Sorry

SO let us apologise. Apologise for more than 30 years of monumental policy failures. For the pursuit of victim politics. For the delivery of unconditional welfare. For the embrace of collective rather than individual rights. And for the Stolen Generations report. It was a noxious exercise that spawned a cadre of bureaucrats too afraid to step in and remove small children from neglect and violence, creating a new generation of child victims.
Janet Albrechtsen

The nation wants to say sorry; and the responses vary enormously. It will be Rudd's first action when parliament resumes in February; and already the critics and the storm clouds are circling. Some see it as a necessary and long overdue unblocking of relations between indigenous and mainstream Australia. Others see it as an unnecessary stirring of the dark aspects of Australia which will do more harm than good. Many people in this country have grievances with the Federal government; as they no doubt have with your government. Just ask any separated dad. Does that justify a national apology for something that happened a century ago; that is by people who have long since passed on. The present generation, many of whom were born overseas, had no direct role to play in the policies of removal of usually half-caste aboriginal children.

And many aboriginal children who were "stolen" and brought up in loving European families do not see themselves as stolen, rather as being saved.

But the single word "sorry" has become so totemic in our culture that many see it as a necessary roadblock to undo so that we can get on with the real business of improving relationships and living conditions.

The fomrer so-called "conservative" Prime Minister John Howard was much reviled for the left for refusing to say sorry; and many assumed it was because such an apology could trigger monumental claims costing the taxpayer billions of dollars.

Our current Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who made an election promise to say sorry and turned it into a virtual brnading or marketing exercise to differentiate hismelf from the then government, has already been derided by some aboriginal edlers and European activists for ruling out compensation as part of the "sorry" package with which he reportedly intends to open parliament.

But what has shocked and saddned many Australians in recent months is revelation after revelation of the appalling conditions in the remote aboriginal communities of Australia.

Reports which have really made many ordinary Australians wonder exactly what it is they are saying sorry for.

And this is clearly not just a matter of money. These people receive the same welfare benefits as the rest of the country; in fact often more generous. Most of these communities are entirely dependent on unemployment benefits; that is on the goodwill and hard work of the Australian taxpayer. Isolated from the real world and the many benefits it can bring by a so-called "permit" system which excludes almost everyone from vast tracts of inland Australia, our new government has been roundly criticised for its back to the future move of reinstalling the system recently abolished by the last government.

These isolated communities were the result of a Utopian, Roussean version of aboriginal life; the "noble savage" free to go about their ceremonies and their ancient way of life without the corruption of the western world.

Vast tracts of the country were gifted back to aboriginal tribal groups and billions of dollars have been poured into the desert sands over the past three decades.

Instead of flourishing and being a source of indigenous pride these communities have turned into chronically dysfunctional communities where alcoholism, petrol sniffing and drug abuse are almost universal; where people die young; where children are neglected and little children die in the desert sands while their drunken parents party nearby. Sexual abuse of children is rife. Their health is so poor it would not be tolerated anywhere else in Australia.

These isolated communities also benefit from millions upon millions of dollars in mining lease payments. But nonetheless, due to abject alcoholism and civic decay these communities are a mess. My neighbour has just returned from helping build a school in central Australia; at enormous expense; ready for the new year. That school was destroyed by the students themselves last year. It has cost millions to rebuild. Brand new cars most Australians cannot afford are gifted to these communities; and rarely last long; never serviced, abandoned if they break down; or torched within months.

Journalists and photographers who have been to Central Australia in recent months all report that these communities are worse than anything you will see in the third world because the people are entirely without hope. Most of the families in the slums of Calcutta proudly send their kids off to school in astonishing white shirts, proud, beaming and clean. In Central Australia many of the kids don't go to school at all; and many of them are sick and abused.

Part of the problem with the debate in modern Australia is that the Bringing Thiem Home report by Justice Wilson on which the whole stolen generation industry has been built was a left-wing political exercise which deliberately gave voice to only one side of the story - that was, the grief felt by aboriginal women who lost their children and by some of those children on the pain of separation from their families.

The voices of the police officers, the social workers and the family carers who dealt with those aboriginal children and who in many cases removed them from abusive alcoholic situations and from tribal groupings where half-castes were treated with contempt, who brought them up and provided them a far better start in life than they might otherwise have received, were deliberately excluded from the inquiry.

Even to question the notion of the stolen generation was derided by the left as immoral; and has led to a great deal of nonsense filtering into the mainstream culture as accepted fact.

Normally classified or derided as being on the right, some columnists have suggested the apparently radical solution: treat everyone the same.

Nowhere else in Australia would child rape or sexual molestation be hidden or excused. Nowhere else would entire communities be allowed to sit around on welfare benefits and not even try and get a job. Nowhere else would property damage, abuse and public drunkenness be tolerated nad excused. Perhaps the core of the problem is the specialist treatment of differing groups in the Australian community based on their ethnicity. Yes there were wrongs in the past. There are wrongs in the present. Children are routinely removed in this country by that left-wing feminist icon the Family Court; and while the fathers themselves almost invariably see these children as stolen, no one on the left has raised a single solitary voice of concern at the devestating impacts on parents and children alike. More than a dozen clients of our reviled bureaucratic nightmare the Child Support Agency are believed to die every day; and no one but the occasional maverik speaks out. Inept state governments and bloated Federal bureaucracies waste literally billions of dollars on projects we don't need; on massive bureaucratic infrastructures we don't need. And for every fat cat brueaucrat with a salary half a dozen times the average wage, or more, some poor bastard has had to work hard sweating it out in a factory all day all week paying this country's grotesque and crippling levels of taxation. These injustices are never spoken of; clearly for reasons of fashion.

Saying sorry may clear the blockages in the pipes that have poisoned relations between black and white Australia; it may stir poisons better left at the bottom of the pond and add yet further fuel to the burgeoning grievance industry which encourages people to see themselves as victims and to hate white people as cruel and indifferent oppressors. Standing on your own two feet, self-reliance and hard work, the values which made Australia a great country; have been eroded by special interest groups: by the mistake of not genuinely treating everyone as equals.


THE BIGGER STORY:



http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/536641/1567742

Members of the stolen generations have told the federal government they want their history taught to primary and secondary school students and all professionals who work with indigenous people.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will say sorry to the stolen generations when parliament resumes in February, more than 10 years after the Bringing Them Home human rights report recommended the federal government do so.

The government has been consulting with indigenous people and groups such as the Stolen Generations Alliance (SGA) since December about the form and wording of the apology.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23146173-662,00.html

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd will use parliamentary privilege to avoid liability in compensation claims arising from an apology to members of Australia's stolen generation.

"If it is made in Parliament, there is an iron-clad certainty you can't be sued in respect to that apology," constitutional law expert George Williams told the Herald Sun yesterday.

"No liability can arise so long as it is done in Parliament. What is said in Parliament cannot be questioned in court."

A formal apology to Aboriginal members of the stolen generation will be made in Federal Parliament on February 13.


http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/the-word-that-makes-life-go-on/2008/02/01/1201801034953.html

We all tell children to say it, but a nation facing the inevitable is still shying from the consequences. Joel Gibson reports.

IT IS "something that every child knows", says Susan Butler, editor of the Macquarie Dictionary and Australia's unofficial keeper of the national vernacular.

"When you say you are sorry, life can go on. Your brother, sister, friend will drop the dispute, whatever it was, and enter into normal relations again. To withhold that 'sorry' utterance is to continue the war."

Like "Good morning" and "How are you?", she says, it is what linguists call a phatic expression; its meaning lies in its utterance, not necessarily in the content of its words.

But there is sorry, and there is sorry.

Ten years of culture wars about historical treatment of Australia's first people and a decade of government refusal to say it have made sorry more than a word, phatic or otherwise.

For this fortnight at least, sorry is the word, a litmus test for the psychological state of the nation and a clue to its sense of itself.


http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/longawaited-apology-should-be-seen-for-what-it-is/2008/02/01/1201801034956.html

In two weeks, the Federal Government risks disappointing most of the population, writes Wesley Aird.

We can now count down the days to the apology that will be the first item of business for the new Parliament. It will be easy for the Prime Minister to apologise to the stolen generation; all he has to do is stand up in Parliament and start talking. The difficult part is for everyone else with an interest in this apology to make sense of it.

As it turns out, the apology is to be from the Australian Government to the stolen generation. It is not going to be from all Australians, and it won't be intended for all indigenous people. By my reckoning, that would leave nearly 21 million people without a legitimate interest; in other words, it looks likely to exclude just about the entire population.

Like it or not, it will be an important occasion for the nation; for the rest of us, we should see it for what it is and think about what it means to us and what it will or won't achieve.

Sadly, it is unlikely to educate us and even less likely to bring indigenous and non-indigenous Australians closer together. In mainstream Australia some urban myths persist about Aborigines that are as tenacious as they are wrong. The myths just keep doing the rounds: native title will take backyards, cheap loans, special payments from the government, and so they go on. It is quirky that people do not take lightly the perception that someone or some group of people might be getting something they're not.

The apology runs the risk of being misunderstood and generating misguided jealousy.


http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23142573-662,00.html

By Peter Michael

February 01, 2008

LAWRENCE Springborg is all ears.

But as he "listens" to Queenslanders, he's also talking.

As he tours Yarrabah in north Queensland, the state's largest Aboriginal community, Mr Springborg says he is sorry.

He is sorry children and adults are still dying of abuse, neglect and violence in Aboriginal communities.

But he is even more sorry the political state of indigenous affairs has become bogged down in "cosmetic symbolism" of the wording of an apology.

Mr Springborg admitted the state Coalition had failed Aboriginal Queensland.

"It is clear there has been a disconnect between our side of politics and indigenous Queenslanders," he said.


http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,23149571-5005374,00.html

Piers Akerman, writing in The Sunday Times

February 01, 2008

AUSTRALIANS were warned before the last election that the contest was not a beauty competition. Yet Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has exhibited all the hallmarks of a brainless beauty queen ever since, with his vacuous endorsement of the meaningless Kyoto Protocol and his gallop to claim moral superiority over the previous Australian government with a pledge to say sorry to the self-described stolen generation, in a yet-to-be revealed form of words on behalf of the current Government.


http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,23149517-5005374,00.html

Glenn Milne:

LIKE John Howard before him, "sorry" seems to be the hardest word for Brendan Nelson to say.
But the internal Liberal imperatives surrounding the Opposition Leader – let alone the sheer moral pressure that has now built behind the issue – means he should learn how to say it . . . and quickly.

His very future as leader may depend on it. Nelson, through no fault of his own, is in an invidious position.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/01/2151864.htm

By Larissa Behrendt

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in his Australia Day speech this year encouraged Australians to be proud of their past, but urged them to look forward. He listed as one of the challenges achieving effective reconciliation, so that we can all move forward together, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australia.

When the curtain went down on the Howard years, it closed an era in which we had a Prime Minister who did not believe in saying "sorry" to the Stolen Generations, who had derailed the reconciliation process and ostracised any Indigenous leader who did not agree with him.

He used the decision in the Wik case to fuel an anti-Aboriginal election, he termed native title and the right to negotiate as un-Australian, dismantled the national Indigenous representative body and had repealed the application of the Racial Discrimination Act from applying to Aboriginal people three times: during the Hindmarsh Island bridge dispute, through the Native Title Amendment Act and in relation to the Northern Territory intervention.

Rudd's clear determination to approach Indigenous affairs differently has created a sense of optimism about new opportunities about the possibilities of a new era where policy will be more effective and the reconciliation process is renewed. His intention to apologise to the members of the Stolen Generations is perhaps the starkest indication of the fundamental shift.

While there is much optimism, Indigenous Australia is not assuming that the end of the Howard era is automatically the beginning of a golden era for Aboriginal people. Rudd in opposition supported, without any amendment, Howard's intervention in the Northern Territory including the aspects that repealed the Racial Discrimination Act, the abolition of the permit system and the compulsory quarantining of all welfare payments.

Ideology driven

The key problem under Howard was that throughout his time in office his decisions about Indigenous policy were directed by ideology. Whoever the Minister, whatever they called the policy, the direction was defined by the ideologies of mainstreaming, assimilation, mutual obligation, opening up access of Indigenous controlled land to non-Indigenous interests and the philosophy that the "real" Aboriginal people live in the north. Policy and resources were directed by these ideals.