“We non-Aboriginal Australians should perhaps remind ourselves that Australia once reached out for us. Didn’t Australia provide opportunity and care for the dispossessed Irish? Did it not for the poor of Britain? The refugees from war and famine and persecution in the countries of Europe and Asia? Isn’t it reasonable to say that if we can build a prosperous and remarkable harmonious multicultural society in Australia, surely we can find just solutions to the problems which beset the first Australians – the people to whom the most injustice has been done.”

Paul Keating, 1992, then Australian Prime Minister,  gave a speech at Redfern Park – in an inner city suburb of Sydney with an historically large Aboriginal population – for the Australian Launch of the ‘International Year for the World’s Indigenous People’.