Olive branch comes a little late

IT is belated, bold and a surprise - John Howard has pledged a fifth-term referendum to achieve symbolic reconciliation with Australia's indigenous people.

IT is belated, bold and a surprise - John Howard has pledged a fifth-term referendum to achieve symbolic reconciliation with Australia's indigenous people.

Howard seeks to reopen the reconciliation debate on a new basis, convinced that his emergency intervention in the Northern Territory has "overturned 30 years of attitudes and thinking on indigenous policy".

In effect, Howard offers Aboriginal Australians and his political opponents a new deal: the chance to achieve a national consensus on reconciliation. This is the significance of his comparison with the 1967 referendum.

This is not just about indigenous people. It is about Howard's political needs on election eve. In an exercise of national leadership he both unveils a future vision and concedes his own "share of the blame" for past mistakes.

Howard's initiative seeks to strike a new balance. He wants not the reconciliation model of the early 1990s but of 2007. This is the Howard model. Convinced that his Territory intervention is a landmark, Howard wants to unlock this "overwhelming" public support for what he calls a "new reconciliation". By accepting his own mistakes, Howard offers to meet Aboriginal Australians on new political ground. This is the real meaning of his speech.

The new ground is Howard's territory - where individual rights and national sovereignty prevail over group rights; where a balance exists between rights and responsibilities and between practical and symbolic progress; where the unique culture of indigenous Australians is recognised within an indivisible rather than a separated nation; and where the indigenous people find their future in the mainstream economy.

Howard promises action within 100 days of his re-election and a referendum within 18 months. He discerns in the nation "a rare and unexpected convergence of opinion on this issue" between opposing sides.

He may be right. But the sense of grievance still runs deep from his past attitudes and his ongoing refusal to apologise.

Howard will make his vision of reconciliation into an election theme. It is another potential wedge that Kevin Rudd, surely, will counter via endorsement.