The Howard government steadfastly refused to apologise to Australian Aboriginals for policies that saw children taken from their homes. Now with a new Prime Minister, the hardest word — ‘sorry’ — will finally be said.
Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister, will deliver the apology to the “stolen generations” on the floor of Parliament on February 13. It will be the Labor Government’s first item of business.
“It’s building a bridge of respect which I think has been in some state of disrepair in recent decades,” Mr Rudd said. “But having crossed that bridge, the other part of it is all about practical business.”
The apology will come more than a decade after a government inquiry established that at least 100,000 children were removed from their parents between about 1869 and 1969. They were placed in orphanages run by churches or charities, or fostered out to socialise them with European culture. Some were brutalised or abused.
Americans, can you imagine what it must feel like for this Australian to see a return to sanity? For years, our respective governments have approached every problem with a stubborn belligerence, doing whatever they wanted, legal or not, moral or not, and they dared us to hold them accountable. Now in Australia at least, reasonable grownups hold the reins. Somehow it makes you feel exhilerated, and want to cry at the same time. I hope you get to experience this soon.
I remember the first Sorry Day in 1998, when people decided to go over Howard’s head, and apologise one on one. I happened to meet an Aboriginal man working at a community market. The place was mostly empty. I chatted with him for a while, and then said, “I just wanted to say sorry.”
He said, “It’s cool.”
But of course it was not cool. Not for him and not for the Native Americans of my own country. Nor for any of the displaced tribes whose history has been forgotten in nation after nation.
So I hope that in addition to a verbal apology, the Rudd government will back it up with money for social programs (in preference to the individuals themselves) to help stop the problems that still plague these communities.
It’s not all kumbaya over here, though. See this page for some truly nasty letters to the editor, including this one.
If being civilised and having modern technology is so hard for this tiny minority of aborigines who want to whinge (wasting tax payers money and destroying the reputation of most aborigines who are very decent hardworking smart people), then why don’t we fence off the National park, they can move there and live without our technology – see how long they last when they don’t even have the wheel.
Posted by: Anthony Henry of 5:40pm January 28, 2008
You stay classy, Telegraph readers.
1 February 2008 at 2:28 am
Daniel, how dare you question God’s decisions! By ‘God’ I obviously mean John Howard.
‘John Howard is God?’ you say? Yes heathen, and I’ll prove it…
1 John 4:8 says “He that does not love, has not come to know God, because God IS love”. My orange juice glasses when I was a child said, “Love is never having to say your sorry”. John Howard never said sorry, ergo, John Howard is God. Suck it hippies!
I think Ryan O’neal might be Jesus, but I’d have to research a little more.