Keeping alive the Keating legacy

 ‘The Redfern Address,’ delivered by then Prime Minister Paul Keating in Redfern Park, is now considered to be one of Australia’s most unforgettable speeches, thanks to an ABC-led competition reports Ben Falkenmire in the South Sydney Herald of September 2007.

Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ topped the ABC’s Most Unforgettable Speeches project with the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ by Jesus coming second and Keating’s Redfern speech a clear third.

Such was the tenacity of Keating’s speech and what playwright David Williamson once described as “head-on courage that’s no longer heard on the hustings,” that it caught the attention of one Casey Bennetto.

Anyone who has attended Keating! The Musical will identify Bennetto as its playwright. The SSH caught up with him just prior to Keating! being awarded Best Musical at the Helpmann Theatre Awards in August, with Neil Armfeld picking up Best Direction of a Musical. Despite the song ‘Redfern,’ a bossa-nova referring to Keating’s speech, being added to Act 2 when the production came to Sydney, Bennetto talked fondly of Keating’s now-famous speech. A commemorative plaque in Redfern Park marks the occasion, according to a City spokesperson. The SSH has not sighted this plaque and failed to locate it, the search muddled by current upgrades. The question begs whether this plaque should be transformed into something more grandiose to mark the speech’s new-found acclamation in the annals of Australia’s political and cultural history.

“Concrete action is always better, but symbols are important,” said Bennetto.

“As long as it is something that comes from the Indigenous community rather than something that is created for it.”

A local Labor Party member is adamant something more edifying should be built. “It is a sacred spot for the Aboriginal community and for the residents of Redfern, and something the whole neighbourhood can be enormously proud of.”

City of Sydney confrmed that the existing plaque would remain intact during the upgrade of Redfern Park.

Photo: John Paoloni - Redfern Park 1992: Vic Smith (Mayor of South Sydney), Paul Keating and Robert Tickner (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs)

Source South Sydney Herald September 2007 - www.southsydneyherald.com.au