confronting indigenous communities. But it can help destroy the twin evils of poverty and ignorance. It can smash through seemingly entrenched perceptions held by many whitefellas. Tourism crosses the generational divide, helping both the young and the old, from backpackers to the grey nomads.

As Francis Bacon eulogised nearly 400 years ago "Travel, in the younger, is a part of education; in the elder, it is a part of experience."Through travel many Australians will have their first opportunity to meet with indigenous people. It sounds trite to make the point, but when you grow up in the middle of a large city there are few very opportunities to experience indigenous culture.