'It's surreal': Australia's first Indigenous minister, Ken Wyatt, on his promotion

Ken Wyatt gave his inaugural speech to parliament in 2010 wrapped in a kangaroo skin coat that was given to him by elders of the Noongar people, the traditional occupants of south-west Western Australia.

The coat, Wyatt explained, was presented to him as a symbol of his heritage, and a reminder to take his culture and experiences with him in his new endeavour.

Wyatt made history in 2010 as the first Indigenous person elected to the House of Representatives. On Wednesday, he broke new ground again, becoming the first person with Indigenous heritage to be sworn in as a minister.

He will take on the assistant health portfolio, a role his 15-year career in public health has prepared him well for.

Heeding the advice of the Noongar elders, Wyatt has kept his culture close during this parliamentary career, fighting for the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people, and for non-discrimination of all Australians.

But when it comes to public process on eradicating racism, Wyatt is pragmatic.

The Racial Discrimination act “hasn’t changed people’s attitudes towards who they discriminate against”, he said.

Despite public outcry over the watering down of the act, and the level of support AFL player Adam Goodes received after being booed by fans, there simply is not the appetite for adding racial non-discrimination clauses to the constitution, he argued.

“Australia’s not ready for that,” Wyatt told Guardian Australia.

Proposals to reform the constitution to recognise Australia’s first peoples kick-started the debate on whether the nation’s founding document should include broader non-discrimination clauses.

Those clauses are “highly unlikely to be supported”, said Wyatt, who headed a parliamentary committee into constitutional recognition. “That’s one that a tough decision has to be made.”

He said that adding anti-discrimination clauses to the constitution would act as a de facto bill of rights, and that the public had still not come to grips with that concept.

“If there was a common accord, say at the end of a decade, where we could put together a set of words that would be enshrined in a constitution, that would safeguard every person based on a non-discriminatory factor, then I don’t have an issue with that. But at the moment, we’ve not had the mature debate that’s needed,” the new assistant minister said.

Wyatt rejected the suggestion that momentum for constitutional reform has died down, and admitted that he had formulated a question that he thought was suitable to be taken to the people for a referendum on the issue, flagged for 2017.

The question was taken to the former prime minister, Tony Abbott, and attorney general, George Brandis. He was tight-lipped on the content, saying that he was still to have a conversation with new prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, on its content.

Wyatt acknowledged the symbolic significance of his elevation to the ministry.

“It’s surreal, it’s a privilege,” Wyatt said. “Any Indigenous Australian has the capacity and capability of achieving their aspirations. There are a whole lot of barriers that impact on each of us individually, but you work to rise above those. And so the symbolism of being on the frontbench is a tremendous one.”

Wyatt was born in Bunbury, south of Perth, in 1952, one of ten children born to parents Don and Mona. Together, his parents have Yamatji, Wongi and Noongar ancestry, and his mother was a member of the stolen generations.

Her experiences weighed heavily on the member for Hasluck, and he used his first speech in the House of Representatives to thank Kevin Rudd for issuing the apology to the stolen generations.

“When the former prime minister delivered the apology on 13 February 2008 in this chamber I shed tears for my mother and her siblings. My mother and her siblings, along with many others, did not live to hear the words delivered in the apology, which would have meant a great deal to them individually,” Wyatt said in 2010. “I felt a sense of relief that the pain of the past had been acknowledged and that the healing could begin.”

“At that point, the standing orders prevented an Indigenous response. On behalf of my mother, her siblings and all Indigenous Australians, I, as an Aboriginal voice in this chamber, say thank you for the apology delivered in the federal parliament,” he said.

Growing up, Wyatt used to wake before dawn to check the rabbit traps he had set the night before, before riding his bike to school. The animals he caught were his family’s primary food source.

“I came out of a lifestyle of poverty, where there was 10 of us and you struggle,” he told Guardian Australia. “Along the way you run into roadblocks, you run into hurdles, but you don’t let them push you aside from what you hope to aspire to.”

He did not always aspire to be a politician. He initially aspired to a career in medicine but an offhand comment from his year 8 teacher changed that.

“She said, some of us are meant to teach, and I ended up teaching. Her words of advice I think tempered my thinking, and I ended up taking the teaching pathway,” Wyatt said.

He had been particularly lucky to have teachers in his life who not only inspired him, but who supported him throughout his career.

“I am here before you today in this chamber because of the influence of education and my year one teacher, Miss Abernethy,” Wyatt said during his inaugural speech. “Her unfailing faith in my ability to succeed and serve Australian society resonated on the day of the election when she turned up to hand out how-to-vote cards for me in Maddington. This ongoing support 50 years after I was in her class has been particularly humbling.”

After 16 years as a teacher and public servant in the WA Department of Education, Wyatt moved closer to his childhood dream by taking on a role in the WA, and then New South Wales, departments of health.

His work in Aboriginal health won him an Order of Australia in 1996.

“I always believe that the system has a responsibility to address the health needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people, not just specific programs,” Wyatt said.

He acknowledged the “uncomfortably high” suicide rate among Indigenous people in his electorate, but rejected the idea that the government should set a new Close the Gap target for mental health.

“Of all the areas that I think we would never achieve a target, [one] would be mental health, because there are so many variables,” he said. “What we should be doing though is creating a target for the number of services and types of services that will reach people that we know are vulnerable.”

He wants all parliamentarians to meet with Indigenous members of their electorates in order to identify the “gaps” that exist for them.

“I think one of the challenges is, in Aboriginal affairs, that we listen to only a handful of leaders. We never talk to the community leadership at the community level, and until we start doing that we’re not going to see the changes,” Wyatt said.

Wyatt hopes that he will make changes as the assistant health minister, describing ministers as “pathfinders” in their portfolios. He joins several other new ministers and assistant ministers in Turnbull’s new-look front bench.

There was, however, one notable thing missing from photos of a smiling Wyatt after Wednesday’s swearing-in ceremony.

The kangaroo coat that he wore with pride, bearing the hallmarks of history, is his no more. He donated it to the art department of Parliament House, so it can go on display for the benefit of any budding politicians – Indigenous or not – who visit the capital.