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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (17 June) . . Page.. 1613 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

I will close with some more words from Patrick Dodson - a vision that we should all be very happy to support, and I believe that we do:

A united Australia which respects this land of ours, values the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage, and provides justice and equity for all.

MS McRAE (11.30): I would like to take this opportunity to add my name and my voice in support of this motion, which has been wholeheartedly supported by my own party and which is going to be supported by this entire Assembly. I unequivocally apologise. This is a gesture of reconciliation and hope. This is a significant motion which attempts to deal with a disturbing aspect of our shared past and begins a much more difficult challenge - of undoing that harm and making improvements, both for the present and for the future.

MR CORBELL (11.30): A lot of words have been said in this debate, but I believe the most simple of phrases is the most important. We apologise. I add my voice today to this most basic step in the reconciliation process. I say that as a young person of a generation of Canberrans who were born in a time after these abhorrent practices ceased. I say that we want to apologise and that we do apologise, and that we want to participate in reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. I say this because the new generation of Australians knows that as a nation we can grow only when we accept and do not deny our past, and that we work for a common future which we must all share.

MR OSBORNE (11.31): It seems to have taken a lot of effort over the past couple of weeks to reach this point today, but at long last we do have a motion of apology on the table. I would have to admit, though, that I have been very disappointed, sitting back over the last couple of weeks and reading the numerous press releases that have been coming out. It has been, in my view, quite pathetic watching members of this Assembly attempt to score political points over an issue such as this. Given that Mr Moore and I are the only members represented here to have not put out a press release with a version of an apology, I must say once again that I am disappointed that some people have attempted to gain political points out of this. I am certain that the race to see who was going to be the first to apologise to this country's host people as a whole has not been to our credit, either as politicians or as representatives of white Australia. I have said my piece.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, in supporting this motion today I wish to make a few brief observations on the wider issue of reconciliation. While all of us here agree that we need to have reconciliation, I wonder whether we really know what we mean by that. What would a reconciled Australia look like and how is it to be achieved? What sort of process is involved and how long will that take? I think that a motion like this is well and truly the first step. I have read some of the stolen generation report and I have to say, as a father of young children, that it made me sick to the stomach. I cannot even allow myself to think what it must have been like for some of those families. My wife and

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