ARM MEDIA RELEASE - 2 November 2005

Republic an opportunity for nation-building

Professor Larissa Behrendt will tonight deliver the 2005 National Republican Lecture at the Wesley Music Centre in Canberra.

In her lecture, The Australian Dream: Indigenous Peoples in an Australian Republic, Professor Behrendt will advocate a vision of civil society to inspire the movement towards an Australian republic, and in turn address the unfinished business of reconciliation.

"Australia will not mature into a just society until the nation building processes have included Aboriginal people. Evolving into an Australian republic is a moment that offers this opportunity. And it is a moment at which the many other sectors of the Australian community that were excluded from the original nation-building exercise can place their stamp on our country," Professor Behrendt will argue.

Her address will argue that the issues of becoming a republic and of achieving reconciliation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders "are the two major stepping-stones that Australia must reach to in order to achieve a just society."

Larissa Behrendt is Professor of Law and Indigenous Studies and Director of the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology, Sydney and Director of Ngiya, the National Institute of Indigenous Law, Policy and Practice. She won the 2002 David Unaipon Award for her novel 'Home' and is a Director of the Sydney Writer's Festival.

The lecture is open to the public and entry is free of charge.