11th ANU Reconciliation Lecture 2014: Is Australia big enough for reconciliation?

Abstract

NCIS was privileged to have the Honourable Frederick Michael "Fred" Chaney, former Deputy Leader of the Australian Liberal Party and Indigenous rights activist, deliver the 2014 Annual ANU Reconciliation Lecture. Mr Chaney's lecture challenged governmental approach to closing the gap despite progress Australia has seen over 50 years.

"The question remains to be answered – are we big enough, generous enough, to provide room for the world's oldest living cultures to find their continuing futures?", firmly asked Mr Chaney. "My questioning, however, arises from our response to the determination of so many Indigenous people to achieve not just social and economic equality – the closing of the gap – but to maintain their collective identities and their cultures."

"Later, as a young lawyer, I saw child removal for social rather than welfare reasons, and blatant abuses of the processes of the law. These early experiences drove my interest in reconciliation although that was not a term we used then."

"The breadth of community engagements in 2014 stands in stark contrast with the segregated Australia of my youth, when these matters were left to a few religious bodies and to governments. In my earliest years, I would have excused any Indigenous person for saying the world was against them. In 2014, they have many allies. It is this broad community engagement which appears to me to be based on a broad community desire to settle these matters which led me to proclaim this as the most hopeful period of my life." Show more