SPEECH BY
EVELYN SCOTT

CHAIRPERSON
COUNCIL FOR ABORIGINAL RECONCILIATION

AT THE PRESENTATION OF A RECONCILIATION AWARD TO
THE KORMILDA STARS and UNITING EDUCATION

KORMILDA COLLEGE, DARWIN

THURSDAY 18 MAY 2000

Thank you Mr Hunter.

Distinguished guests , students, staff and members of the Kormilda College community, Ladies and Gentlemen. I would like to start today by acknowledging and paying my respects to the Larakia people, the traditional owners of the land we are meeting on today. I am very pleased to be here today to make a very special award to Kormilda STARS and Uniting Education.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation is very strict about who receives the kind of award that I’m going to present here today. The question of whether to make such an award is a formal item of business for a full meeting of our 25-member Council. And since the first round of project-based awards, associated with the Australian Reconciliation Convention in 1997, you can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times we’ve approved an award such as this. That’s because of the nature of the reconciliation movement in Australia. There are millions of Australians who are truly committed to the cause of reconciliation between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the wider community. There are tens of thousands of people working hard, in their communities, faith groups, schools and workplaces, to promote and achieve the goals of reconciliation. Council believes, therefore, that only a very special contribution should be recognised by the granting of a Reconciliation Award. I’m delighted to be here today to celebrate one such very special contribution.

The initiative of the Kormilda College STARS, and the continuing support of Uniting Education, have started something big, something highly significant in Australia’s progress towards genuine reconciliation. The first National Youth Reconciliation Convention, held here in 1998, made all of Australia sit up and take notice that the young people of this country are serious about reconciliation. The convention made it clear that young people believed that reconciliation can and must take place in the hearts and minds of ordinary Australians. But it also delivered a clear message that governments, and other institutions with the power to influence public events, must act to remove the barriers that still stand between us and true reconciliation. And it showed that the understanding that can be gained when we share our cultures leads to the sort of respect that can change our whole society for the better. The conclusions of that first convention gave important input into the Council’s discussions about what should be included in the original Draft Document for Reconciliation we released for discussion a year ago. Of course it’s now history that the wonderful success of that first youth convention led to a demand, from students themselves, that the event become a regular part of the public affairs calendar. It’s a tribute to the enlightened approach of the supporters of the convention – in particular the Uniting Church – that this became a reality with the staging of the second convention in Geelong last September. As with the Kormilda convention, the work done at Geelong produced constructive, forthright suggestions about the direction the reconciliation process should take. And of course the timing of the Geelong convention was right in the middle of Council’s nationwide process of consultation on our Draft Document.

As I’ve said before, the Geelong Convention document was one of the best presented and comprehensive submissions we received during all our consultations. It was very useful to us as we worked on the final Document Towards Reconciliation that we’ll formally present to the nation at Corroboree 2000. I’d like to say just a few words about Corroboree 2000 before presenting this award.

We strongly believe that the events of Corroboree 2000, in Sydney the weekend after next, will be a major step forward for reconciliation. On the Saturday, the formal presentation of our document to the people of Australia will achieve two key results. It will be a celebration of what this country has achieved on the path to reconciliation since the Council started work nine years ago. And it will provide a fresh and more powerful focus on what still needs to be done to reach the point of genuine reconciliation.

On the Sunday, the people’s walk across Sydney Harbour Bridge will reinforce both those messages, and it will demonstrate as never before the strength of commitment and support for reconciliation among ordinary Australians. Like the statements from the youth conventions, it will also tell all our governments and institutions, organisations and communities, as well as individuals, that we all still have work to do, both on the symbolic and the practical side of reconciliation. I hope for Australia’s sake that these messages are given and received in a wholehearted way. And I hope that you people at Kormilda will see in Corroboree 2000 an exciting national extension of the pioneering work you’ve done in establishing the STARS network and the National Youth Reconciliation Convention.

Thank you.