Redfern Park Speech

The Redfern Park Speech, also known as the Redfern speech or Redfern address, was made on 10 December 1992 by then-prime minister of Australia, Paul Keating, at Redfern Park, which is in Redfern, an inner city suburb of Sydney, New South Wales. The speech dealt with the challenges faced by Indigenous Australians; both Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It is remembered as one of the most powerful speeches in Australian history, both for its rhetorical eloquence and for its groundbreaking admission of the negative impact of white settlement in Australia on its Indigenous peoples, culture and society, in the first acknowledgement by the Australian Government of the dispossession of its First Peoples. It has been described as "a defining moment in the nation's reconciliation with its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people". The spirit and name of Keating's Redfern speech was invoked by the Redfern Statement, a policy statement from a large group of Indigenous bodies issued on 9 June 2016, shortly before the 2016 Australian federal election. Among other things, the statement called for the creation of a new dedicated department to deliver programs for Indigenous advancement.

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