The Government's mission is to build a strong and fair Australia capable of meeting the new challenges of the 21st century.

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future. We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

Compassion is not a dirty word. Compassion is not a sign of weakness. In my view, compassion in politics and in public policy is in fact a hallmark of great strength. It is a hallmark of a society which has about it a decency which speaks for itself.

The Apology opened the opportunity for a new relationship based on mutual respect and mutual responsibility between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. Because without mutual respect and mutual responsibility, the truth is we can achieve very little.

Compassion is not a dirty word.. it's time we rehabilitated compassion into the national political vocabulary of this great nation of ours.

But Australia faces additional regional and global challenges also crucial to our nation's future - climate change, questions of energy and food security, the rise of China and the rise of India. And we need a strong system of global and regional relationships and institutions to underpin stability.

We have a prime minister, I'm the foreign minister, I'm trying to get on with the job of doing Australia's foreign policy.