Linda Burney - Political Career

Political Career

When Burney was elected as the Member for Canterbury in 2003, she became the first Aboriginal person to serve in the NSW Parliament. In her inaugural speech to the Legislative Assembly she said, referring to the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginals) Act, 1967:

I am a member of the mighty Wiradjuri Aboriginal nation… For the first 10 years of my life, like all indigenous people at that time, I was not a citizen of this country. We existed under the Flora and Fauna Act of New South Wales. Growing up as an Aboriginal child looking into the mirror of our country was difficult and alienating. Your reflection in the mirror was at best ugly and distorted, and at worst nonexistent.

She was appointed Parliamentary Secretary for Education and Training in 2005. Following the 2007 election Burney became Minister for Fair Trading, Minister for Youth, and Minister for Volunteering. In September 2008 she was promoted to Minister for Community Services and in December 2009 she was appointed Minister for the State Plan. She lost her portfolios following the change of government at the 2011 state election.

Burney was appointed to the Community Services portfolio in December 2008 just prior to the handing down of the report of the Special Commission of Inquiry into Child Protection Services by retired Supreme Court Justice James Wood. She was the lead Minister in a whole of government reform plan, Keep Them Safe, that commenced implementing the recommendations of the inquiry.

Following the ALP's landslide defeat at the 2011 state election, Burney was elected as Deputy Leader of the Labor Party after former Deputy Premier Carmel Tebbutt chose not stand for the position. She also became the Shadow Minister for Planning, Infrastructure and Heritage, Shadow Minister for the Central Coast and the Hunter and Shadow Minister for Sport and Recreation.

As Minister, Burney was the inaugural patron of the NSW Volunteer of the Year Award, a major NSW Government supported initiative. In 2006 she gave the seventh Vincent Lingiari Memorial Lecture, and in 2008 gave the sixth Henry Parkes Oration.

Burney is an Ambassador of the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation.

As part of the 2012 Sydney Festival Burney performed as herself delivering her inaugural speech to the NSW Parliament in a theatrical production called I am Eora.