WHO’S SORRY NOW?

A still bitter former Prime Minister, Paul Keating, calls it Howard’s  ‘deathbed repentance’ and many people will see it as the last desperate throw off  the dice by a poll-stricken PM whose seems only hours away from calling the election that could bury him.

But John Howard’s pledge to call a referendum to change the Constitution to enshrine Aboriginal history and culture is more than that.

His admission that he has had problems with indigenous issues and the “I’m sorry’ question for the time he has been in the job is an extraordinary whiff of honesty from a politician.

He said last night: ‘I’m the first to admit that this whole area is one I have struggled with during the entire time that I have been Prime Minister’.

But while now embracing reconciliation he still makes the distinction that many Australians will agree with. He says ‘We are not a federation of tribes. We are one great tribe; one Australia.  He rebuffs  the idea of a treaty that implies we are two separate nations. On that I agree with him. We are not.

I don’t agree with his stubbornness in not saying ‘I’m sorry’. I know the main reason why. The fear of massive lawsuits. And other Australians say they won’t apologise for the ‘Stolen Generation’ because they personally didn’t do it.

Well, I didn’t do it. But I am sorry it happened. Germans who were never there have apologised for the Holocaust. And we turn our anger on current Japanese politicians who won’t admit that thousands of women were used as sex slaves for their troops in World War II.

The words’ Stolen Generation’ were emotive and wrong. It wasn’t a generation. But Aboriginal babies and kids were stolen. Some of them. Some were given away by parents hoping for a better life for them. Some were taken for health reasons to save their lives.

And the cause wasn’t helped when it turned out that two major activists Charles Perkins and Lois( now Lowitja) O’Donoghue weren’t stolen.

Still, John Howard’s latest policy should be applauded – even if seen a s a last gasp by some. It comes on the heels of an indifferent government finally doing something about the sexual abuse of children in far-flung Aboriginal communities and an epidemic of alcohol, disease and despair.

I have said many times: With the billions and billions of dollars that have been spent on Aboriginal welfare and projects since Gough Whitlam’s days 35 years ago there should not be one Aboriginal kid with pus-filled, fly-infested, eyes in this country. Not one family without access to clean water.

That’s what we all should be sorry about. White and black.

Friday, October 12, 2007

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2007