We need an Australian republic and our own flag, but only Indigenous recognition will make us a truly great country, former prime minister Paul Keating has said during a wide-ranging discussion about his legacy.
“I always hoped and believed that Australia would be a great country,” the former Labor leader said of his vision for Australia when he became prime minister in 1991, after eight years as treasurer.
“No great country has a monarch of another country as their head of state,” Keating said at the Sydney Opera House, in conversation with ABC presenter Kerry O’Brien on Tuesday evening. “No great country has the flag of another country in the corner.
No country which is great … wants to live with the shame of the dispossession of its original people
"But more than that, but more than that, no country which is great, and calls itself great, wants to live with the shame of the dispossession of its original people.”
Indigenous dispossession and Australia’s colonial shame was a theme Keating returned to often during the lively 90-minute discussion, saying his greatest “emotional commitment” was the historic Mabo legislation that he ushered in which recognised the land rights of Australia’s indigenous people.
“We beat being marginalised, like South Africa was with apartheid, by the skin of our teeth,” Keating said.
Malcolm Turnbull could deliver a republic in his next term in office, Keating said, in a strong push for an Australian republic.
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