E&OE...
Thank you very much. First of all, may I pay tribute to the Ngunnawal people, the traditional owners of the land on which we gather and thank Matilda House for her customary warm and enthusiastic welcome. And Joyce, can I say, you've stolen the show. My fellow Australians, and I acknowledge particularly the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, the Leader of the Opposition and to Jackie Huggins and Mark Leibler, who have done such outstanding work in being the co-chairman of Reconciliation Australia in organising today's event.
Today Australia remembers one of the finest and fairest days in our history. The 1967 referendum has carried its own mythology down the years, portrayed variously as extending citizenship rights or the right to vote for indigenous Australians. The truth, as we know, is a little more prosaic. Aboriginal Australians were to be counted in the census and the Commonwealth given formal power to make laws for indigenous Australians. To discount the power of myth is, however, to miss the larger meaning of this historic moment 40 years ago. Myth-making has always been part of how a country becomes a nation. And if it spurs a nation on to a better one, well so much the better.
On the 27th of May 1967, Australians said in a loud and collective voice that indigenous Australians deserved a fair go; that the first Australians should not be second-class citizens in their own country. This was the most resoundingly successful referendum ever in Australia. We recall today the bipartisan spirit in which it was carried. More importantly, we remember this as a campaign of grassroots democracy, a peoples' campaign in which indigenous and other Australians worked side by side.
Today, our nation honours the patriots who pricked our national conscience 40 years ago. We particularly honour those here from the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, as well as friends and colleagues who have since passed on. We pay tribute to all who took up the cause; gathering signatures, raising awareness, persuading politicians and challenging prejudice.
The 1967 referendum was a landmark in the shaping indigenous identity. It also helped bring many remarkable individuals like Charlie Perkins and Faith Bandler to national prominence. In a way, Neville Bonner's public life began that day. Legend has it that my dear old departed friend was helping a Liberal distribute how-to-vote cards, advocating a Yes vote, when a Labor man told him he should be handing out ALP material, also advocating a Yes vote. Never one to be pigeon-holed, Neville promptly joined the Liberal Party.
The last thing that a Charlie Perkins, a Faith Bandler or a Neville Bonner would want is for today to be just a national pat on the back. Too many of the hopes expressed so resoundingly and genuinely 40 years ago remain unrealised. As Prime Minister I'm very conscious of that.
This is a moment to reflect on the wider meaning of what Australians were trying to say in 1967, including about indigenous rights. I recognise the importance of rights to indigenous aspiration. I recognise the special status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as our first peoples with 60,000 years of history, the starting point for our nation's history which every Australian child should learn. I recognise too the spiritual importance of connectedness to country and of indigenous languages. And with others I celebrate the way indigenous culture is now so central to Australia's cultural expression to the world.
But in recognising all this, I come back to what I think the Australian people were trying to get at 40 years ago. The right of an Aboriginal Australian to live on remote communal land and to speak an indigenous language is no right at all if it is accompanied by grinding poverty, overcrowding, poor health, community violence and alienation from mainstream Australian society. Reconciliation has little meaning in a narrative of separateness from that society. We've spent a lot of time these past decades analysing the causes of indigenous failure. In a way, that's been part of the problem. We should have spent more time thinking long and hard about the causes of indigenous success.
This single question; what does indigenous success look like must be our starting point. It's at the heart of what we as a government are trying to achieve in areas like housing, health, employment, business development and education. Part of our collective frustration is that there is so much common ground on what indigenous success looks like.
We can all agree, I think, that it means a healthy child born into a loving family. It means a young boy or girl at school and ready to learn. It means a safe community. It means a young man or woman discovering a sense of self in a culture of responsibility, enriched by his or her indigenous heritage. It means indigenous Australians enjoying the same opportunities as other Australians. It must never mean reconciling ourselves to lower expectations for 30 or 20 or 10 per cent of indigenous people.
This vision can only be realised in a culture of shared responsibility. Sometimes this will demand more from government; more listening, more responsiveness on the ground and, where it can make a difference, more resources. And I simply note that real spending on indigenous-specific programmes has increased by 42 per cent since this Government came to office, and will reach a record $3.5 billion in the coming financial year.
But for indigenous success to shine through sometimes, frankly, it demands less from government and more from indigenous civil society; from the little platoons between the individual and the state. Like the family, the school community, the elders, the voluntary sector and indigenous leadership. Only then will we be able to genuinely marry the best of government intentions and resources with the wisdom of local knowledge.
I come from a political tradition that values such knowledge; that values independence and personal responsibility, as well as freedom, equality and civic duty. It's here that the spirit of 1967 carries so many lessons for Australians today. As Jackie Huggins has said, the movement for change in 1967 didn't start just because a government wanted it to. It started because enough of the Australian people wanted it.
Under the umbrella of Reconciliation Australia, this same spirit is inspiring more and more of our people and companies to the cause of Reconciliation; a very Australian, bottom-up, do it yourself Reconciliation. Not in a way that absolves government of its responsibilities. But in a positive way that affirms this as a cause that begins with people.
I sometimes wish our country had its own Alexis de Tocqueville, the great French chronicler of 19th Century American democracy. He or she would have reminded us long ago that a great democracy doesn't rest on laws or political proclamations or government targets. It rests most solidly on what he called