It diminishes their significance.

Sorry Day was first held in May 1998, one year after the tabling of the report Bringing Them Home. Last week was the 25th anniversary of the tabling of that report, yet the Productivity Commission, in its latest report on child protection, reveals that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are still being removed at rates as high as at any time in recent memory.

That is even the case in Canberra, the nation's capital and a haven of prosperity and privilege. The Productivity Commission has revealed that on most measures, including the removal of Aboriginal children from their homes or the numbers of Aboriginal children under a care and protection order, the ACT has the second- or third-highest rates in Australia.

Rather than celebrate together, as a gesture of reconciliation, with singing and dancing and cultural displays, I think it would have been far more appropriate for, say, a vigil on Sorry Day, or the Day of Mourning. It would have helped us to reflect on, remember and mourn the Aboriginal lives destroyed, and which continue to be deeply affected, by the removal of Aboriginal children from their families. And, of course, to demand action from the government.

I would also have welcomed, on that day, a progress report from the ACT's Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Ms Rachel Stephen-Smith, on the implementation of the recommendations of the Aboriginal-led Our Booris, Our Way inquiry into child protection, including an explanation of the reasons for her failure, over four years after the review was commissioned, to fully implement not just every one of the Our Booris recommendations, but a single recommendation.

In similar vein it would be appropriate for all other ministers to report on the progress they claim to have made in addressing Aboriginal disadvantage.

I regularly and publicly highlight that we are going backwards, and indeed just this week have again called on the ACT government to respond to the latest devastating data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in relation to prisons in Australia, which confirmed that the ACT - yes that's correct, "progressive" Canberra - has not only the highest rates of imprisonment of Aboriginal men and women in Australia (an Aboriginal person in Canberra is 21 times more likely to be imprisoned than a non-Aboriginal person) but also the highest rate of recidivism, at 94 per cent, and the largest increase in Aboriginal incarceration over the past 10 years.

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Underpinning this system-wide failure to achieve equality, let alone close the gap, in outcomes for Aboriginal people even in the national capital, is the failure to respond to the continuing human consequences of the brutal occupation and colonisation of our land, the scattering of our communities and the suppression of our culture. Perhaps most distressing of all, for me, is that it has been estimated that up to 30 per cent, or one in every three Aboriginal children in Canberra, lives in poverty. Think about that for a minute as you try to understand why the ALP and the Greens voted together last year to defeat a Liberal Party motion in the Legislative Assembly for an inquiry into poverty.

Unfortunately, I see Reconciliation Day as little more than a distraction from both the gravity of the disadvantage endured by Aboriginal people, and the lack of an effective or genuine response by the ACT government to the needs of the Aboriginal community. In other words, and in the interests of truth-telling, I think it's a gimmick.

Turning out on one day a year to experience aspects of our culture, demonstrate empathy with Aboriginal people or concern about the injustice which we endure every day of our lives will not close the gap or achieve reconciliation in the ACT. To be frank, in my opinion, that will only be achieved through a royal commission.

It may perhaps make us all feel better, but as I noted in a discussion the other day on this issue, an old and dear friend of mine, the late Dr Puggy Hunter, on occasions when we lamented the lack of decisive action from government or meaningful and sustained support from non-Aboriginal peoples in our battles for justice, was wont to characterise events such as Reconciliation Day in the following terms: "They turn up, they hug a blackie and they move on."