Abstract:
When the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation
handed its Final Report to the Prime Minister in
December 2000, John Howard stated that
"[r]econciliation is now an unstoppable force".
Although some media commentators reported this
observation as an embrace of reconciliation, it is
perhaps more accurate to say that the Prime Minister
acknowledged that, far from resolved at the moment
that the Council's ten-year legislative tenure was
ending, reconciliation was a matter certain to remain
prominently on the national political agenda.
The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation,
through its recommendations and Final Report, has
sought to set out a pathway to a better relationship
between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
What I want to explore here are two of the Council's
recommendations with public law implications and
discuss what the future of those recommendations
might be in order to reveal some of the obstacles and
challenges for achieving reconciliation as the Council
envisaged it.
