Documents of Reconciliation
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Documents of Reconciliation
- Briefing Paper
Introduction
We are approaching
a highly symbolic time in Australia's history. The entry into the new
millennium will also be the entry into our second century as a nation.
It will also mark the exit of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation,
which will cease to exist on the very day that Australia celebrates
its centenary of federation.
That is why the
Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation is now devoting its energies to
the creation of a formal statement of Australia's commitment to reconciliation.
Council proposes to involve as much of the Australian community as possible
in the creation of this pivotal declaration, through an intensive round
of stakeholder and community consultations throughout 1999, and a major
forum to launch the results of its work to be convened in May 2000.
When the Commonwealth
Parliament established the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in
1991, one of the major functions entrusted to the Council was a thorough
exploration of the issue of a document or documents of reconciliation.
Council is required to consult with Indigenous peoples and the wider
Australian community about whether reconciliation would be advanced
by a formal document or documents of reconciliation.
In its first two
terms, the Council did consult widely on the documents issue. As a result
of those consultations, of community opinion surveys and of the outcomes
of the Australian Reconciliation Convention in May 1997, Council concluded
that formal documents would indeed advance reconciliation and benefit
the Australian community as a whole. At the first meeting of the third
Council, with some half of its members newly appointed, this view was
endorsed, and the current Council established the following as one of
its three key strategic goals for its final term:
Achieve recognition
and respect for the unique position of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander peoples as the Indigenous peoples of Australia through a
national document of reconciliation and by acknowledgment within the
Constitution of this country.
Council must now
produce detailed recommendations on what a national document of reconciliation
should be like, and how it can be given effect in the Australian Constitutional
context. This task must be completed in time for the Council to report
to Parliament through the Minister before its final term ends on 31
December 2000. As always, Council will work with all political parties
as well as the community, since it was the whole Parliament which gave
it its mandate. Also, the Council has always stressed that true reconciliation
must be the work of the whole nation, with the full involvement of the
Australian people in their communities, workplaces, institutions and
organisations.
It is a challenge
which the Council is tackling with enthusiasm, and believes that with
the support of women and men of goodwill it can fulfil its mandate in
a way which will see Australia enter the new millennium with its head
held high.
This paper sets
out a brief history of some key issues relating to documents of reconciliation,
including a summary of Council's own work to date on the issue, and
provides an outline of Council's current proposals for advancing community
discussion about the content and structure of a national document of
reconciliation.
Council strongly
believes that by 1 January 2001, the centenary of Federation, the nation
must declare, clearly and unequivocally, its genuine commitment to reconciliation
and to achieving real advances towards equality of circumstances between
Indigenous peoples and other Australians.
Evelyn Scott,
Chairperson of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation
22 September 1998
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