This was the call of Robert Tickner, the Keating government's minister for Aboriginal affairs, who was in charge of implementing the royal commission's 339 recommendations.

"These are fixable social problems, but things won't change and won't be prioritised much unless our current and future prime ministers seize the agenda and become its champion in the same way Paul Keating did for Mabo," Mr Tickner said when addressing a National Archives of Australia media conference on the release of selected cabinet records for 1992 and 1993.

"I think Malcolm Turnbull is a good and decent person who wants to do the right thing in Aboriginal Affairs, but expressed good intentions are not enough without the necessary leadership to generate real change, and I desperately hope he seizes the moment on this.

"I think he needs to capture the momentum of the 50th anniversary of the 1967 referendum, which occurs on May 27, to announce major policy commitments to address these issues."

The cabinet papers take in Paul Keating's first years as prime minister following his defeat of Bob Hawke as Labor leader just before Christmas 1991.

They take in watershed events including the High Court's June 1992 Mabo decision that laid to rest the concept of terra nullius, Keating's Redfern speech the following December asserting European settlers were responsible for smashing the traditional way of life of first Australians and the claim by the Wik people for title to their land which fused miners, pastoralists and the Queensland and West Australian governments into a coalition of opposition.

Feelings ran so high that the secretaries committee on intelligence and security reported to cabinet in November 1993 that Mabo has caused threats to ministers and their families.

Mr Tickner confirmed he was one of the targets, also revealing that not only had his electorate office been the target of an arson attack, but somebody had sent him a dead rat through the post.

Mr Tickner said the drama surrounding the issue in those years was made all the more tumultuous personally by the birth of his son and for the first time he was reunited with his birth mother on the steps of the Sydney Opera House.

The archives' consultant historian, Australian National University Professor Nicholas Brown, said the Keating government sought to resolve many of the issues by preparing a Native Title Bill in the face of strong internal and external opposition.

"The passing of that legislation on December 21, 1993 neatly marks the end of the period under review," Professor Brown said.

"The politics of native title would prove corrosive – John Hewson declared Mabo "a day of shame" – but encapsulated much that has been associated with this first period of the Keating government.

"The Sydney Morning Herald enthused that the stand on native title 'could yet be judged the most profound achievement of Paul Keating's political career'."

Mr Tickner only received about a third of the money he asked for to implement the deaths in custody royal commission recommendations, and when asked how he felt about the current royal commission into juvenile justice in the Northern Territory traversing the same ground as the 1987-91 inquiry, he became emotional.

"In all my life in public life I don't think I wept in public ... but you could make me weep because you're right. There's two responses – tears or anger: we should all be angry," Mr Tickner said.

"All that public money, all those commitments, all those promises, and yet all that consequence, of tens of thousands of wasted, damaged lives as a result of the failure to implement the recommendations of the royal commission.

"People whose life potential was never fulfilled because governments didn't do what they promised.

"If this happened in a contemporary parallel area such as the current child abuse royal commission and there was a failure to implement those recommendations, how long do you think that would last?

"The media would be at the throat of government. But it has happened here. That's why you require a prime minister to step up and take some leadership."