Ms JODIE HARRISON (Charlestown—Minister for Women, Minister for Seniors, and Minister for the Prevention of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault)— The 2023 King's Birthday Honours List celebrated 1,192 recipients across Australia, and I would like to congratulate Mr Sean Gordon of Charlestown for being made a Member of the Order of Australia.

A Wangkumara man, Mr Gordon was born into the foster system on the former Brewarrina Aboriginal Mission. He says this early experience, raised amongst First Nations young people living with the impacts of the NSW Aboriginal Protection Act, ingrained in him a lifelong need to look out for his community.

Mr Gordon's great-great-grandparents and their children were caught up in the forcible relocation of 117 Wangkumara people from their homes in Tibooburra to Brewarrina in 1938.

This sort of dispossession, which happened all across Australia, had profound, lingering impacts on First Nations people, and Mr Gordon has spent his professional life advocating for Aboriginal people and working to set out the long road to reconciliation.

This included taking part in the First Nations Constitutional Convention as a delegate in 2017, which ultimately produced the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Mr Gordon says his proudest achievement is helping educate the next generation of First Nations Australians. Congratulations to Mr Sean Gordon AM on this well-deserved recognition.

A Community Recognition Notice is an opportunity for an MP to submit a short statement praising the work of an individual or group in the local community. If you have any ideas about people I can recognise with a Community Recognition Notice, please email and let me know!