Fed: Apology changes Australia Day forever: Hulls
22 Jan 2009 8:11 PM
MELBOURNE, Jan 22 AAP - The apology to Australia's indigenous people delivered by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd almost a year ago has changed the spirit of Australia Day forever, acting Victorian Premier Rob Hulls says.
Speaking at an Australia Day reception at Melbourne's Government House on Thursday evening, Mr Hulls said the January 26 celebrations would mark the nation's achievements but carried "sorrowful and sober connotations" for Aborigines, who were dispossessed when the First Fleet landed at Sydney Cove on January 26, 1788.
"The ambiguity of this sorrow and celebration, this duality, is one that this nation has really struggled to come to terms with fully in its relatively short life," Mr Hulls told the reception.
"Until early last year, we had not truly, formally, properly, begun to make right the wrongs of dispossession, we had not truly acknowledged that the land that is now known as Australia was founded on a denial of its first peoples.
"That's why I thank the prime minister for the moving and respectful apology he gave on behalf of the nation in federal parliament last February."
"Because of that simple act, this Australia Day is unlike any other.
"It's one which finds us at a new beginning, the first day of a truly collaborative journey to maturity.
"It's an Australia Day on which we can generally look, as the Prime Minister said last February, to a future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners with equal opportunities."
