E/CN.4/2002/24/Add.1 page 24 process and the conversion of the anti-racism programmes into “Living in Harmony” programmes more geared to assimilation goals are perceived as encroachments on multiculturalism. 50. This new approach is said to have created divisions within Australian society by setting those who regard themselves as belonging to “mainstream Australia”, and are mainly from an English-speaking background, against the others. Mr. John Howard, the Prime Minister, is said to favour assimilation more strongly than the preservation of different identities within Australia; he has, for example, stated that “Australia made an error in abandoning its former policy of assimilation and integration in favour of multiculturalism”. 51. Furthermore, the full realization of multiculturalism presupposes the recognition and elimination of the far-reaching effects which European colonization has left on Australian society. As Senator Aden Ridgeway pointed out, the persistent and effective destruction of Aboriginal societies has created sociological and psychological problems which manifest themselves through marginalization, inferiority complexes, mental illness, alcoholism, drug use and many other social evils among the Aboriginals. Australia’s tragic past has been given prominence only recently but is now openly described in the works of historians such as Mr. Henry Reynolds, who, in his book “Why Weren’t We Told?” (Penguin Books, 1999), questions the reasons why the violence which accompanied the occupation of Australia was hidden for so long. Similarly, it was not until 1997 that the report “Bringing them home”, the result of an inquiry into the abduction of Aboriginal children for assimilation purposes, shed a harsh light on this past through passages such as the following: “Violent battle over rights to land, food and water sources characterized race relations in the nineteenth century. Throughout this conflict Indigenous children were kidnapped and exploited for their labour. Indigenous children were still being ‘run down’ by Europeans in the northern areas of Australia in the early twentieth century. Government and missionaries also targeted Indigenous children for removal from their families. Their motives were to ‘inculcate European values and work habits in children, who would then be employed in service to the colonial settlers’.” 52. There is no doubt that time is needed to eliminate the consequences of these practices and many others which the Special Rapporteur will refrain from mentioning out of a concern not to stir up the past and thereby jeopardize an already difficult process of reconciliation. But above all, what is needed is a genuine political will and sincere support for change on the part of the whole of Australian society. The achievements resulting from action to combat discrimination against the Aboriginals since 1967 - notably the calling into question of the legal fiction of terra nullius in the Mabo v. State of Queensland judgement - should therefore be preserved and reinforced. In addition, the successes and failures should be evaluated, but above all the voices of the victims and their descendants should be heeded. But the increasingly frequent reactions against reference to the misdeeds of colonization - the rejection of “black-armband history” - are causing concern to many interlocutors, who wonder whether this attitude is not prejudicial to genuine reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous inhabitants. The Special Rapporteur shares these doubts and concerns, but hails the significant progress made in action to combat racism and racial discrimination against Aboriginals.