National Reconciliation Week

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD (15:04): Supplementary: in the government's view, what specific actions and steps need to be taken and completed in order for reconciliation to be achieved?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Attorney-General, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (15:04): I thank the honourable member for his question and it is a really good question. I don't think there are three things or 10 things or a list that has to be done and reconciliation is definitely achieved. It is a process and it is not something that you tick a few things and everything is completed and changed.

I think I might just reflect on how far we have come, just in the years I've been involved in my lifetime. I know that one of the great benefits of reconciliation that I've seen over my lifetime is a shift in attitudes of non-Aboriginal Australians taking pride in sharing this land with the oldest living culture that the world has today.

I think that also has allowed many Aboriginal people to feel more comfortable taking pride in who they are and their culture and I think those have been some of the great benefits of the reconciliation process. So in answer to the honourable member's question, there are many more steps we can take.

I think policies like the Stolen Generations Reparation Scheme and when South Australia was, I think, the second parliament to say sorry under former Premier and Aboriginal affairs minister Dean Brown in 1997 after the Bringing Them Home report was tabled are demonstrable steps in the process of reconciliation. I don't have a list to say this is what we do and it's done, but much of what we do in this place in Aboriginal Affairs contributes to that process.