Cirrus@Austlit

'The 2008 national Apology to the Stolen Generations was met with jubilant acclamation from across the country, generating a collective wave of optimism that Australia could be a better place that it had been, even if this was a ‘largely symbolic’ event. Nine years on, the Apology’s promise to make Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians equal partners by ‘closing the gap’ in health and life-expectation has spectacularly failed in all areas bar one, while the nation stalls yet again on questions of formal recognition of the first Australians in its handling of the campaign for a referendum on constitutional change that would ‘end the exclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from the Australian Constitution and deal with racial discrimination in it’ (Commonwealth of Australia, Constitutional Recognition).' (Introduction)