Tim Watts
Tim Watts is a public policy and strategy consultant with The Nous Group (www.nousgroup.com.au). He has expertise in water policy, aged care and corporate governance.
Active as a founder and board member of technology-driven businesses and not-for-profit organisations, Tim is currently a director of the sustainable transport company Flexicar (www.flexicar.com.au) and the policy thinktank OzProspect (www.ozprospect.org) Tim's writing on public policy and economics has appeared in The Age, Australian Financial Review and the Boston Globe. His first book Australia's Population Challenge was published by Penguin in 2003.
He lives in Melbourne with his partner and three-year-old old son.
What a reconciled Australia looks like to me.
Reconciliation for me is a call for change - a call for a more mature and more just Australian society.
A more mature Australian society would actively recognise and celebrate the fact that the land on which we all live has a 40,000 year history of human settlement. The achievements, tragedies and learnings of Indigenous Australians are as important a part of our heritage as Cook's voyages and Gallipoli.
A more just Australian society would provide Indigenous Australians with the same opportunities to pursue healthy, happy and sustainable lives available to other members of the community.
Change is never easy. Growing up, maturing involves acknowledging past mistakes and forging sometimes uncomfortable new directions. Choosing to provide lasting equality of opportunity for the disadvantaged is harder than focusing on the needs of the already well off.
But mature societies like mature individuals have a richness of perspective and a confidence which comes from taking the long view. If more Australians had a deeper understanding of Aboriginal history, language and knowledge of the environment we would be better equipped to tackle the big challenges facing us today. If the day to day experience of life in Australia included more stories, rituals and events from Indigenous perspectives, it would be a more vibrant and rich place.
That we are still debating whether to make the investments and to put in the work needed to address the tragic health and education problems facing some Indigenous Australians is hard to believe. We are not the home of the 'fair go' until we get this right. And there are economic as well as moral, reasons for doing so. The history of the 20th century shows us that most successful nations tend to be those which are able to achieve genuine equality of opportunity because they benefit from the energy and ingenuity of the greatest number of their members.
We have an opportunity to make this period in Australian history known as the reconciliation years - a period of maturing and of an egalitarian spirit towards Indigenous people. I hope we can do it.
Tim Watts
