Eight years on from his historic apology to the Stolen Generations, former prime minister Kevin Rudd says Australia needs to face up to the fact that it has a racism problem.
In a speech marking the anniversary, Mr Rudd said he was perhaps naive when he said five years ago that "racism was not at work" in the nation.
"Perhaps I was just wishing that the better angels of our nature had begun to prevail in a newly reconciled Australia," said in speech at NSW parliament on Friday.
"Or perhaps I was just plain wrong."
Mr Rudd said the treatment handed out to former AFL player Adam Goodes last year was one of many incidents that have made him doubt his belief.
"When I spoke about this last year, people screamed back at me that it wasn't because Adam was Aboriginal. It was just that they disliked his behaviour as a footballer," Mr Rudd said.
"I'm not exactly a connoisseur of the finer points of the game.
"But I think the claim that this was to do with Adam Goodes as a sportsman and not to do with his Aboriginal identity, I think that claim, is 100 per cent bulls***."
Mr Rudd cited several other examples of what his indigenous friend recently called the "low, steady hum of racism" in the country.
They include an elderly Aboriginal couple not being served in a regional cafe or a black, but not indigenous, Australian who left a job recently because he was sick of being called a "monkey".
He told the breakfast gathering of indigenous, political and business leaders it would be wrong to conclude that Australia did not have a problem with racism.
"As one Aboriginal friend once said to me, `Even if it is a small minority that have this view, the words once spoken, racist words once spoken, still carry a great weight because they are powered by the force of history'," he said.
The former PM called on Australians to name, shame and call out racism when they saw it.
"The next time any of us see or hear racist behaviour, it's very simple: don't be silent.
"Don't allow our indigenous brothers and sisters to stand alone".
Mr Rudd's speech comes after the federal government presented its eighth Closing the Gap report on Wednesday that showed only two of the seven health, education and employment targets remain on track.
He said although progress for indigenous people had been "at best, uneven" it was better to have a report card based on objective data than none at all.
"We cannot afford to exhibit any form of national learned helplessness on whether we can, in fact, close the gap," he said.
"The truth is we can.
"If we put our minds to it, if we put our hearts to it, if we put our enterprise to it, our enthusiasm, our determination, our guts ... we can get there."
