PM visits grave of land rights father Mabo

Reflecting on the indigenous battles of the past, Tony Abbott declared the next fight for recognition would best be won by a conservative leader.

Mr Abbott became the first prime minister to visit the final resting place of Eddie Mabo, the trade unionist who fought a decade-long court battle for indigenous land rights.

The prime minister hailed Mr Mabo a warrior who was brave enough to take on a well-established legal system that had been unsympathetic to the claims of indigenous people.

"And now we are a people on the path to reconciliation," he told a gathering of locals at the gravesite on Monday.

More than 20 years after the Mabo decision, indigenous Australians are fighting for another form of recognition - a place in the nation's founding document.

Mr Abbott says now is the time to right a regrettable oversight in the constitution and believes, despite bipartisan support for change, it helps to have a conservative leading the push.

"Just as Nixon went to China ... it may well take a conservative leader to bring about the ultimate form of symbolic recognition," he told reporters on Mer Island.

The government will fund a series of indigenous and wider community conventions over the next 12 months - overseen by a referendum council - to map out how to change the constitution.

Mr Abbott said he would announce the council's members in the next two weeks.

Earlier, under the shade of banana tree leaves, he laid a wreath on the grave of the man locally known as Koiki and heralded as the father of native title.

The significance of his visit could be clearly seen on the face of Mr Mabo's daughter Gail, who fought back tears as she thanked Mr Abbott for making the pilgrimage.

"To me it shows he has that respect for what my father achieved," she told AAP.

"This is the space he was fighting for."

She hopes the spotlight on Mer Island will encourage the next generation to learn about her father and what he fought for.

"It's not like it's in their text books because it's in living memory," she said.

Mr Mabo led the landmark High Court case that in 1992 handed indigenous Australians land rights and rejected the legal doctrine of terra nullius - or land belonging to no one.

The land rights campaigner died of cancer six months before the High Court ruled in his favour and never witnessed the outcome or the rights it handed to his people.

The visit was Mr Abbott's first official business of his trip to the Torres Strait islands to honour his promise to run the country from a remote indigenous community for a week each year.

While Mr Abbott travelled around the island and spoke with members of the Mabo family, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten met with Mr Mabo's widow, Bonita.

Mr Shorten welcomed the prime minister's visit to Mer Island but took a swipe at his consistency on indigenous land rights.

"I think hopefully this shows a maturing in Mr Abbott's views from 20 years ago when he said ... the Mabo decision was dividing Australia," Mr Shorten told reporters in Cairns.

The prime minister last week reversed his opposition to indigenous-only conventions, a forum that will help inform the final question on the constitution before it is put to the nation in a referendum.

He played down a rift with indigenous leaders after he initially rejected conventions because of concerns they could produce a log of claims not supported by the wider community.

"I do think the process is back on track," Mr Abbott said.

Mr Abbott's trip to the Torres Strait islands is the second time he's relocated the machinery of government to an indigenous community; last year he travelled to Arnhem Land.