ABSTRACT
Chapter 11 opens with the Bicentennial year of 1988. These celebrations were rejected by Indigenous peoples and their supporters who saw 1988 as a year of mourning. From the 1980s, Australia was reimagined as multicultural, as a potential republic and as part of Asia. Conservationists and environmentalist pressed their claims. Campaigns to protect ‘wilderness’ areas raised questions about the role of Indigenous people in conservation management; farmers and miners joined the conversation, sometimes uneasily. The Indigenous Land Rights movement intensified. The Mabo case (1992) rejected the legal fiction of terra nullius and the following year the federal government introduced the Native Title Act, fundamentally altering the legal relationship between Australians and the land. Past government policies were condemned in the Bringing Them Home report (1997) on the ‘Stolen Generations’, children forcibly removed from their Indigenous families. Yet unfinished reconciliation business remains in the Uluru Statement from the Heart (2017). As Asia flourished, Australia turned towards the region. Prime Minister Paul Keating (1991–6) spoke of obtaining ‘security in Asia, not from Asia’. Australians considered becoming a republic but rejected the idea by referendum. Keating supported Australia’s creative industries but, facing recession, many Australians were more concerned about keeping their jobs. Incoming prime minister John Howard (1996–2007) was reassuring – under his watch people could remain ‘relaxed and comfortable’. Howard reinforced ideas of British heritage and joined America’s ‘War on Terror’ and the war in Afghanistan.
