Editor’s view: We all need to hear the truth of our past

The soon-to-be established truth-telling and healing inquiry will make for tough listening. But we owe it to the victims – and to our state’s future – to listen, writes the editor.

While none of us are personally guilty of the historic crimes against Queensland’s First Nations people that will no doubt be exposed by the soon-to-be established truth-telling and healing inquiry, as a community we share a responsibility to listen.

The three-year inquiry that, under laws passed yesterday by state parliament, is to be set up within three months will hold hearings investigating the evidence for historical wrongs such as massacres or the stolen generations. It will make for tough listening.

But we must. Reconciliation is not easy, and each generation has to be brave enough to do things that are uncomfortable at the time, but that push us ever closer to closure.

We saw this in 1993 when Paul Keating became the first prime minister to publicly acknowledge the “dispossessing” and “murders”, and that children were taken from their mothers. His speech came a year after the landmark Mabo decision that created the legal concept of native title, and six years before hundreds of thousands joined the Walks for Reconciliation.

It still took another eight years for the formal public government apology to the stolen generations. And here we are, 15 years further on, with our national walk towards reconciliation continuing.

The truths that this inquiry will confirm will be hard to hear. Most Queenslanders will have never previously learnt of the horrific stories that will be uncovered.

But we owe it to the victims – and to our state’s future – to listen.