Sorry Day falls on the eve of Reconciliation Week, giving us the chance to ask whether we are making progress in the wider challenge of reconciling Indigenous and other Australians.

Malcolm Fraser

Categorized in : Fall Giving Sorry

Three years ago the Government announced the creation of Reconciliation Place, and said that it would include a memorial to those removed from their families. However, they refused to include any of those who were removed in the design of their own memorial.

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In the last twelve years, we have come some distance towards reconciliation and the breaking down of disadvantage. Let us take encouragement from what has been achieved and set our minds and hearts to end the remaining roadblocks.

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Even Australians who take a very, very hard line about asylum seekers - and unfortunately there are more than I would like to think - are probably a bit uncomfortable with the kind of treatment that has been meted out to children in detention by the Australian Government, in their name.

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I didn't like the way Andrew Peacock was not supported in 1984. He'd done well in that election; he deserved to continue. But by the end of '85, he was out.

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If we had, we would have realised sooner that Indigenous organisations are sometimes not the appropriate channel for programmes to help the stolen generations, because many of them play little part in Indigenous associations.

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Although our capacities to advance our interests are limited, we should be active and constructive in pursuit of a peaceful and favourable international environment.

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There should be a global commitment to try and get rid of UNHCR refugee camps and long-term people in those camps.

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We could try and establish a world in which the great and the powerful adhere to that international law which they require ordinary mortals to adhere to. In other words, there is one international law, and even America and even Russia and China and Japan must adhere to it, and Australia must adhere to it.

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If we want a cohesive society, if we want people that are prepared to respect others who are different in our society, I think a number of the race-related issues have been handled in ways which I really abhor.

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I wasn't a party apparatchik. I think too many of today's people in both parties come forward, university, 'What party will I join? Oh, yes, I know somebody here. I might get a job working for this member or for that shadow minister or minister.'

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Why turn away from that talent? What is it in today's parties that is virtually saying, 'Well, if you're a George Williams or Garr Barwick, you may not get pre-selection?' I'd like to reverse that.

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Politicians today are not highly regarded... there seem to be people young and old and in the middle saying that they have never heard such wretched debates.

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Socialism is not a way of life. It is an unworkable formula which would apply to robots but not to men and women.

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What we do not know, we often fear. What we do not understand, we fear. And what we fear becomes a threat.

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It is ironic in today's world, but the core values, the protection of the law which we had thought to be universally accepted, has been seriously breached by the war on terrorism.

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