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Great speeches have the power to not only inform, but to inspire and move people into change and action. On December 10, 1992, then Prime Minister of Australia, Paul Keating, delivered a moving speech about the plight of Indigenous Australians, at Redfern Park in Sydney, a neighbourhood with a historically large Aboriginal population. Recently, on February 13 2008, our current Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered a speech of a similar nature, an official apology to the stolen generations from parliament – an apology many people in Australia believed to be long overdue. These speeches were delivered over 15 years apart, and the political climate had changed dramatically, as over this time the Howard government had refused to apologize to the stolen generations, despite the calls to do so. Through using persuasive language devices such as references to history, repetition and metaphorical and emotive language, both these speeches served to highlight the plight and issues of aboriginal Australians, take responsibility for our role in their past and present struggles, encourage reconciliation and healing, and influence a widespread change in attitudes, to bring an end to racial conflict. Internationally, both speeches received attention, so were not only delivered to a direct national audience of both Indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, but to a much wider international audience. In doing this, they also served the purpose to illustrate to the rest of the world Australia’s strength and unity, with our values of equality, compion, reconciliation, and a “fair go”, being what shapes our identity.