Rhetoric of Redress: Australian Political Speeches and Settler Citizens' Historical Consciousness

This article traces the convergence of state redress and educational construction citizenship from 1990s onwards in Australia. It examines how successive settler political leaders used education a historical consciousness—settler citizens’ relation to past, present future—as core strategy seek resolution problematic national past. The key speeches that sought mediate nation's past light growing international domestic pressures, including Keating's 1992 Redfern Park speech Rudd's 2008 Apology Stolen Generations, one conservative backlash: Howard's 1996 Menzies Lecture. subsequent policy agenda apology an Australian Curriculum inaugurate new era history. That program was embodied by figure future citizen positioned reckon with unjust task inscribed inaugural history curriculum.