What Is Jeff Kennett Speech Against Aboriginal Australia

Introduction

In 1993, the former Victorian Premier, Jeff Kennett, stated that ‘from good we gain pride; from the bad we learn; and from the totality of our past we gain our identity'. In his speech, Kennett speaks about his ideologies of republicanism and his “excitement” for the potential for the nation to position itself for the future. The quote is derived from a section of his speech, where Kennett is talking about Australia’s history with the United Kingdom and how it is best forgotten. He states that whilst this section of Australian history is best forgotten, Australia, as a nation, cannot pick and choose its history. Without this cultural inheritance, specifically, the adoption of the United Kingdom’s constitutional and legal systems,

The situation no longer directly affected the Non-Indigenous Australians, as Non-Indigenous Australians had thought that the process of reconciliation was complete, with the matters of the Indigenous Australians now handed over to the Australian Government. Over the course of the next 10 years, the nation became apathetic towards indigenous affairs, however public interest was revived in 1982 when Eddie Mabo, an Indigenous land rights activist and several others challenged action against the State of Queensland and the Commonwealth of Australia in the High Court over Indigenous land rights in the Murray Islands. This gained massive media coverage, as it was the first time that the issue of Indigenous land rights had been raised at a federal level. At this time, it was unexpected, as many, again, believed that the altering of the constitution had closed the seal on reconciliation. It was not a high priority for the Government who, at the time, was trying to meet the political demands driven by the public to fix the Australian economy, which whilst booming, was leaving thousands unemployed, with high-interest rates, a catalyst for impending disaster. The Commonwealth was completely unprepared, and as the Mabo story gained traction, apathy started to fade away, knocking down any political policy the government had set out to conquer at the beginning of its term. On 3 June, 1992, the High Court of Australia rejected the doctrine of terra nullius and recognised Indigenous land rights for the first time. In doing so, the Commonwealth had admitted that the Indigenous peoples had lived in Australia for thousands of years, that their land had slowly dissolved into the colonies as they grew, underwriting the Australian identity. This lack