Unless we confront our history, unless we deal with it and move forward, not with recrimination, and move forward then we're always going to have the problems.

You always felt not happy about things, but you just couldn't put your finger on what was going.

I'm a great reader of history. I love - I have been reading history since I was a kid, and learning the lessons globally of what happened with people.

I can convert anyone.

If you don't learn about each other, you do not understand each other, and you don't hide warts and all, both sides, then you're forever going to repeat history.

We were very - we were a working family, and my father had this very simple philosophy, simple working class approach. If you spoke to my father and said, "Mr Smith across the road, what do you think of Mr Smith?", he'd only - he'd only say a couple of words. He'd say, "He's a worker", and that meant this bloke got up in the morning, went out, worked, brought his money home, fed his wife and kids, housed them, got them to school, educated them, made sure they were safe and all that. It had so much connotations to it.

Reconciliation will not work if it puts a higher value on symbolic gestures and overblown promises rather than the practical needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in areas like health, housing, education and employment.