Episode description

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. We discuss the 1992 speech given by Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating, in which he acknowledged the moral responsibility his government should bear for the horrors committed against Indigenous Australians, with our guest Dr Rebe Taylor from Tasmania University.

We also look at two female orators from opposite ends of the political spectrum: Eva Peron, also known as Evita, from right-wing Argentina and Dolores Ibárruri, who was a communist and anti-fascist fighter in the Spanish Civil War.

There are also two speeches from the USA, one which is remembered as one of the great presidential speeches of all time and another which help to change the view of AIDS in the country.

Contributors: Don Watson - who wrote Paul Keating's Redfern speech in 1992.

Dr Rebe Taylor - Australian historian from the University of Tasmania.

Archive of Eva Peron - former first lady of Argentina.

Mary Fisher - who addressed the Republican Party convention in 1992.

David Eisenhower and Stephen Hess - Dwight Eisenhower's grandson and former speechwriter.

Archive of Delores Ibárruri - former anti-fascist fighter in the Spanish Civil War.

(Photo: Paul Keating Credit: Pickett/The Sydney Morning Herald/Fairfax Media via Getty Images)