It came at a time when the nation was informed by the words
and findings of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the Human
Rights Commission inquiry into the removal of Aboriginal children from their
family, country and cultures and the High Court ruling on the existence of native
title as part of the common law inherited from England.
For Keating — the political heavy-hitter from Bankstown, protege of
Jack Lang, collector of antique clocks and devotee of Mahler — Aboriginal
affairs were not country well-travelled. The big picture and the world stage
were the natural environment of a prime minister new to the job after almost a
decade spent delivering economic reform for a nation confronted with a global
reality.
This was no Hawke promising treaties as a spur-of-the-moment
gesture, not a prime minister of platitudes and populist gesture. This was the
cold political warrior of the harsh wit and rapier riposte. To the fools, he
offered no succour.
What Keating exposed to Australians in Redfern Park
as they prepared for Christmas was the elephant in the room that the nation had
refused to acknowledge for two centuries. He placed before Australians the
truths of our past and the sad reality of our contemporary society. He laid
down the challenge for our future, as a nation united and at peace with its
soul.
The man of clocks and Mahler pulled aside the dark curtains
of our lounge rooms and asked us to look into the suburban street and consider
the truth of our national denial.
Keating was not the first or only Australian to challenge
our complacency and confront us with this reality of our national failure. Sir
Ronald Wilson and others would add other chapters to the national book of
denial. But Keating as prime minister was the leader prepared to place the
truth before us in the symbolic heart of Aboriginal Australia, in Redfern,
before a crowd of people who had been denied in the celebrations of the
bicentenary half a decade earlier. Theirs was a community confronting some of
the worst housing in the nation, struggling to deal with the social Legacy of
two centuries at the front line of the colonial assault.
Listen to a recording of the event on that sunny December morning and you
will be struck by the hum of an unsettled crowd. The chatter and the laughter
of a crowd imbued with scepticism and distrust for yet another politician
offering platitudes and reassurances of better times to come in this land of
plenty and a fair go. But as the speech progressed, the honesty of the words of
contrition permeated the sullenness of the crowd and they recognised the
courage of what the leader of the country was saying.
The chatter dissipated, the hum of inattentiveness disappeared among those
whose only other experience of such open reflection on the truth of our shared
history had been the whispering and compassionate heart of Father Ted Kennedy
at the nearby St Vincent’s Catholic church. In
admiration and thanks, they now began to ponder the import of what the prime
minister was placing before the nation.
Not a great deal of media attention was given to what had been said that day
in Redfern Park
in South Sydney. The analysis and recognition
of its import came later.
The legislation based on the 10-point plan that would ultimately hurt the
opportunity of the High Court’s Mabo decision had yet to be written. The report
into the stolen generations was still to be written (and be ignored for a
decade after). National pride in the young woman from Mackay at the 2000
Olympics was still to come. The shame of our government fighting every attempt
by Aboriginal people to have their native title rights recognised and deriding
those who sought compensation for the travesty of their childhoods stolen by
the genocidal policies of benevolent removal was still before the nation.
One of the ironies of Keating’s leadership in Redfern on that day was that
his successor John Howard’s hatred of and disdain for him — and Howard’s
determination to remove from the national consciousness all that Keating stood
for — may have premised the next prime minister’s refusal to lead the nation in
a unifying act of acknowledgement and formal apology to indigenous peoples.
No politician since Keating has shown this level of national leadership for
the common good. This adds to why the Redfern address is considered a great
speech. It was not just for the press gallery, Aborigines and the conservative
right, but to help the nation go forward in healing the sad and tragic
relationship that still festers. Alas, Aborigines are back in the hands of the
public servants and have no free voice in the determination of their future.
Patrick Dodson is chairman of the Lingiari Foundation.
Read Paul Keating’s Redfern address at: www.keating.org.au