Today for the first time ever, the Aboriginal people of the Canberra region have welcomed our federal parliament onto their land. This has never happened before and in fact, Aboriginal people have protested the Australian parliament and it's decisions with a
'tent embassy' for many many years.
This historic welcome anticipates the apology our new Prime Minister is set to offer the Aboriginal people of this land tomorrow. An apology for all the injustice, murder and dispossession these people have suffered at the hands of white settlers right up to this very day.
You may say that an apology is only words. That it means nothing, and perhaps it will in the end, but in the spirit of the gravity with which this apology is being offered, I, along with many millions of my fellow Australians can only hope that this is the first big step on the path to
reconciliation.