 I, too, honour the first Australians whose people we celebrate, whose culture we own, as the oldest continuing culture in human history. Professor Vic Colton, to Dustin Ahamad, CEO of Reconciliation Australia. Members of the board of the National Policy and National Apology Foundation of Indigenous Australia. We're here with us this evening. Pat Turner, Jackie Huggins, Tim Goodwood for YouTube. And to all the distinguished guests here present. It's very difficult, all these years on, to sit and to watch such a beautiful rendition of archaeology science. Thank you very much for those who have come. It was truly beautiful. It is impossible to sit in an audience and to hear that song perform without being moved to the core of your being. Impossible. I'm always taken by historical photographs, whether it's in the Harbour Club in New York, or CPU photographs of Indigenous peoples in our country. Australia over generations and over centuries now. To look and do each of those faces of those small children and recognise that each of them is an extraordinary story. Each of them. They are not Aboriginal people. They are individual Aboriginal persons. And if you reflect for a moment on the pictures you saw of the earliest CPU photographs in the series, just of that very tiny Aboriginal girl perhaps three or four years old. A picture which looked at least a hundred years old. And simply the look in the comprehending of the horror being inflicted or about to be inflicted on it. So if there is still any hardness of heart in this country, it's time we opened our hearts afresh to look into the eyes and through the eyes to the deep soul of the tens of thousands of Indigenous Australians. Hundreds of thousands of Indigenous Australians over the centuries of European settlement whose lives were radically wounded. Seven years ago I said to the Parliament of Australia that there comes a time in the history of nations that in order to embrace fully their future they must fully reconcile with their past. Much has happened over the last seven years in our long journey of national reconciliation. Much has not. And much, much more needs to be done. And there are seven is a number of truly biblical significance both in the biblical narratives of creation and destruction. Perhaps it is time to reflect on our progress, our prospects and perhaps our regrets in this difficult but necessary journey we call reconciliation. We should begin by reminding ourselves why reconciliation is not optional for Australia but necessary for our nation's future. We should reflect on countries around the world where the reconciliation of their peoples has not been achieved. I do not believe that we Australians want our children to grow up in divided societies. Divided societies do not happen by accident. They exist right around the world. They happen because political processes and economic forces allow them to happen and the consequences are ugly. And as Australians whatever our political affiliations we are also challenged and I hope animated by a deep inalienable irreducible sense of justice. Justice or whatever term we may use to describe it in the Australian vernacular is embedded in our national DNA. It is this deep sense of justice that calls us to reconciliation. That calls us towards reconciliation. And it calls us towards completing reconciliation. Completing reconciliation. Reconciliation is not just a dignity, it is a destination for Australia. If we were to deny ourselves the prospect of reconciliation we would be denying these essential elements of our national spirit and character. We would also be denying these essential angles of our human nature. Just as we would be failing to put to death some of the demons of our uncomfortable past in our dealings with Indigenous Australians. And as a people we would not be complete. There is another reason why reconciliation is important and it's a more practical one. Unless and until our processes of reconciliation draw towards completion and inclusion, as I believe they must, we are also failing to unleash the full human economic and political potential nearly half a million of our Indigenous brothers and sisters. That is a loss to the nation, it is a loss to Indigenous peoples themselves, it is a loss to us all. Reconciliation is easy to say. It is hard to do. It is also difficult, as you said, to define. We seem to know what reconciliation is when we sense its absence. We don't seem to talk much about a reconciled society. This is worth thinking about more deeply. When we talk about reconciliation, are we therefore talking about a state of mind or a set of social attitudes? Are we talking about a framework of policy and law? Are we talking about measurable social and economic conditions? Of course, I believe we're talking about all of the above. The essence of reconciliation is the acceptance that a deep wrong has been committed by one person against another, by one group against another, almost distantly by one race against another. Acceptance that a wrong has been committed is hard because of all the frailty of human nature, such acceptance can take a very long time. The world today is full of excuses as to why such wrongs were never seen as wrongs in the past and why we should not indulge ourselves in retrospective ethics. This leads to very dangerous ground indeed. Human pride is a profound and powerful immersion. Human pride, particularly embedded in entrenched historical narratives about one people's prejudices against another, can be lethal. If acceptance that is the first step in reconciliation, then an apology for past wrongs is the next. And of course, such an apology must be accepted. This again can be a hard thing to do. In the offering of an apology, if it is genuinely met, weasel words are to be avoided. People are not stupid. Half measures can be spotted at a thousand places. Escape clauses litter our political landscape. In our quest for reconciliation, we must be particularly mindful of the absolute simplicity of the biblical injunction of let your yes be yes and let your no be no. There is also the usual cautionary advice that we shouldn't be held responsible for the sins of our fathers. My response to this has long been that if we are willing to appropriate the positive dimensions of our heritage as the objects of contemporary pride, either personal or national, but it follows that we cannot behave as punctious pilot on the darker actions of our committed past. The acceptance of an apology for past wrongs is much harder than its rendering. An apology, after all, is in large part still a matter of words. For those who have been profoundly wronged, apologies can be seen as trivialising the depth of the damage and the hurt that has been done. Words, not the standard of the obstacles constructed by our egos in actually articulating them, are, in the end, simple. But for reconciliation to be something more than words, an apology must be received as well. And if you have experienced the multiple indignities of Indigenous Australia over the decades and over the centuries, this is by far the harder road. There is a further step as well. Beyond the simple words of an apology, actions must be taken to bring about a level of restorative justice, either for the individuals who have been wronged or in the case of Indigenous Australians or Indigenous Australia as a whole. The national apology delivered seven years ago was incomplete. Actions have to match our words, and that can mean, and must be, putting your money where your mouth is. Some Indigenous leaders pointed to the time and since then to the absence of restorative payments to surviving members of the Stalin generation, separate to the national programme of closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians at large. There is merit in the criticism. During the last national elections, I undertook to revisit this if we return to office. That proved not to be the case. There is, of course, a remaining part of our road to reconciliation, which is yet to be travelled at all. This lies in the process of formal political recognition of those who have been wronged and who should never have been wronged. In mourning the race-based murder of a group of African-Americans of prayer at an Atlanta church early this year, President Obama observed recognition precedes justice. It is as if recognition, formal recognition, public recognition, political recognition, and in the context of the current Australian debate, constitutional recognition, completes a process which commenced with a much earlier societal acceptance that Greg wrongs had been committed. Reconciliation, particularly when it applies to the deepest sensitivities of race, is, therefore, the most difficult and, at times, the most volatile of processes. In reality, reconciliation is a complex of changing social attitudes of emerging equalities and of policies and laws that both advance and, in time, recognise the same. In Australia, while we have made some progress along this path, there is still much distance and many obstacles that lie ahead. So what of reconciliation in Australia? It's a long, long time since the events of 1967. I remember clearly attending the commemorative and celebratory events of 2007, at Old Parliament House on the 50th anniversary of that landmark referendum. It was humbling to meet those who mobilised a nation at a time when racial stereotypes about our Indigenous brothers and sisters had changed a little more since the early years of European settlement. Remember, in 1967, this was a time when the stolen generations were still being stolen. I also remember, perhaps my earliest political memory, walking into a polling booth with my father, a member of the country party, at the Amundi State Primary School and Conservative rural Queensland in 1967, to my surprise, my absolute surprise, voted yes. At least, that's what he told me. The truth is, much of the hard work on the road to reconciliation has been done by those who have come before us. They deserve our admiration, each and every one of them. Australians, both black and white, who have led the charge against the prevailing winds of Syrian prejudice. These were bare-knuckled days compared to the discourse in which we are now engaged. We should therefore honour the contributions of those who have brought us thus far. We should be humbled by them as we consider our current travels on constitutional recognition. The veterans of the 67 referendum of the earliest land rights legislation, including Dunston, Vingyari and Whitlam, of Keating and Redford, of Lowitcher, and Marlborough and Wick, and then the Bringing Home Report on the stolen generations. So many people in this room have played a part in that. We all play our part, but we are all small in the wide sweep of history. We in Australia have indeed come a long way on this roadless travel that we call reconciliation. At some point along this road, and it is difficult to identify when, we as an Australian people began to accept that a great wrong had been done to our Indigenous brothers and sisters, and that we, white folks, were responsible. It became absolutely impossible to ignore, to sweep discreetly under the carpet, even less to laugh off the conditions to which Aboriginal Australians had been reduced in the racist jokes that polluted our private and sometimes public conversations. We had, rightly as Australians, become uncomfortable in the depths of our national conscience when you something had to be done without really knowing what to be done. With the work of the Bringing Home Report, coupled with that of the National Sorry Day Committee, Reconciliation Australia as well, we began to realise the time for formal national apology had come. I gave this undertaking to the Australian people in the 2007 election, and the apology became the first parliamentary act of my government. It is for the nation to judge what impact the apology has had on the deeper question of reconciliation over time. For me, the miracle of the apology was not that it was delivered. The miracle of the apology was that it was acknowledged, accepted, and I believe received by our Indigenous brothers and sisters. Something, it seemed, had finally melted in the hearts of Australians, black and white. It was as if we were able to see one another through new eyes or at least through a different lens. Compassion, at least for a season, replaced prejudice, mutual recrimination and condemnation. Perhaps these were the tentative beginnings of deeper attitudinal change. As part of the apology, closing the gap was intended to deal with an entirely different dimension of any enduring reconciliation. It sought practical, funded, measurable programs to reduce and in time remove the structural disadvantages that divided Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. These focused on health, on education, on housing and employment, and the appalling gap and the continuing obscenity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. These were not intended as normal aspirations. They articulated concrete goals within concrete timelines. They were anchored in funded programs reflected in Australia's first national agreement between the Commonwealth and the States on closing the gap signed in Darwin in December of 2008, and involving both government and non-government sectors. Most critically, the political parties committed to an annual report to the parliament by the Prime Minister of the day on progress and any regress in achieving the policy objectives outlined in the closing the gap strategy. So far, we have had seven such reports. After seven years, the emerging picture is mixed with a number of measurable improvements in education, health, housing and employment, but with real problems in areas such as literacy and numeracy. The critical factor in all this is that we must have consistent, accurate data. I believe we now have the maturity as a national political community to confront the reality of Indigenous disadvantage rather than sweeping uncomfortable data under the carpet or worse, ceasing to collect, collate or publish it. All future Australian governments should be held accountable against the policy objectives of closing the gap and the data which therefore keeps us honest. If the data tells us we are failing in particular areas, let's have the imagination without political recrimination to do things differently. For the future of closing the gap, it should be a dynamic, not a static process. It should not be regarded as a closed canon. Since leaving office, I have recommended we add new measures concerning Indigenous access to higher education. I have also argued that we must now add new measures concerning Aboriginal incarceration rates around Australia, given the obscenity of the numbers we are now seeing. Earlier this year on the anniversary of the Upolyte, I spoke two of the dangers of creating a second stolen generation, arising from the alarming separation rates of Aboriginal children from their family and kinship groups, while fully recognising the alarming rates of domestic violence and child abuse. As a nation, we must not shrink from any of these challenges. We must embrace them together and with the great Australian characteristics of courage, of pragmatism and resolve. In our great mission of national reconciliation, the national apology made a contribution. I believe it has helped change social attitudes. I believe it has produced some progress in reducing Indigenous disadvantage. But I also believe it is one part, but one part, of our greater effort to bend the arc of history. So what a constitutional recognition. The constitutional recognition of the first Australians is the next stage of our long national journey towards reconciliation. There has been a long national conversation on this over many, many years. It was among the key resolutions, for example, of the 2020 summit I convened in a month of the National Apology in 2008. It became then a core commitment of the newly elected government. The journey, therefore, on constitutional recognition has indeed been a long one, in fact, far too long. The importance of constitutional recognition lies in both simple concepts of respect and simple recognitions of reality. Respect for the unique status of this, the oldest continuing culture in our human family, whose continuity reaches back to deepest antiquity, connecting us to the Indigenous mysteries of creation. Reality, because those of us who have come uninvited to this continent from various communities of the world to live and have our being in this vast continent, represent but a recent blip against the 50 millennia or more of continuing Indigenous occupation. With the advantage of historical hindsight and contemporary reflection, there is a stunning arrogance in the language of our constitution. Of course, this was consistent with the age. We're all familiar with the doctrine of Terinolius, not to be overturned by the Australian courts, for almost one century. But reflecting these grandly imperial assumptions of the age, our founding legal document saw Indigenous peoples almost exclusively seen as a problem. Not as the people whose prior occupancy, Terra Australis in Cognita, was in any way worthy of respect. Constitutional change must set these wrongs to right. Consistent with these changing realities, the formal repeal of the provisions of our constitution that are discriminatory law and condescending in nature is essential. These do not belong in any civilised constitution of the 21st century. No other people within our Australian family, least of all the first Australians, would or should tolerate the language of race and our founding colour. This brings us to a further and more profound change, the scope of which lies beyond these legal realities. There is a sense which we should not dismiss lightly, that by finally recognising Indigenous Australians in our shared constitution and by removing its antiquated discriminations, we are also reflecting underlying changes in Australian social attitudes towards indigeneity, which in turn gives rise to further changes in an increasingly reconciled society. In my mind, the ultimate objective is to cause all Australians to have about them a spontaneous pride in Indigenous Australians. That has not been the case so far. It is, however, now becoming the case. We see this already in the international prestige attached to Indigenous art, design and dance. I believe this appreciation will progressively deepen and broaden to new areas of Indigenous creativity, professional engagement and enterprise. This trends it's comfortably with and in my view is furthered by the impending reality we both call constitutional recognition. I'm aware, painfully aware, of the content, complexity and texture of the current discussion within Indigenous Australia and between Indigenous Australians and the rest of the Australian community on the desired content of constitutional amendments to be put to the Australian people. Hard questions have been raised and harsh things have from time to time to be said. I'm aware of the discussion over preamble paragraphs versus explicit Indigenous recognition at the beginning of the Constitution proper. These phrases should, in my view, reflect the fact of our indelible Indigenous heritage, that this is a living heritage and therefore an equally indelible part of our common Australian future. And given the findings of our courts in recent decades, these acknowledgments should also include the enduring connection between Indigenous Australians and the land and waters of our shared content. The poetry of these phrases should also be memorable, not drowned by a bloody committee. So that these two become etched in the minds and the souls of all Australians of the future. A document of which we can be proud. The debate over the repeal of Section 25 of the Constitution on the potential exclusion of people from electoral participation on the grounds of race is clear-cut and uncontested. Section 25 must be repealed. Section 25 provides that if by the law of any state or person or any race are disqualified from voting in elections for the numerous House of Parliament of the state, then in reckoning the number of people of the state or of the Commonwealth persons of that race risen in that state shall not be counted. I'll read that again if you like. It is self-evident that Section 25 must go. The other explicit reference to race in the Constitution is in Section 51-26. This empowers the Commonwealth to make laws for the people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws, unquote. The debate here is how to amend this provision in a manner that preserves the Commonwealth's power to legislate the specific purposes of Indigenous Australia and to their advantage, with that explicit recourse to a race power. It then follows the equally contentious debate over the inclusion or otherwise of the new and explicit constitutional provision that would effectively import the relevant provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975 into the Constitution proper. This warning, the argument of its proponents, prevent any future Parliament from legislating in a manner injurious to the interests of Indigenous Australia. There was even further debate over the desirability of an Indigenous advisory body to advise future Governments and Parliaments on the impact of proposed legislation on the interests of Indigenous Australians, and if so, whether such an advisory body should be anchored in the Constitution or in legislation. I do not believe it is productive for me to engage in the debate over these most contentious questions of constitutional reform. That, in my view, is probably the province of Indigenous Australia. Again, their engagement in turn with the Australian political process. I am happily no longer part of that process. But I wouldn't. Mindful of my direct experience in the preparation of the National Apology, caution against the rigidities of a debate that sees the perfect triumph over the good only to see the perfect defeated and the good defeated and the potential political ugliness of a divisive referendum. In 2008, a Government consulted widely on the content of the Apology. I received conflicting advice all across the Government and beyond. In the end, I made a call and wrote myself. Quite efficiently. The Apology was far from perfect, but we did manage to carry the nation with us. We also, in an even greater miracle, were able to carry with us Majesty's loyal opposition. Had we failed to do so, the Apology and all that came as a consequence of it along the long and torturous road to reconciliation, including the practical measures containing closing the gap, would have been rendered null and void with inevitable twists and turns of the political cycle. The degree of political difficulty with the referendum to amend the Constitution is much greater. The vicissitudes of the House, in which the Government commands a majority, is little compared with the vicissitudes of public opinion, even when a politically effective no-pace is mounted, irrespective of whether it is formally endorsed by one political party or another. The race demon has not yet been fully exercised or expunged from our national soul. All this is by way of saying that obtaining bipartisan political support is essential to seeing constitutional change through the hazardous waters of a referendum. The failure to obtain such support would most likely result in the proposal for a referendum dying before it was actually put to the people. Or if it was, we would run the greater risk of a divisive national debate on race which would deeply scar the as-yet fragile tissue we have in Australia in this living process we call reconciliation. Imagine, too, the reaction around the world. It went to the people on a divided or at least divisive proposition which saw the proposition voted down. The world concluded that the ghosts of white Australia had somehow returned in a different form. We should be cautious about any such risk. Given how far we have come so far. I respect the views of my Indigenous brothers and sisters who have worn against constitutional nominalism, the trivialization of symbols and the triumph of symbols over substance. I therefore do not argue for a minimalist approach. I believe the new Prime Minister has an open mind on these questions. And unless I am proven to be wrong, has a deep empathy for Indigenous Australians. Furthermore, the previous Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition have also sought to improve consensus in the recent roundtable they convened at Kiribati. What I argue for myself is for the most expansive consensus possible to be forged among Indigenous Australians and between them in the Australian political process. And, most critically, while the national climate is still right to get on with it and to do it. I genuinely fear the loss of national political momentum on constitutional recognition. The Australian public want it. Let us not degenerate into a public button fight. And let's remember that an agreed form of constitutional recognition provides a better starting point for ultimate justice than the present constitutional silence. Even what some might call symbolic constitutional change can usher in a further era of substantive policy change, changing the way we do business when governments and parliaments come to consider the distinctive needs and entitlements of Indigenous Australians in the future. There is a sense that each stage of this reconciliation process builds on the previous. It creates momentum that's capable of further renewing momentum. There will be an election next year. Both sides of politics will commit to constitutional recognition. A constitutional convention that needs to be convened in 2007 is not far away. We should be very wary of the risks of political dissipation as other priorities emerge, whereas the political process concludes that consensus on recognition is being too politically difficult or simply impossible. We should remember what one writer has said of such circumstances that a tide in the affairs of men when taken at the flood leads on the fortune omitted all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea we are now at the flood and we must take the current when it serves or lose our ventures. Let us not miss this tide but us grasp this opportunity to take this difficult national journey of reconciliation with the first Australians to the next stage and let us just for a moment lift up our eyes from the trenches of political battle and gaze for a moment upon the mountains unleashing for a moment our imagination on the new possibilities that might just by beyond constitutional recognition towards an Australia that is utterly, wonderfully, magnificently, racially, blind, colour blind. Where Australians are indeed judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. That I believe is the Australia we desire in all our hearts. Reconciliation has indeed been a long journey for this nation of ours Australia. For Indigenous Australians this journey has been the longest of all. It is a journey in which we all have a stake in which we all have a responsibility as women and men of good will and in which we all have our path to play be it large or small. Mine has been the apology. There's also been with closing the gap and of course I stand ready to do that as I long believe it is right to stand on the side of Indigenous Australia to be in their corner rather than to have them stand alone. To this end I have established the National Apology Foundation for Indigenous Australians. And as we speak I'm advised the Parliament is this week passing legislation to afford this foundation the National Apology Foundation for Indigenous Australians DGR status for which I'm thankful to the previous treasurer and his successor. The foundation has as its aim perpetuating the spirit, the objects and the substance The Board of the National Apology Foundation has agreed that one of its major priorities over time is to raise an endowment for a permanent chair here at the Australian National University dedicated to the explicit analysis of the policies necessary for and the core data associated with closing the gap. To be blunt whoever the future Government of Australia happens to be we want to keep the bastards honest. We want to ensure the necessary data is collected to measure our success or our failure in bridging the intergenerational gap of entrenched Indigenous disadvantage. This mission must continue beyond the passing seasons we call politics. The Chancellor of the University a quiet man you may know him tells me such a chair will lead a $5 million endowment. I'm tempted to say to paraphrase the great work of Australian cinematography and the array of philosophers portrayed within it that they've got to be dreaming. We will talk about the numbers and of course the university's own contribution won't we meet? Today however, I wish to announce I'll be making an initial personal contribution of $100,000 to the foundation to begin its fundraising campaign now. As the song says from little things big things grow it's also far easier in my experience to eyeball somebody and ask them for money when you've stuck your hand in your own pocket. Indigenous reconciliation is a challenge not for just for Australia is a challenge for the 350 million Indigenous peoples of the world and the settler communities in which they live. Indigenous peoples around the world are among the most poor and oppressed as in Australia throughout history they too have been pushed to the margins. The sad reality is that many countries have simply given up on the universal moral challenge of reconciling with their Indigenous peoples. Sometimes this is the product of indifference sometimes it's a question of individual inconvenience and others it's a question of what I would sense is learned hopelessness but because Indigenous disadvantage has become so entrenched simply nothing works there are elements of all these in the countries I've looked at around the world that we in Australia yield to none of these that we in Australia instead as we attend to our own real challenges in achieving reconciliation in our own land encourage others also around the world to do the same and so too together indeed bend the arc of history. Ladies and gentlemen if you're not stimulated about reconciliation and constitutional recognition before this lecture you ought to be now. Mr Rudd has kindly agreed to take some questions so if you've got a question put up your hand wait for your microphone and please be reminded of the nature of the event and the need to be respectful someone will be marching around. So yes I mean I was just a little surprised Land Rights didn't play a part in your description of reconciliation. What I said was that Land Rights was part of the process I referred directly to Whitlam to Binyari to Dunstan that whole period from Marlowe to Wick. What I would say is that reconciliation in fact from the earliest time when the national conscience was disturbed around the time of 67 I think through until the president has seen one wave after the another of engagement with bringing some justice to Indigenous people and Land Rights frankly was at its core. I follow those processes by opinion which is why it was the Wic and those who did the earlier legislative efforts on those questions as well. My further point though about reconciliation is what I sense from Indigenous Australia is there's kind of a sense of an outrage and exhaustion as I speak to my own Indigenous friends about when it is we're going to finally put all this ahead. A whole business of reconciliation and get on with it. Get on with the national future together. It ain't rocket science when you think about it. Social attitudes are hard to change but it ain't rocket science to get on with the core bits which make up a full digs or puzzle. Sometimes what I despair about is someone who's engaged in this as a white father who was for a while Prime Minister is that when I hear the language that reconciliation is a process reconciliation is a journey I become very impatient for my Indigenous brothers and sisters. Reconciliation is a destination. Reconciliation is where we want to be as a nation. Reconciliation is the character of the society we wish to be a fully reconciled Australia and if we think that's a losery then we defeat him from the first step. So we start to need to unleash our national imagination as to what a reconciled Australia actually looks like. We start taking a picture of what it could and should be not in just a bunch of numbers and flowery words but what the hell would it be? Indigenous people are fully empowered and fully participating but when I look at an Indigenous person and I no longer see the element of colour I just see another human being. I think that's a conversation we need to start in order to get people to say well let's get to that and get through these apparently impossible steps on the way it requires a political imagination it requires national imagination but it's dual. What I'm encouraged by is the attitude of my kids generation that my kids have grown up in Queensland People's Republic of Queensland Over the years they've been a little conservative from time to time I've tried to be the Labour Prime Minister from Queensland a few degrees of difficulty there but anyway what I'm encouraged by when I meet these kids is that I find in my kids generation of kids a group who are genuinely colour blind and race blind I cannot say at a university that I have all kids in the country I can't but you know there's something of a trend here and our jobs turn that unfolding social reality into a broader picture which says that's the Australia we're going to be If we think it's hopeless and frankly everything else we do in the meantime becomes mechanical almost something that you've got to do I'm all for imagining the future as it can be and then get them there That's what I'm about Land Rights Department Hi my name's Sarah Burke Where are you from Sarah Burke? I'm from Canberra actually Yeah, I'm visiting PhD students here What are you studying? I'm looking at Indigenous Health What I wanted to address was your point about being colour blind I was hoping when you were saying that you want an Australia that is a wonderful beautiful place I was hoping the next word was going to be diverse but it was kind of fine and I think I used to draw but adversity in my judgment is kind of inherent in the proposition My mind means that in my sense I mean this is Queensland Dialect that you simply enjoy the diversity and you're utterly unmindful of the fact that this person should be considered inherently different to you I understand what you're saying but I think also raising a generation of people who are colour blind ignores the lived reality of people of colour who do experience discrimination on that basis whether or not they're friends or family are colour blind Yeah I'd like to hear from our Indigenous brothers and sisters on that I mean having grown up in a community where we had one Indigenous family and I've had direct experience of what they had on the receiving end of that I remember it was quite a while ago I just... So you have heard from an Aboriginal sister? I didn't quite get you I am Aboriginal and I make that comment to you as an Aboriginal person? Sure but I'm not disputing that all I'm saying is I think we're having a discussion about the different interpretation of words when you say diversity I say yes and amen different parts of the world when I say colour blind what I mean is that people are not actually alienated by the sight of somebody who comes from somewhere different and they actually turn around and celebrate the diversity with them that's what I mean so maybe it's a question of language for the people Perhaps I have two more questions I just want to go on over Thank you very much for your excellent presentation My question is about the proposed National Human Rights Act that Father Frank Brennan won as the long champions of human rights and the rights of Indigenous Australians the former government abandoned the proposal for a national statutory Bill of Rights Queensland is currently having an inquiry and as an advocate of reconciliation are you fully supportive of a Bill of Rights for Queensland? Well as you know there's a difference between common state statutes in this area by the way my defence in response to all such questions is that I'm having many things but I'm not aware so I will defer partly on those questions but the reason that I among others including then Attorney General invited Frank Brennan to share that committee and do the work that he did on the desirability of the Human Rights Act for Australia was to advance the debate in very concrete terms. What would it look like? How would you go about doing it? What would be the questions that you put to people as you propose that change and I think that is still valuable work. Why I intrinsically as a matter of principle have long supported Bill of Rights? We cannot assume the current societal assumptions about what is acceptable and unacceptable based on common law traditions will pertain in fifty or a hundred years time that's what worries me and therefore the ability to return always to a founding couple which makes explicit constitutionally what those rights are is by far the desired course of action knowing something about how people campaign negatively in this country when you propose a radical change such as this, I think the first step was actually to put all the relevant issues on the table and Frank's report did that very well so in direct response to your question about Queensland which as you know the state involves a different set of considerations of course I fully support that. Last question, watch this for the camera it's time to make Good evening Mr. Rudd, my name is David Rudd I'd like to take up the statement you made about not rewriting the constitution by committee and I certainly agree with your observation about committee aesthetics my question is do we have the talent as a nation to rewrite the constitution? Well remember when we were talking about constitutional recognition we're not taking the document apart in total and we're talking about the subtraction and addition of causes so let me pose a question to you all render to me one memorable phrase in their existing constitution have you got one? any lawyers here, constitutional lawyers? have you got one? yeah, I risked my case I risked my case it just ain't nothing there most of us can quote bits of the Bill of Rights some of us can quote parts of the Declaration of Independence the United States etc we've had a poverty of national poetry now poetry doesn't solve all the problems there must be grounded in fact and in the conclusions you make in policy about what the change is to be but it's not beyond our national wit and wisdom and creativity from our indigenous brothers and sisters to come forward with language and livens the soul and becomes part of the national poetry in the country that's part of what we're looking for do we have such people? it's rooms full of bright people far brighter than me when it comes to creative work so yes I'm sure there are folks around so what I'm saying in that cryptic remark was that let's get the policy right on the four or five or maybe even two or three contentious policy questions which currently inform the constitutional debate on constitutional recognition let's get that done quickly so we can get on with the business of getting it done and then having done so ensure that what we cry is not an unusual surge of bureaucraties of which we the political class are faced across the world so yes let's mock people around thank you that concludes the general questions session