I totally reject the allegations by Mr Bob Hawke, reported in today’s Age newspaper that I have promoted racial prejudice and engaged in “politics of the lowest order” on aborigines.
Mr Hawke is entitled to have differences of view with me on how the reconciliation process is handled.
He is wrong, however, to impugn my motives. I repudiate his claim that I have never been a supporter of non-white people.
I have never, as he has suggested, “insinuated to the Australian people that every home of every Australian all over this country was in danger or under threat from some open-ended land grab by aborigines”.
The reality was that after the Wik decision of the High Court there was legitimate concern within the Australian community that led to the passage of the Government’s amendments to the Native Title Act which were trenchantly opposed by Mr Hawke’s Labor Party.
Mr Hawke also implied that I had derided and abused his government for its opposition to apartheid in South Africa.
That claim is also totally wrong. As Leader of the Opposition in the 1980s I strongly supported the Hawke government’s condemnation of apartheid in South Africa.
Like many other people at the time, however, I was critical of economic sanctions against South Africa.
I have never, in any way, been sympathetic to apartheid.
29 June 2000