Karen Middleton
Karen Middleton has worked as a political journalist in the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery for almost 20 years. Spending most of her career in newspapers, Karen worked for The Canberra Times, Melbourne Herald, Herald-Sun, Sunday Herald-Sun and The Age before joining The West Australian as its political correspondent in 1997. She moved to television in early 2005, when she was appointed as Chief Political Correspondent for SBS. She has been a regular panellist on ABC TV's weekly political talk show, Insiders, since its inception in 2001. Karen is also a regular commentator on commercial and ABC radio and writes a weekly column for The Canberra Times. Currently serving her third year as the Press Gallery's elected president, she is also a co-founder of the Press Gallery's infamous a'capella group, The House Howlers, who specialise in satirising politics in song.
Karen's longstanding personal commitment to reconciliation was reinforced in January, 1988, when she participated in the Uniting Church's ground-breaking "Costly Reconciliation" project in Arnhem Land. As part of the project, Top End Indigenous communities hosted 100 young non-Indigenous Australians, entrusting them with their stories and offering extraordinary insight into their daily lives and the ongoing struggle to improve the status of their people. The project was designed as an alternative to the nation's official activities marking the bicentenary of white settlement.
What a reconciled Australia looks like to me.
When it's no longer remarkable that an Indigenous Australian should become a surgeon, or a State Government minister, or a Federal Government minister (when will that be?), or the lead in Othello, or the winner of a talent quest; when those achievers only attract public attention for their performance; when the expectation of decent services in remote communities or even certain inner-city suburbs isn't dismissed as impossible or just unreasonable; when young black men aren't all assumed to be drunks, rapists, and thieves; when, by being shown basic human respect and dignity and given opportunity and encouragement and support, fewer young black men and young white men and young men of all colours turn into drunks, rapists and thieves; when more of those young men - and women - grow up knowing that with hard work and determination they can do and be anything they want; when that ambition comes as naturally as breathing; when fear and hopelessness and suspicion and prejudice and anger and mass inertia are replaced by strategic thinking and collaboration and independence and understanding and colourless pride and action (on both sides); when there's official acknowledgment that present injustices can only be overcome and future injustices averted when there's a genuine apology for the sanctioned injustices of the past; ... then we will be on our way to being reconciled. And life will be better for all of us.
Karen Middleton
