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The Redfern address given by prime minister Paul Keating, 1992

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Credits:

Reproduced with permission of the Hon P J Keating

Creator:

P J Keating, speaker, 1992

TLF ID:

R11282

Source:

National Archives of Australia, http://www.naa.gov.au/

Description:

This is a recording of excerpts from an address by prime minister Paul Keating (1944-) in the inner-Sydney suburb of Redfern on 10 December 1992. Keating outlines what he describes as Australia's failure to extend opportunity, care, dignity and hope to its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. He declares that Australia needs 'practical building blocks of change' to improve living standards and to achieve justice and equity for its Indigenous peoples, who have suffered 'two centuries of dispossession and abuse'.

Educational value:

Made to mark the declaration of 1993 as the International Year for the World's Indigenous People, this address is regarded by many as one of the most important Australian political speeches because of the way it gives official recognition to the mistreatment of Indigenous Australians by non-Indigenous Australians. Land rights and the promotion of reconciliation were policy priorities for Keating, prime minister from December 1991 to March 1996.
The extent to which current generations should accept some responsibility for the past mistreatment of Indigenous Australians and attempt to right past wrongs was a matter of extensive public dispute at the time of this speech. Keating's call for recognition that non-Indigenous people took the land and subjected Indigenous people to murder, child removal and discrimination was regarded by opposition leader John Howard (1939-) as negative and divisive.
Keating's repetition of the word 'imagine' in one section of the speech is an appeal to his non-Indigenous listeners to put themselves in the position of Indigenous Australians. Each situation he asks people to imagine is an example of injustice or even absurdity when seen from an Indigenous point of view. He implies that such acts of imagination are necessary if non-Indigenous Australians are to understand the wrongs that have been committed.
In referring to the fact that Indigenous Australians had been told that their land had never been theirs, Keating is alluding to the legal concept of 'terra nullius' (or 'land belonging to no-one'), which had been overturned by the High Court's historic Mabo judgement of 3 June 1992. This concept, which had declared Australia to be 'unoccupied' before British colonisation in 1788, is described elsewhere in the speech as a 'bizarre conceit' and Keating applauds the Court's decision.
This speech was delivered in Redfern, an inner suburb of Sydney that has had a significant Indigenous population since the 1920s, when many Aboriginal people moved there to work in the Eveleigh Railway Workshops. In stating elsewhere in the speech that Redfern tells how white settlement failed 'to bring much more than devastation and demoralisation', Keating refers partly to the area's history of poor housing and unemployment.

Learning area:

History

Keywords:

Aboriginal history; Aboriginal peoples; ATSIC; Indigenous Australians; Keating, Paul; Mabo judgement; Native title; Reconciliation; Redfern; Redfern address; Redfern speech; Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody; Speeches; Terra nullius; Torres Strait Islanders

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