Site navigation

Change font size: SmallerLargerReload

About the Australian Human Rights Commission navigation

THE RECONCILIATION IMPERATIVE

Graduation Address, Faculty of Medicine, University of Sydney, 25 May 2000

INTRODUCTION

When asked last year to give this address I was very pleased. I realised it would coincide with the 25th anniversary of my own graduation, this month in 1975, in this same Great Hall. On that occasion the address was given by the then Prime Minister, EG Whitlam; I apologise that I am nowhere near as distinguished.

I thought, when I was invited, I would reflect on how my fellow students and I felt when we graduated 25 years ago and on what we as a generation might have accomplished since then - a general kind of address that is appropriate and customary on these occasions.

But the events that will take place in this city this weekend are of such longstanding and continuing national significance that I must speak very specifically about them.

On Saturday, over 2000 Australians will gather at the Sydney Opera House for Corroboree 2000, the public event to mark the completion of the decade long work of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. Those participating will include the Governor General, the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, the leader of the Australian Democrats, federal ministers and shadow ministers and all state premiers and territory chief ministers. They will include almost all the indigenous leadership. Heads of religious communities and community organisations will be there. And many hundreds of ordinary people, indigenous and others.

On Sunday, tens of thousands, hopefully hundreds of thousands, of people will walk the walk of reconciliation across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which will be completely closed to traffic for only the second time since it opened in 1932.

These events are without doubt the most significant events of the decade or more. That is why I must speak today about our need for reconciliation.

THE HISTORICAL NEED FOR RECONCILIATION

If we are to understand why we need reconciliation, we must go back to the very beginning of modern Australia, to the day in January 1788 when Arthur Phillip raised the British flag and proclaimed about half this continent the property of His Majesty the King of England. Australia was already an ancient land that had had owners and custodians from time immemorial. Yet they were not consulted; they were not asked their opinion; they did not consent and they signed no treaty ceding land or sovereignty.

Indeed they were not even forced, let alone invited, to sign a treaty. In this respect the colonisation of Australia was unique among British colonies. No other land colonised by Britain was decreed to be empty, no one's land, and no other original peoples were dispossessed without rights under treaty or law. Not in the United States, not in Canada, not in New Zealand, only here. Often, of course, those treaties were honoured more in the breach than in the observance but they did recognise prior sovereignty and ownership and their provisions today have new life and are effecting real change in the legal and economic positions of the first peoples of those countries.

From this original wrong of non recognition and dispossession flowed the sorry history of poverty, marginalisation, deaths by disease and murder, removal of children, degradation. The worst periods may be over but they are not events of the far distant past. The last massacres of Aboriginal people, known euphemistically as punitive expeditions, occurred in the 1920s and 1930s, during the lifetimes of many still alive today, far more recently than the Gallipolli landing we remember on Anzac Day. The last removals of Aboriginal children under explicitly racist laws occurred in the 1960s, during my lifetime and the lifetimes of at least half of us in this Great Hall.

I recall this history this morning for two reasons. First, because it must be recognised and accepted. I don't feel guilty for our history or consider that any one else here should feel guilty. On the contrary no one can be personally responsible for the actions of another. It's not a matter of personal guilt but of national responsibility: that we acknowledge our nation's past, including its very recent past, and as a national community express our sorrow.

Second, I recall the history because its legacy is present today for indigenous Australians. It divides indigenous Australians from other Australians. Healing that division requires reconciliation and reconciliation is impossible unless and until we come to terms with our history.

THE PRESENT NEED FOR RECONCILIATION

Dealing with the past is necessary for reconciliation but it alone is not enough. We must also deal with the present. For large numbers of indigenous Australians the present is an experience of poverty and disadvantage. Indeed no matter what social or economic indicator is used, the lives of indigenous Australians today remain marked by inequality. I don't like quoting lists of statistics in addresses but it is important that we remember the facts, the extent of the disadvantage.

Indigenous Australians have

Reconciliation is in large part a question of social justice. My friend and colleague Mick Dodson, when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, described social justice in these terms.

Social justice must always be considered from a perspective which is grounded in the daily lives of indigenous Australians. Social justice is what faces you in the morning. It is awakening in a house with an adequate water supply, cooking facilities and sanitation. It is the ability to nourish your children and send them to a school where their education not only equips them for employment but reinforces their knowledge and appreciation of their cultural inheritance. It is the prospect of genuine employment and good health, a life of choices and opportunity, free from discrimination.

Reconciliation then is also very practical. I have visited many Aboriginal communities in all sates and territories. I have seen the conditions in which people are forced to live, in which children grow up. When I went to Halls Creek Shire in Western Australia I was told of research that establishes that child nutrition levels there are comparable with those in Cambodia according to UN criteria. I have also seen communities with life and hope, doing wonderful things to address the disadvantage:. Let me give you two examples. Yirrkala in Arnhem Land has a lively, innovative school that teaches children in both the local languages and English. Bathurst Island has a program to ensure that by the year 2010 there will be a local person educated and trained for every job on the island, whether in education, health,

Reconciliation requires that we address these and other basic life issues for indigenous people, the issues that Mick Dodson listed: safe running water and food, a house, a school, a doctor, a job. It is a present need, not just an historical one.

OUR NEED FOR RECONCILIATION

When I speak about past treatment and present disadvantage, you might think that I consider that only indigenous Australians need reconciliation. The truth, however, is that we all need it, our nation needs it. The Governor General, Sir William Deane, put it most clearly when he said that without reconciliation we are diminished as a nation. That's why the events of this weekend are significant for all of us.

The weekend will not be a celebration of reconciliation achieved. Maybe that was always too ambitious a goal but I think it could have been accomplished. Unfortunately it hasn't been. The failure of national political leadership has left reconciliation out of reach, still beyond us. The statement that the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation will deliver the nation on Saturday will not be a statement of reconciliation but a statement towards reconciliation. It will not have the unequivocal support of the Prime Minister or his government.

For me now that is a deep disappointment but perhaps in years to come, in retrospect, we will see that as a good thing. The failure of political leadership has forced the cause to be taken up by ordinary people in cities, suburbs and towns across the country. That is happening. There are 369 local reconciliation groups registered with the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. There are over 200 local groups that are part of the network of Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation. There are regional and local coalitions to promote the development and well being of whole communities. In the Barwon-Darling Valley in north west New South Wales, all the local councils, cotton growers, farmers organisations, tourism groups and Aboriginal organisations have formed a regional development alliance. In Cape York in far north Queensland the graziers, miners, tourism groups and local governments have negotiated a regional development and land use agreement with the indigenous communities. Reconciliation is happening already on the ground in many parts of Australia and it must continue.

That is, in my opinion, why the walk across the bridge on Sunday will be the most important event of the weekend. It will be the occasion when we can show that we are committed to healing the divisions, to building a united Australia based on justice, equality and respect.

Our nation then needs the commitment of each of us to this cause. Our future depends on it. We are diminished without it. That's the challenge you face as new graduates. What contribution can you make, as doctors and as citizens? What contribution will you make? What about your families and friends? Your teachers and others here this morning?

Though we cannot be held personally responsible for what was done in the past, we are responsible, and history will judge us, for what we do or fail to do in our own time, with the opportunities and privileges given to us by our education and position.

Chancellor, ladies and gentlemen, I hope I run into you on the bridge on Sunday.

Last updated 1 December 2001