MALCOLM FRASER

In the last twelve years, we have come some distance towards reconciliation and the breaking down of disadvantage. Let us take encouragement from what has been achieved and set our minds and hearts to end the remaining roadblocks.

Last year the National Sorry Day Committee consulted with stolen generations people in every State and Territory, and concluded that programmes set up in response to the Bringing Them Home Report are reaching only a small fraction of those they are intended to help.

We are seeing healing among the stolen generations, and initiatives which are enabling Indigenous people to make their distinctive contribution to our national life.

Over 120 Aboriginal communities run their own health services - some have been doing so for 30 years. They struggle with difficult medical problems. They also try to deal with counselling, stolen generations issues, family relationships, violence, suicide prevention.

Yet there are thousands of Indigenous people searching for family members.

We are lagging far behind comparable countries in overcoming the disadvantages Indigenous people face.

There are no quick fixes to Indigenous poverty and social disaster.

Health economists have estimated that an injection of $250 million per year in Indigenous clinical care, and $50 million in preventative care, is required to provide services at the same level as for any other group with the health conditions of Indigenous Australians.

Sorry Day falls on the eve of Reconciliation Week, giving us the chance to ask whether we are making progress in the wider challenge of reconciling Indigenous and other Australians.

Solutions will not be found while Indigenous people are treated as victims for whom someone else must find solutions.

If we had, we would have realised sooner that Indigenous organisations are sometimes not the appropriate channel for programmes to help the stolen generations, because many of them play little part in Indigenous associations.

Maoris now own over half the commercial fishing industry in New Zealand.

People die because they find living too painful.

Three years ago the Government announced the creation of Reconciliation Place, and said that it would include a memorial to those removed from their families. However, they refused to include any of those who were removed in the design of their own memorial.

Reconciliation requires changes of heart and spirit, as well as social and economic change. It requires symbolic as well as practical action.

Life is not mean to be easy.

We used to have a view that to really be a good Australian, to love Australia, you almost had to cut your links with the country of origin. But I don’t think that was right and it never was right.

Socialism is not a way of life. It is an unworkable formula which would apply to robots but not to men and women.

Why turn away from that talent? What is it in today's parties that is virtually saying, 'Well, if you're a George Williams or Garr Barwick, you may not get pre-selection?' I'd like to reverse that.

What we do not know, we often fear. What we do not understand, we fear. And what we fear becomes a threat.

If we want a cohesive society, if we want people that are prepared to respect others who are different in our society, I think a number of the race-related issues have been handled in ways which I really abhor.

Politicians today are not highly regarded... there seem to be people young and old and in the middle saying that they have never heard such wretched debates.

I didn't like the way Andrew Peacock was not supported in 1984. He'd done well in that election; he deserved to continue. But by the end of '85, he was out.

I wasn't a party apparatchik. I think too many of today's people in both parties come forward, university, 'What party will I join? Oh, yes, I know somebody here. I might get a job working for this member or for that shadow minister or minister.'

We could try and establish a world in which the great and the powerful adhere to that international law which they require ordinary mortals to adhere to. In other words, there is one international law, and even America and even Russia and China and Japan must adhere to it, and Australia must adhere to it.