Home | Friday 15th February 2008 | Issue 620

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SORRY IS THE EASIEST WORD

This Wednesday saw a big moment in Australia when the Prime Minister did what the outgoing conservative John Howard refused to do – say ‘sorry’ to Aboriginals. You may be thinking ‘so what?’, but for years the whole ‘sorry’ issue became a big symbol of an Australian government refusing to admit to its genocidal history. New Labour PM, Kevin ‘07’ Rudd, read out a set of generalised, non-committal statements in parliament, sprinkled with liberal amounts of ‘sorry’, broadcast live and put up on public screens around the country – with large gatherings in city centres watching and scenes of open weeping. On this occasion it was specifically to apologise for the ‘Stolen Generation’, Aboriginal kids who were forcibly taken into orphanages - and often abused – between around 1910 and 1970. It will no doubt prolonging Rudd’s honeymoon with the liberal-centre left after two months in office.

However, while it was a powerful day for Aboriginal Australia, it was an easy – and media friendly – gesture in the long road towards reconciliation. Indigenous people and those ‘stolen’ called it a ‘tokenistic five letter word’, and it doesn’t act on key points made in the 1997 ‘Bringing Them Home’ report about the Stolen Generation, a Kevin 07 pre-election promise. The ‘sorry’ soundbite glosses over monetary compensation and other concrete restitutions. Admittedly this complicated process can’t be solved overnight and lump sums agreed upon instantly, but even so it remains to be seen whether the whole national ‘sorry’ day can help shift suburban Australia towards realising that they’re in fact living out ‘Neighbours’ in an illegal occupation.

In the build-up to the ‘sorry’ day, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy site, one of the longest continual protest camps in the world since 1972 (See SchNEWS 339), grew to a tent city as Aboriginal groups camped after long treks from all around the country. On Tuesday thousands marched from the Tent Embassy to Parliament House against the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007 – a set of law enforcement and welfare tightening legislation aimed at Aboriginals, masquerading as a knee-jerk response to domestic abuse in remote communities. This law, commonly known as the ‘intervention’ – and sent the army into 70 communities - broke international human rights conventions by suspending indigenous Land Rights claims in the NT, as well as ‘quarantining’ (withholding) benefit payments and introducing a voucher system, plus making it easier to enter remote communities without permits.

* For more see perth.indymedia.org

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