Thirty years on, the Uluru Statement from the Heart campaign can draw inspiration from Mabo

Celuia Mabo, the youngest daughter of Indigenous activist Eddie Mabo, at the Wave Hill Walk Off commemoration in Northern Territory, in 2016. Photograph: Helen Davidson/The Guardian

A notable early similarity between the Labor governments of Anthony Albanese and Paul Keating is a focus on Australia’s First Nations peoples. For Albanese, it’s been a commitment to deliver the Uluru Statement from the Heart. For Keating, it was embracing the high court’s Mabo decision.

Mabo removed the lie of terra nullius from Australia’s legal narrative and replaced it with a common-law recognition of the title to the Australian continent of its First Nations peoples. The decision was simultaneously hugely profound and yet legally modest. Its significance was a potential recasting of the Australian story and as an enabler of honest dialogue about the ongoing relationship between First Nations and the wider Australian community.