Honest conversations about race, reconciliation and responsibility challenge us to confront our past and its legacy and welcome new beginnings.

As Australia faces a possible poll over race issues, Mike Brown reports on grassroots action to bring together indigenous Australians and the wider community.

At one week old, Avis was taken away from her mother by the Aboriginal Protection Board to be brought up by the United Aborigines' Mission at the Colebrook Home, some 500 miles away in Adelaide.

Australians have grown up believing that Aborigines were altruistically taken out of wretched conditions, to be offered the immense benefits of white society. Now a National Inquiry was describing the practice in terms of a horrifying crime.

Australia's human rights record would greatly inhibit our role in the Asia-Pacific region. 'We need to go into the region with clean hands.'

Australia will celebrate the Millennium with a cocktail of hope spiked with a potent brew of insecurity and anxiety.by Mike Brown

Lois O'Donoghue, one of Australia's best known public figures, did not know her mother until she was 35. Mike Brown tells the story of her extraordinary life.

Since becoming Australia's Governor-General in 1996, Sir William Deane has spoken compellingly about Australia's social needs. These remarks are taken from his address to the Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS) in November 1997, with the last two paragraphs from his Vincent Lingiari Memorial Lecture in August 1996.

Our present way of life is not viable

See friends before they've had time to get their pictures developed