National Reconciliation Week 2020: In This Together

 

National Reconciliation Week is celebrated each year from 27 May – 3 June and is a time for all Australians to learn about our shared histories, cultures, and achievements, and to explore how each of us can contribute to achieving reconciliation in Australia. 

The theme of this year’s National Reconciliation Week is In This Together, which highlights that we must continue to progress towards national healing and greater equality, through reflection, acknowledgment and action. In 2020, Reconciliation Australia marks twenty years of shaping Australia’s journey towards a more just, equitable and reconciled nation. National Reconciliation Week is an important time to reflect on the strengthened relationships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-Indigenous peoples.

National Reconciliation Week marks two significant milestones – the Referendum of 27 May 1967, a turning point for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander human rights, and the landmark Mabo Decision passed down on 3 June 1992, which overturned the legal fiction of terra nullius and paved the path forward for Indigenous land rights.

 

Supporting LGBTI equal rights 

 

 

Australia believes that nobody should be discriminated against for who they are or who they love. More tolerant and inclusive societies benefit everyone.

On this basis, Australia joined 44 Embassies, Diplomatic Missions, and International Organisations based in Vienna, Austria, in support and recognition of the International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOBIT) on 17 May 2020.  For the full statement, please refer here.

To mark the 2020 Pride events in Slovakia, Australia joined 37 Embassies based in or accredited to Slovakia, and issued a statement to reaffirm its commitment to protecting and defending the human rights of all. For the full statement, please refer here.

In Hungary, the Australian Embassy joined the statement of 30 Diplomatic Missions and 9 cultural institutes in support of the 25th Budapest Pride Festival taking place from 14 to 23 August 2020.  Please read the joint statement issued on 17 August here.

 

Anzac Day 2020: Standing apart, but together as one

In line with the current COVID-19 restrictions, the Australian and New Zealand Embassies in Vienna commemorated Anzac Day at home this year.  The Embassy has produced a video on what Anzac Day means to Australian and New Zealand communities and friends. For the video, please see here, or visit Ambassador Richard Sadleir’s Twitter. We would like to thank all the Australian musicians in Austria for their participation and recording of “Abide By Me” for the video. 

 

Caption: On 25 April, colleagues at the Australian Embassy in Vienna stood at dawn to lower the Australian flag and remember the fallen.  

 

More information about Anzac Day, its history, meaning and stories that have shaped the Anzac spirit is available on Australia’s Anzac Portal and on the website of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.       

Ode of Remembrance
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Lest we forget.