PATRICK DODSON was there on the day, 30 years ago, that prime minister Bob Hawke promised aboriginals a treaty that would at last acknowledge their rights. At the time Mr Dodson was the manager of one of the many “land councils” that aboriginals had formed in an effort to reclaim their traditional lands. He helped Mr Hawke draft his declaration. “It was a breath of fresh air that at long last Australia was prepared to sit down and discuss the way in which the country was taken from first-nations people,” the senator from the Labor party recalls.
Mr Hawke said that negotiations could be concluded within three years, but his plans were scuttled by the conservative opposition. “The whole notion of a treaty got pushed further and further to the background,” says Mr Dodson. Today, aboriginals are no closer to an agreement with the federal government than they were in 1988. Instead, the current conservative coalition had offered to hold a...Continue reading
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