Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

I'm only using the kind of words Devine used about me when responding in our email debates about the Iraq war – cut off suddenly when her version didn't pan out.

This subject has gone on too long and those involved have suffered for generations. When people like Nelson, and today Abbot with his laughable claim that Howard did more for indigenous people than any other PM, or the shills of the right like Devine, Akermann etc spout out their nonsense – or as one journalist from the ABC reported that one (and I won't even name him) News Ltd attack dog actually read a comic during Rudd's speech – continue their political, racial nasty campaign – and that's all it is, they don't deserve courtesy.

The young of Germany today realise that collectively older generations in their way were responsible for the horrors of the Nazis – even though the Nazis were a minor political party and the majority of people were actually ignorant of what was really happening and probably had no real way of preventing it. Yet they have faced up to their past in an honourable way.

Those in Australia that continue to nitpick – as Devine does: she again points to the history re-writer Windschuttle who claims the mass killings of Aboriginals are a myth and The Bringing Them Home Report is flawed and false (Devine agrees) – are all cogs in the system that perpetuate an evil. My words may be crude; their polite words are far more damaging.

Devine just serves up the usual right-wing rubbish couched cleverly with a few salient points. The only time she actually rose to some sensible stuff was during the dreadful APEC policing from our woeful NSW premier, and that was because some hapless and innocent chap got thrown to the ground by some police thugs in front of his young kid and he happened to be a friend of Miranda's. Such things happen every day, and have been happening to indigenous people for decades, but they don't have friends on newspapers who receive "sit-down money" to write a drivel twice a week like Miranda.

Hi Craig.

I was so close to so many emotions yesterday, that my sense of perspective was flooded, and I really did feel as if I was drowning in my thoughts.

So maybe I owe you an apology. I really did not mean to set the focus of my emotions on you, just my frustrations got the better of me and clouded my judgment.

I felt so close to so many underlying themes that I felt a desperate need to tie them all together. So it all poured out by itself.

The theme of the indigenous identity, and what it means to all Australians.

The very recent thread that brought back all my memories of the East Timorese.

Will try to expand on all this in the future and, yes, Craig we can try to connect the dots.

The odious Miranda Devine has the hide to run the headline on another of her atrocious articles about yesterday's events as "Rudd fans the flames of the culture wars".

It's a piece about some Aboriginal kid getting abused on the North Shore recently - apparently Kevin's fault - and the usual tosh about that ratbag Windschuttle, and she unbelievably claims that:

The Bringing Them Home report which prompted demands for an apology in 1997 was commissioned by Paul Keating in 1995 in the dying days of his divisive government.

Uhhh?? Has this harridan been asleep for the past eleven years?

Methinks so. Certainly since 2003 when this ratbag engaged me in an email war, endlessly castigating me as an ignorant fool for claiming the Iraq invasion would be a disaster, that it would all be over by the end of 2004 when Iraqis would dance in the streets and a liberated and democratic Iraq would be the envy of the Middle East. The dingbat suddenly cut off contact for some reason as the place fell apart.

But there we have it - just one day and the naysayers and horrors are hard at - it's actually Kevin Rudd's fault (he's Labor, after all) and they aint going to shut their big mouths for one minute. Bastards. Mean, stingy, horrible, nasty bastards.

Fiona: "Have a herring (your choice of colour) and oh behave, Justin."

I'll have a rainbow one thanks Fiona, today it would be appropriate methinks.

Oops it's tomorrow already. In this case it's a happy Valentine's Day to you Fiona. Flowers and thingies to eat that make you fat and cuddly and all that.

Sorry...

Fiona: Thank you, Justin - I'm already fat but, according to some people, delightfully cuddly. Happy Valentine's Day to you too.

"the audacity of hope...Most of all, let's be hopeful."

Well I'll be....that great big wooden aeroplane flies ... lovely wings. Well done Howie ... er Harr ... David.

Fiona: Have a herring (your choice of colour) and oh behave, Justin.

"None of this will be easy. Most of it will be hard—very hard. But none of it is impossible, and all of it is achievable with clear goals, clear thinking, and by placing an absolute premium on respect, cooperation and mutual responsibility as the guiding principles of this new partnership on closing the gap."

What a magnificent speech.

I made the second comment on this thread last night.  My feeling remains the same today.  I said, "it's our opportunity - let's grasp it" and "what we do with it is our choice".

I have a lot of sympathy for those who present the intellectual case that exposes the demonstrable flaws in today's activities.  In many respects those people are right.  I think deep down many can accept the intellectual flaw in the unqualified apology.  It will always be seen by some as a statement that did not represent a complete representation of history or intention.

Where does all this end though, and where do we find the intersection of humanity and pragmatism?

Who amongst us has not offered an unqualified apology to another in the interests of a greater goal of reconciliation?  Pragmatism dictates that the party who has done the most wrong has to apologise.  You can't have a reconciliation without an apology and forgiveness. Qualified apologies don't work.  Don't we all know that?  You either have to go the whole hog or it falls flat. That's the practical reality.  It's human nature.

The emotion today was real.  That's what clinched it for me.  I've always had reservations about this whole thing (on an intellectual / factual basis) but still consistently maintained the position that it should be done.  I am relieved this has now been done.

Men and women who show humility are to be admired. Those in power who show humility toward the dispossessed are the true leaders.  They are the ones who improve a society.  They value the individual and the society.

Now would be an excellent time to reach for that unimagined future. Reach out now, or get ready to say sorry all over again in 20 years. This is not a time for naysayers.  As Barack Obama rises, perhaps we should think about his phrase, "the audacity of hope".  Let's be bold, let's be audacious!  Most of all, let's be hopeful.

Ok Scott, I understand.

Cheers

"You cannot solve any problem, without first defining the problem .And that has never happened to date."

461 words to admit defeat. The problem sweet and precious is staring us in the face, we have been telling it to go away for yonks. Jenny the problem is - US.

Jenny, you forgot to include; 'we have moved on', as if it is possible to dismiss the various  horrors by proclaiming that you 'have moved on'!

Reconciliation: always suggests to me that you are trying to restore something. It is the 'feel' that the word has. However of the formal meanings given,  it is  'accept as inevitable' that I believe most people mean.

In most  cases where I see it used, were I the injured party there is not a chance that I would 'accept as inevitable'  the position.

But then I never did believe in 'forgiveness', which is possibly why I put so little value on 'sorry'!

L.Ferguson: "I wonder how many Webdiarists will hammer Rudd over the next 3 years as nothing gets done."

Politicians the world round are easy to read - political partisans even easier. You go on to answer your own question correctly.

It was a good day for the stolen generations and long overdue. I've never understood why saying sorry was seen as being too difficult. Simply because of the compensation issue?

Rudd's speech was eloquent, said it all, but these politicians need to learn that a long speech is not always the best. I lost interest toward the end as it was far too wordy. Nelson's was actually more succint and as a result I can recall much more of what he actually said, albeit wandering off the issue somewhat.

But this word reconciliation. Exactly what do people understand that to mean? I feel the word is bandied about without people actually having an idea what they see as the end point of the so called process of reconciliation.

The real issue is not in my view reconciliation, (whatever that actually means and entails) but how the indigenous people can find a meaningful place for themselves in 21st Century Australia.

And what does moving forward actually involve, especially  for those aboriginies who are almost or are entirely full blood, living as they do in remote communities with no jobs, and seemingly with little desire to be part of mainstream western society? And why would they want to move from their lands to the big towns and cities to become part of the broader society, the economy, the workforce? After all, their ties to the land are so much a part of their indentity, their culture.  

So much talk over the decades of, and a lot today of moving forward, without anyone actually saying what they mean by that, or where they want to move to.

A century of failed policies toward indigenous Australians which were no doubt underscored with vague notions of helping these folk move forward. No wonder they failed.

Ultimately the issue that has to be addressed is the one of assimilation and intergration, into mainstream society, into the workforce, into the economy.  And that requires a commitment on both sides. I am not sure that commitment is there.

I'm a bit of a pessimist here. Simply because no one has ever been prepared to state what the real problem is for our indigenous people, that is the problem that keeps them locked into a cycle of poverty, poor health, and collapsed social conditions in remote communities, and on the fringes of the towns.  And until someone does, there will be endless more failed policies.

You cannot solve any problem, without first defining the problem .And that has never happened to date.

The only people who can really do that are the indigenous people themselves. And if we never ask them, we will never know. We will simply apply our solutions to their problems, as we define them. And fail.

JWH has only himself to blame for being in the dustbin and completely irrelevant. If he swallowed whatever he had to swallow and made it to the Sorry Ceremony, he could have had his own little reconciliation. I am sure if he did that, they would accept his gesture. Having the last 5 PMs there, Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke, Keating and Howard would be an even more powerful symbolism. Of course, we all know that JWH has always been a petty, small hearted politician.

To those who say it is easy to say sorry I say this.

If it was easy to say sorry it would have happened long ago. Even at the time this policy was being carried out there were people saying the policy was wrong and evil. And it was certainly clearly so in terms of argument and evidence by the end of the 1980s. However, there were and are psychological and political costs in saying such things in Australia. And, as Howard knew, political benefits to not saying them.

In South Africa, scarred more horribly than here, they are still saying sorry and doing so to great effect. Also in Rwanda. In 1993 the US Congress made a statement of apology to the native Hawaiians, it is still struggling with one for native Americans. The Polish President, Aleksander Kwasniewski, apologised for the massacre of Jews that took place at Jedwabne in Poland, by Poles, in 1941. That this happened after the Nazi invasion, or that in other places there were good and brave Poles who hid Jews at risk to their own lives, was not used as an excuse in his apology for Polish sins of anti-Semitism and inhumanity. In all cases this course of apolgy has been healing but also brave and politically difficult. It is not easy.

The Chinese, and many Australians, are still angry at the lack of a proper apology by the Japanese for their actions in WWII. The Japanese have given half apologies but Japanese domestic politics always draws a line over facing the truths of this time. It is apparently still too hard. Just as it was for John Howard, a member of the government in the 1970s, surrounded then by those whose government had been carrying out this policy. For him to say it was just the guilt of past generations was brass-faced indeed.

Anyone who saw today the expressions and emotion of so many of our fellow Australians of indigenous background, of those touched directly by the policy of removal, and those whose simple identity as indigenous makes them feel the sting of this particular discrimination, could not doubt the apology was actually important to them. Both its having been denied for so long and its now having been offered seems to have had a real effect on their well-being, on their life perspective and on their connectedness with the rest of us and with their own humanity.

The apology was real and its effects are real, and no it's not easy to say sorry. And those with the most guilt often have the greatest resistance to doing so and are the fastest to offer excuses or distractions. That said, let us support and urge the government now to steps of practical reconciliation that help indigenous people address their contemporary conditions. Conditions that are the outcome of past discriminations and our common history.

Wow!

As I have no interest or belief in either pomp or ceremony, and put very little weight upon what people say — as opposed to what people do — this is to me pretty much a non event.

Many Australians alive today lived while these policies were in practice.

For many more, all those born after the early ‘70's, this is simply the past. So today Rudd on behalf of the government, — on behalf of the people? — is apologising for the world as it was.

Of far more significance would be a constructive plan to bring, or move those aboriginals left behind into the present. That said we must never forget that a great many aboriginals have very successfully moved into today’s world, and many of them want nothing to do with those who wallow in the past.

(Before the howls start, I have aboriginal friends, and have had over the years, and I have heard them discussing these issues. )

Sidetracking for a moment, long years ago when I frequented ‘Question Time’ at The Chapel, in Kings Cross, an attempt was being made to tie ‘the plight of the Maoris’ to that of the Indigenous people of Australia.

I was itching to join the discussion, wishing that I remembered more of the Maori/pakeha/treaty history than I did, knowing that I would be winging it. I was saved by a young Maori woman who got in before me, standing, with quiet contempt she demolished the issues raised, supplying chapter and verse of both the history and the contents of the Maori/pakeha/treaty. She wanted no pity, no concessions, and most of all no notion that she was one of a defeated race. They were after all the only indigenous people who ever fought the colonising British to a standstill. They were never defeated.

I will never forget that young woman, or her speech.

There are some wishing/wanting schools to teach the (an) indigenous language. Apart from the obvious ‘why?’, just which indigenous language? According to Wikipedia there are several language groupings and ‘fewer than 200 indigenous languages remaining.’

It has been my view since school days that from day one a second language ought to be taught. But make it a useful language! As in my view the most difficult languages are Chinese, Japanese or Middle Eastern, they would be my pick. But indigenous?!

So today Australia said ‘sorry’ for the way things were up until some 30 odd years ago.

However Australians, or enough Australians failed to prevent Australia joining the invasion of Iraq. Not enough Australians cared enough about the plight of the Iraqis to dump Howard and his government — or at least they cared more about a point or two on their mortgage interest — .

I would have been much more impressed had Rudd stood and declared that Australian troops were moving out of Iraq, beginning today. That as the first installment on our reparation we were dispatching a shipload of surgical/medical equipment and supplies, and that an immediate followup would be delivering a complete array of the latest equipment, enough to set up a complete hospital, the money to build a hospital, and that we were committing to supplying the medical/surgical supplies needed to run this hospital for the next ten years.

That Australia would, beginning immediately, lobby all relevant organisations and the governments of the world to pressure the US to release all the Iraqi Doctors being held — and there are over 3000 — ‘for aiding the enemy’.

That Australia would lobby for places in medical schools to help replace the ‘many’ shot by invading forces ‘because they were, or had been aiding the enemy’.

This all occurred on our watch, people. We are to blame. Until Australians accept it, and begin to repay an unpayable debt they have no reason to ‘stand tall’.

Of course, we could simply say: ‘we are sorry’.

Fiona, I was in Singapore when Whitlam was dumped. I caught the next plane back. Never have I so desperately wished that I had kept within journalist circles. Never have I so wanted to be right there in the middle of things, as I did then.

I don’t think that this rates.

More from today's Crikey. There are comments by others like Robert Manne, Tim Flannery etc, but I think it's important to consider the response of some first Australians and those who work closely with them.

Chris Graham, Editor of the National Indigenous Times:

The power of Rudd's words … will endure. Rudd spoke of building bridges and historical truths. Of dark chapters and of bright futures. "This is not the black armband view of history. It's just the cold, uncomfortable, confronting truth," said Rudd. …  Of course, Rudd must deliver on his promises to halve the infant mortality gap. He must deliver real health, housing and education to Aboriginal people and having defined his leadership so early on this issue, I have little doubt many in the media will seek to hold him to account. Rudd's talk of a bi-partisan committee headed by himself and the Leader of the Opposition to tackle Aboriginal disadvantage is a good gesture. ... For Indigenous Australia, the talk over the next generation will be of a treaty, or a national settlement. Whatever you choose to call it, Australia has an opportunity, not to mention a mood, for change. The challenge that confronts us all now is whether or not we, as a nation, are mature enough to face this now, or whether we condemn future generations of our children to deal with this issue, and all the tragedy and misery that will inevitably ensue if we fail to act. Given the sincerity of Rudd's speech, and the genuine support of many of his colleagues, there's some reason for optimism.

Megan Davis Director, ILC Director of the Indigenous Law Centre and Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of NSW:

I thought Rudd was magnificent, it was really beautiful and more than what we expected … I don’t think compensation issue will go away but today’s not the day for it. Today is a day of celebration. I was happy with the wording of the apology, and the full speech then clearly explained it. It was a very sophisticated apology, it explained that regardless of the motivations of people in power, who had the power, the focus should be on what the children’s experience was, the experience of the stolen generations and that was acknowledged today. I’m getting phone calls from all over the country, from all of my family – it truly is a day of celebration. So many people have been affected. Every Aboriginal person has in some way been affected, it has manifested itself in all sorts of illness and behaviours. It was really important… it’s just a really golden day for the nation. A lot of people don’t actually talk to aboriginal people and don’t understand the importance of this to them and what sorry means to them. That apology has an impact on how they feel about themselves and how they fit in the nation, their place in the nation. This is enormous.

Harry Scott, CEO of Titjikala, an Indigenous community situated 130km south east of Alice Springs:

The significance of it is we’re not expecting to have any people at work today. It’s a very significant moment for Indigenous people right around Australia and no less so in Titjikala. Personally, I thought it was sensational. We were watching one of our staff, one of the Stolen Generation, in Parliament House. My feeling is that the Indigenous people have been at the table for a long time and mainstream culture has finally joined them. One of the most significant things was the formation of the committee for the next five years on Indigenous housing. That is what needs to happen. There are some substantial issues that need to be addressed and that isn’t going to happen by someone coming in and autocratically creating an intervention. Regarding the apology itself, for me it was more about the intention and spirit in which it was delivered. The significance of it was seen by the amount of applause after their speeches.

Louise Togo from the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning, University of Technology, Sydney:

I watched it this morning and it felt really historic. My daughter is Indigenous and I did get emotional over it, although I’m not from that Stolen Generation. I was really interested in the wording of it, and I did think it had some substance, but let’s just wait and see. ... I thought the actual apology was good. And you could really tell that Prime Minister Rudd is a Christian ... you could really tell in his wording and his empathy that it was a faith-based feeling on his part. It was really important I think. It would be more important to the older Aboriginal people who were a part of the Stolen Generation, but it did bring a tear to my eye. I actually thought that the speaker of the house had a tear in his eye, and that was really touching because historically it is the government that committed all these atrocities ... I know many people and older people who have been removed as children from around the Redfern and Sydney area ... Today is really symbolic because it’s an acknowledgement of what has not been taught in Australian history, and this means for her, for my eight-month-old daughter, she will learn about what happened, she will learn the real story.

Who said he couldn't give a good speech? I'm reproducing it in full. Standing ovations and tears indeed.

APOLOGY TO AUSTRALIA’S INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

That today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.

We reflect on their past mistreatment.

We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations—this blemished chapter in our nation’s history.

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.

For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.

A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.

A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.

A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.

A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.

A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.

There comes a time in the history of nations when their peoples must become fully reconciled to their past if they are to go forward with confidence to embrace their future. Our nation, Australia, has reached such a time. That is why the parliament is today here assembled: to deal with this unfinished business of the nation, to remove a great stain from the nation’s soul and, in a true spirit of reconciliation, to open a new chapter in the history of this great land, Australia.

Last year I made a commitment to the Australian people that if we formed the next government of the Commonwealth we would in parliament say sorry to the stolen generations. Today I honour that commitment. I said we would do so early in the life of the new parliament. Again, today I honour that commitment by doing so at the commencement of this the 42nd parliament of the Commonwealth. Because the time has come, well and truly come, for all peoples of our great country, for all citizens of our great Commonwealth, for all Australians—those who are Indigenous and those who are not—to come together to reconcile and together build a new future for our nation.

Some have asked, ‘Why apologise?’ Let me begin to answer by telling the parliament just a little of one person’s story—an elegant, eloquent and wonderful woman in her 80s, full of life, full of funny stories, despite what has happened in her life’s journey, a woman who has travelled a long way to be with us today, a member of the stolen generation who shared some of her story with me when I called around to see her just a few days ago. Nanna Nungala Fejo, as she prefers to be called, was born in the late 1920s. She remembers her earliest childhood days living with her family and her community in a bush camp just outside Tennant Creek. She remembers the love and the warmth and the kinship of those days long ago, including traditional dancing around the camp fire at night. She loved the dancing. She remembers once getting into strife when, as a four-year-old girl, she insisted on dancing with the male tribal elders rather than just sitting and watching the men, as the girls were supposed to do.

But then, sometime around 1932, when she was about four, she remembers the coming of the welfare men. Her family had feared that day and had dug holes in the creek bank where the children could run and hide. What they had not expected was that the white welfare men did not come alone. They brought a truck, two white men and an Aboriginal stockman on horseback cracking his stockwhip. The kids were found; they ran for their mothers, screaming, but they could not get away. They were herded and piled onto the back of the truck. Tears flowing, her mum tried clinging to the sides of the truck as her children were taken away to the Bungalow in Alice, all in the name of protection.

A few years later, government policy changed. Now the children would be handed over to the missions to be cared for by the churches. But which church would care for them? The kids were simply told to line up in three lines. Nanna Fejo and her sister stood in the middle line, her older brother and cousin on her left. Those on the left were told that they had become Catholics, those in the middle Methodists and those on the right Church of England. That is how the complex questions of post-reformation theology were resolved in the Australian outback in the 1930s. It was as crude as that. She and her sister were sent to a Methodist mission on Goulburn Island and then Croker Island. Her Catholic brother was sent to work at a cattle station and her cousin to a Catholic mission.

Nanna Fejo’s family had been broken up for a second time. She stayed at the mission until after the war, when she was allowed to leave for a prearranged job as a domestic in Darwin. She was 16. Nanna Fejo never saw her mum again. After she left the mission, her brother let her know that her mum had died years before, a broken woman fretting for the children that had literally been ripped away from her.

I asked Nanna Fejo what she would have me say today about her story. She thought for a few moments then said that what I should say today was that all mothers are important. And she added: ‘Families—keeping them together is very important. It’s a good thing that you are surrounded by love and that love is passed down the generations. That’s what gives you happiness.’ As I left, later on, Nanna Fejo took one of my staff aside, wanting to make sure that I was not too hard on the Aboriginal stockman who had hunted those kids down all those years ago. The stockman had found her again decades later, this time himself to say, ‘Sorry.’ And remarkably, extraordinarily, she had forgiven him.

Nanna Fejo’s is just one story. There are thousands, tens of thousands of them: stories of forced separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their mums and dads over the better part of a century. Some of these stories are graphically told in Bringing them home, the report commissioned in 1995 by Prime Minister Keating and received in 1997 by Prime Minister Howard. There is something terribly primal about these firsthand accounts. The pain is searing; it screams from the pages. The hurt, the humiliation, the degradation and the sheer brutality of the act of physically separating a mother from her children is a deep assault on our senses and on our most elemental humanity.

These stories cry out to be heard; they cry out for an apology. Instead, from the nation’s parliament there has been a stony, stubborn and deafening silence for more than a decade; a view that somehow we, the parliament, should suspend our most basic instincts of what is right and what is wrong; a view that, instead, we should look for any pretext to push this great wrong to one side, to leave it languishing with the historians, the academics and the cultural warriors, as if the stolen generations are little more than an interesting sociological phenomenon. But the stolen generations are not intellectual curiosities. They are human beings, human beings who have been damaged deeply by the decisions of parliaments and governments. But, as of today, the time for denial, the time for delay, has at last come to an end.

The nation is demanding of its political leadership to take us forward. Decency, human decency, universal human decency, demands that the nation now step forward to right an historical wrong. That is what we are doing in this place today. But should there still be doubts as to why we must now act, let the parliament reflect for a moment on the following facts: that, between 1910 and 1970, between 10 and 30 per cent of Indigenous children were forcibly taken from their mothers and fathers; that, as a result, up to 50,000 children were forcibly taken from their families; that this was the product of the deliberate, calculated policies of the state as reflected in the explicit powers given to them under statute; that this policy was taken to such extremes by some in administrative authority that the forced extractions of children of so-called ‘mixed lineage’ were seen as part of a broader policy of dealing with ‘the problem of the Aboriginal population’.

One of the most notorious examples of this approach was from the Northern Territory Protector of Natives, who stated:

Generally by the fifth and invariably by the sixth generation, all native characteristics of the Australian aborigine are eradicated. The problem of our half-castes—

to quote the protector—

will quickly be eliminated by the complete disappearance of the black race, and the swift submergence of their progeny in the white ...

The Western Australian Protector of Natives expressed not dissimilar views, expounding them at length in Canberra in 1937 at the first national conference on Indigenous affairs that brought together the Commonwealth and state protectors of natives. These are uncomfortable things to be brought out into the light. They are not pleasant. They are profoundly disturbing. But we must acknowledge these facts if we are to deal once and for all with the argument that the policy of generic forced separation was somehow well motivated, justified by its historical context and, as a result, unworthy of any apology today.

Then we come to the argument of intergenerational responsibility, also used by some to argue against giving an apology today. But let us remember the fact that the forced removal of Aboriginal children was happening as late as the early 1970s. The 1970s is not exactly a point in remote antiquity. There are still serving members of this parliament who were first elected to this place in the early 1970s. It is well within the adult memory span of many of us. The uncomfortable truth for us all is that the parliaments of the nation, individually and collectively, enacted statutes and delegated authority under those statutes that made the forced removal of children on racial grounds fully lawful.

There is a further reason for an apology as well: it is that reconciliation is in fact an expression of a core value of our nation—and that value is a fair go for all. There is a deep and abiding belief in the Australian community that, for the stolen generations, there was no fair go at all. There is a pretty basic Aussie belief that says that it is time to put right this most outrageous of wrongs. It is for these reasons, quite apart from concerns of fundamental human decency, that the governments and parliaments of this nation must make this apology—because, put simply, the laws that our parliaments enacted made the stolen generations possible. We, the parliaments of the nation, are ultimately responsible, not those who gave effect to our laws. And the problem lay with the laws themselves. As has been said of settler societies elsewhere, we are the bearers of many blessings from our ancestors; therefore we must also be the bearer of their burdens as well. Therefore, for our nation, the course of action is clear: that is, to deal now with what has become one of the darkest chapters in Australia’s history. In doing so, we are doing more than contending with the facts, the evidence and the often rancorous public debate. In doing so, we are also wrestling with our own soul. This is not, as some would argue, a black-armband view of history; it is just the truth: the cold, confronting, uncomfortable truth—facing it, dealing with it, moving on from it. Until we fully confront that truth, there will always be a shadow hanging over us and our future as a fully united and fully reconciled people. It is time to reconcile. It is time to recognise the injustices of the past. It is time to say sorry. It is time to move forward together.

To the stolen generations, I say the following: as Prime Minister of Australia, I am sorry. On behalf of the government of Australia, I am sorry. On behalf of the parliament of Australia, I am sorry. I offer you this apology without qualification. We apologise for the hurt, the pain and suffering that we, the parliament, have caused you by the laws that previous parliaments have enacted. We apologise for the indignity, the degradation and the humiliation these laws embodied. We offer this apology to the mothers, the fathers, the brothers, the sisters, the families and the communities whose lives were ripped apart by the actions of successive governments under successive parliaments. In making this apology, I would also like to speak personally to the members of the stolen generations and their families: to those here today, so many of you; to those listening across the nation—from Yuendumu, in the central west of the Northern Territory, to Yabara, in North Queensland, and to Pitjantjatjara in South Australia.

I know that, in offering this apology on behalf of the government and the parliament, there is nothing I can say today that can take away the pain you have suffered personally. Whatever words I speak today, I cannot undo that. Words alone are not that powerful; grief is a very personal thing. I ask those non-Indigenous Australians listening today who may not fully understand why what we are doing is so important to imagine for a moment that this had happened to you. I say to honourable members here present: imagine if this had happened to us. Imagine the crippling effect. Imagine how hard it would be to forgive. My proposal is this: if the apology we extend today is accepted in the spirit of reconciliation, in which it is offered, we can today resolve together that there be a new beginning for Australia. And it is to such a new beginning that I believe the nation is now calling us.

Australians are a passionate lot. We are also a very practical lot. For us, symbolism is important but, unless the great symbolism of reconciliation is accompanied by an even greater substance, it is little more than a clanging gong. It is not sentiment that makes history; it is our actions that make history. Today’s apology, however inadequate, is aimed at righting past wrongs. It is also aimed at building a bridge between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians—a bridge based on a real respect rather than a thinly veiled contempt. Our challenge for the future is to cross that bridge and, in so doing, to embrace a new partnership between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians—to embrace, as part of that partnership, expanded Link-up and other critical services to help the stolen generations to trace their families if at all possible and to provide dignity to their lives. But the core of this partnership for the future is to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians on life expectancy, educational achievement and employment opportunities. This new partnership on closing the gap will set concrete targets for the future: within a decade to halve the widening gap in literacy, numeracy and employment outcomes and opportunities for Indigenous Australians, within a decade to halve the appalling gap in infant mortality rates between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children and, within a generation, to close the equally appalling 17-year life gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous in overall life expectancy.

The truth is: a business as usual approach towards Indigenous Australians is not working. Most old approaches are not working. We need a new beginning—a new beginning which contains real measures of policy success or policy failure; a new beginning, a new partnership, on closing the gap with sufficient flexibility not to insist on a one-size-fits-all approach for each of the hundreds of remote and regional Indigenous communities across the country but instead allowing flexible, tailored, local approaches to achieve commonly-agreed national objectives that lie at the core of our proposed new partnership; a new beginning that draws intelligently on the experiences of new policy settings across the nation. However, unless we as a parliament set a destination for the nation, we have no clear point to guide our policy, our programs or our purpose; we have no centralised organising principle.

Let us resolve today to begin with the little children—a fitting place to start on this day of apology for the stolen generations. Let us resolve over the next five years to have every Indigenous four-year-old in a remote Aboriginal community enrolled in and attending a proper early childhood education centre or opportunity and engaged in proper preliteracy and prenumeracy programs. Let us resolve to build new educational opportunities for these little ones, year by year, step by step, following the completion of their crucial preschool year. Let us resolve to use this systematic approach to build future educational opportunities for Indigenous children to provide proper primary and preventive health care for the same children, to begin the task of rolling back the obscenity that we find today in infant mortality rates in remote Indigenous communities—up to four times higher than in other communities.

None of this will be easy. Most of it will be hard—very hard. But none of it is impossible, and all of it is achievable with clear goals, clear thinking, and by placing an absolute premium on respect, cooperation and mutual responsibility as the guiding principles of this new partnership on closing the gap. The mood of the nation is for reconciliation now, between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The mood of the nation on Indigenous policy and politics is now very simple. The nation is calling on us, the politicians, to move beyond our infantile bickering, our point-scoring and our mindlessly partisan politics and to elevate this one core area of national responsibility to a rare position beyond the partisan divide. Surely this is the unfulfilled spirit of the 1967 referendum. Surely, at least from this day forward, we should give it a go.

Let me take this one step further and take what some may see as a piece of political posturing and make a practical proposal to the opposition on this day, the first full sitting day of the new parliament. I said before the election that the nation needed a kind of war cabinet on parts of Indigenous policy, because the challenges are too great and the consequences are too great to allow it all to become a political football, as it has been so often in the past. I therefore propose a joint policy commission, to be led by the Leader of the Opposition and me, with a mandate to develop and implement—to begin with—an effective housing strategy for remote communities over the next five years. It will be consistent with the government’s policy framework, a new partnership for closing the gap. If this commission operates well, I then propose that it work on the further task of constitutional recognition of the first Australians, consistent with the longstanding platform commitments of my party and the pre-election position of the opposition. This would probably be desirable in any event because, unless such a proposition were absolutely bipartisan, it would fail at a referendum. As I have said before, the time has come for new approaches to enduring problems. Working constructively together on such defined projects would, I believe, meet with the support of the nation. It is time for fresh ideas to fashion the nation’s future.

Mr Speaker, today the parliament has come together to right a great wrong. We have come together to deal with the past so that we might fully embrace the future. We have had sufficient audacity of faith to advance a pathway to that future, with arms extended rather than with fists still clenched. So let us seize the day. Let it not become a moment of mere sentimental reflection. Let us take it with both hands and allow this day, this day of national reconciliation, to become one of those rare moments in which we might just be able to transform the way in which the nation thinks about itself, whereby the injustice administered to the stolen generations in the name of these, our parliaments, causes all of us to reappraise, at the deepest level of our beliefs, the real possibility of reconciliation writ large: reconciliation across all Indigenous Australia; reconciliation across the entire history of the often bloody encounter between those who emerged from the Dreamtime a thousand generations ago and those who, like me, came across the seas only yesterday; reconciliation which opens up whole new possibilities for the future.

It is for the nation to bring the first two centuries of our settled history to a close, as we begin a new chapter. We embrace with pride, admiration and awe these great and ancient cultures we are truly blessed to have among us—cultures that provide a unique, uninterrupted human thread linking our Australian continent to the most ancient prehistory of our planet. Growing from this new respect, we see our Indigenous brothers and sisters with fresh eyes, with new eyes, and we have our minds wide open as to how we might tackle, together, the great practical challenges that Indigenous Australia faces in the future.

Let us turn this page together: Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, government and opposition, Commonwealth and state, and write this new chapter in our nation’s story together. First Australians, First Fleeters, and those who first took the oath of allegiance just a few weeks ago. Let’s grasp this opportunity to craft a new future for this great land: Australia. I commend the motion to the House.

Honourable members applauding—

Today I had tears in my eyes. The feeling was just incredible. I watched on the big screen in the city. The feeling from the general public was overwhelming. Men in suits cheered and clapped, office girls wiped their eyes. I was so proud to see white Aussies join in.

PS: Kathy-it was such a good day I'm only going to be nice about Noel Pearson as well. He's probably got a lot to contribute. (The other little bloke we can forget about).

Let's make sure the momentum keeps going. Aussies just grew a tiny little bit taller today. 

From today's editorial:

A lot of Australians said sorry today. Some did not. One most notable Australian -- the man who late last year said that an apology to Aboriginal Australians would “only reinforce a culture of victimhood and take us backwards” -- drew attention to himself by staying out of sight.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry for John Howard's insensitivity.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities we say sorry for John Howard's bloody mindedness.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture we say sorry for John Howard's crass indifference.

I certainly hope we don't stop after this first step.

Charles, I think your points are well made and important, not off-topic at all.

The answer some would give on why Australia's indigenous and not the East Timorese is that it is we white fellas who have the greater responsability in the case of indigenous Australians.  As to the East Timorese: our collaboration with the bullies (American, Indonesian . . .) and so on is disgusting and contemptible.
 

Richard: “As Keating says 'This is a day of open hearts.' "  With all due respect, but this is exactly what I am referring to in my last post.

Richard, how could you possibly quote Keating, knowing his relationship to the late Indonesian dictator?

Why are we not exploring an essential human basis?

Are the East Timorese any less human than our indigenous?

How on the one hand can we talk about being sorry to one group, yet be doing the exact opposite in relation to other global communities.?

Again why the discrepancy and disconnect?

Craig “I yearn to learn more because I'd love to teach my children more, to connect them to this land, and to help them appreciate the culture of its original inhabitants.”

This is of course a very good point. Craig you must remember all the past discussions, were we explored the mind of the suicide bomber, the Sadat book you quoted etc. in your Bingo thread.

Why when I try to penetrate under the surface of the connections you speak of, to the land, to language, to culture and creativity and identity,.I am for the most part completely ignored?

What do these connections you speak of mean to a Muslim's identity?

What do these connections you speak of mean to a first generation migrant, whose culture and language and links to his/her original identity are drowned out in the conformity of a corporate saturated social environment?

Why whenever I try to penetrate the surface of our multicultural society and search for a foundation for an identity that gives real meaning to my life, I am completely ignored?

Why when I posted the Rapael Lemmkin quote, the man who actually defined Cultural Genocide I received total silence?

I could go on and on about all of this.

One last question- why are all the dots not being connected?

That’s the basis of my doubt.

Craig, Fiona and Richard, I put it to you, what is transparency and accountability, if the dominant cultural group that you all belong to will not accept or refuse to see the ramifications of what all this really means to all Australians from all backgrounds

What does transparency and accountability mean if an honest foundation is ignored?

I say this with all due respect, but at the same time I feel I am drowning in my own thoughts.

I have been meaning to bring this up for a while what does transparency and accountability actually mean, if the social environment is saturated linguistically and architecturally?

I don’t think I am being off topic, I sincerely believe that these are all relevant questions

Hi Fiona, I feel that a song is coming.

I posted this yesterday: “I always thought this country of mine has no soul. I think we have found our soul. The heritage of our indigenous comrades is our soul. I saw that today and I hope to see it again tomorrow”.

Just watched Rudd’s speech. I saw it again. Yes, we have found our soul.

Bloody hell, tears in my eyes. I have not wasted my vote on Rudd. Can you imagine if Rudd’s speech was delivered by Obama?   It will bring the heaven down.

Richard: “When our kids are learning their local aboriginal language at school, we'll be on the right track.”

Very good point, and just one indication of a real move and change of heart, based on real human values.
I sincerely want to believe Rudd, and I sincerely hope that Michael is right and this is the signal for major changes.

Fiona, perhaps you could encourage a research project at your university investigating possible links between human decency and the seeding of rain. It would explain the 11 years of drought that promptly ended with the election of the Rudd Government.

Granted - he possibly does make some very good points.

But I point to my post about him and say again - not once during the past 11 years did Pearson ever attack John Howard over his horrid stance on Aboriginal people, not once did he attack Howard over the "sorry" saga but he lashed out at Rudd on the same thing just three months ago. Yet now it's Kevin Rudd making the historic move. I doubt in the piece I didn't read does he apologise for attacking Rudd.

And sure, Howard's history, but he's left a bloody awful legacy and people like Pearson who got down and dirty with Howard and aided him have a lot to answer for. Pearson did nothing for his own people but a lot for himself, just as Howard did nothing.