2026 Federation University Annual Reconciliation Lecture

The National Centre for Reconciliation, Truth, and Justice warmly invites you to the Fourth Annual Federation University Reconciliation Lecture ‘Beyond Reconciliation: What the Referendum Revealed’

In the aftermath of the 2023 referendum, there has been a restoration of the status quo: an anaemic reconciliation project, a persistently unmet Closing the Gap framework, and a turn toward self-referential and non-consequential truth processes. This restored federal settlement is institutionally unchallenging and makes few demands on the state. Truth advocacy predicated on therapeutic categories of healing and trauma individualises harm and displaces questions of state responsibility. As such, it functions to re-inscribe the conditions the Uluru Statement from the Heart sought to transform, substituting safe and politically palatable alternatives for structural reform.

Against this backdrop, this lecture reflects on the 2023 referendum as a moment of political loss that sharpens, rather than diminishes, the case for constitutional recognition of First Nations peoples. The referendum did not mark the exhaustion of reform; it exposed the depth of the political, institutional and civic work required to secure it.