Within white Australia, there was a growing movement for what was known as reconciliation - a movement that peaked with millions marching in 2000 to demand the government say sorry for past injustices.
Under Howard, federal government support for black Australia slowly dried up. Services were slashed, native title restricted.
Logging is an industry driven solely by greed. It prospers with government support and subsidies, and it is accelerating its rate of destruction, so that Tasmania is now the largest hardwood chip exporter in the world.
There's always been something deeply disturbing about the Abbott government's attitude to women.
Through the 1990s, the fracturing of Tasmanian Aboriginal politics was given impetus by the ongoing corruption of a number of black organisations started under federal government programmes, with large amounts of public money being lost.
In 1995, the Paul Keating Labor government commissioned an inquiry into the forcible removal of Aboriginal children.
The only accusation of Gillian Triggs with the ring of truth is that she has lost the confidence of the government - but then, so too has Tony Abbott.