Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Who's Sorry Now?
With Kevin Rudd in power in Australia, this was inevitable - but will the apology make the slightest difference to the social collapse of the Aborigines? Was it anything more than a fatuous gesture, adjusting the mood music? Aboriginal children continue to be taken from their families in large numbers, but the motivation now is to rescue them from neglect and abuse. The sad fact is that these people were doomed as soon as the first white men settled in Australia - it's a story that will never get any happier. Or am I being unduly pessimistic? By the way, that's not Rudd in the picture at the top left of the report.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
They do seem a bit lazy to me I must say....
ReplyDeleteThey deserve an apology even though it won't change anything.
ReplyDeleteThe apology has been deemed by the media here to be a great success, and indeed it was clear that many aborigines found it an emotional event, I suspect because the apology was so broad and general that it did cover any aborigine who ever knew anyone who felt they had been mistreated.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I find it very hard to believe that the goodwill generated will last more than a few months. There remains substantial resistance in aboriginal activist circles to the government taking the tougher, more interventionist approach to cleaning up the truly disastrous living conditions in many remote communities which the former conservative government instituted.
Such tensions are not going to be resolved by an apology; indeed the activists may be in a position to claim a greater degree of betrayal if the Labor government does not do what the activists want.
PM Rudd also set himself up for failure by setting at least one improbable goal (all aboriginal children in all communities to be attending pre-school in 5 years time.)
The apology has been deemed by the media here to be a great success, and indeed it was clear that many aborigines found it an emotional event, I suspect because the apology was so broad and general that it did cover any aborigine who ever knew anyone who felt they had been mistreated.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I find it very hard to believe that the goodwill generated will last more than a few months. There remains substantial resistance in aboriginal activist circles to the government taking the tougher, more interventionist approach to cleaning up the truly disastrous living conditions in many remote communities which the former conservative government instituted.
Such tensions are not going to be resolved by an apology; indeed the activists may be in a position to claim a greater degree of betrayal if the Labor government does not do what the activists want.
PM Rudd also set himself up for failure by setting at least one improbable goal (all aboriginal children in all communities to be attending pre-school in 5 years time.)