One of the benefits of Alzheimer’s Disease is that you can hide your own Easter eggs. One of the downsides is that it can sometimes cause you to write stuff like this: “On this first anniversary of Sorry Day, Kevin Rudd’s official apology to the Stolen Generations, there is still a great deal to be sorry about.
“While the Prime Minister committed his Government to improving education and healthcare for the present generation of Aboriginal children, the overwhelming emphasis in the speech was on wrongs done many years ago.
“And in the way it elevated the politics of symbolism over the more mundane pursuit of policies to address issues that oppress Aborigines in the present, it might even have done some harm.”
Queue the orchestra… that’s The Australian’s editorial (by editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell), hot off the presses this morning.
Even on the Chris-Mitchell-Manning-Clark-O-Meter, this one is an especially wild and rambling manifesto. Almost everything and everyone - from the national apology, Mick Dodson, the ‘urban elite blacks’, the left, Aboriginal academics, black protestors, opponents to the NT intervention and, sadly, rational thought - come in for a thorough belting.
And now here’s Mitchell’s editorial from February 14, 2008, the day after the national apology when he noted The Australian had always support an apology.
“Both [Rudd and Brendan Nelson] are to be congratulated for finding the right words on such a complex and painful subject.”
And just for good measure, here’s Mitchell in 2007, a year before the apology: “… The winds of change are even sweeping through The Sydney Morning Herald, which has editorialised no fewer than 16 times since January 2000 on the need for a national apology to Aborigines from the Prime Minister. It is gratifying, however, to see that in yesterday’s editorial, The Sydney Morning Herald recognised that “apologising - however sincerely - for things for which one cannot possibly be responsible is not only practically useless, (it) trivialises real problems, sanctifying and confirming Aborigines’ victimhood,” negating their reserves of pride and strength and relegating them to a status of ‘querulous dependence’.”
So The Oz opposed the apology, supported it, and now opposes it. It seems someone is off his medication again. If a security guard from the front desk at Holt Street is reading this, could you please dash upstairs and check that Mr Mitchell hasn’t locked himself in his office, that the cork is still on the fork, and that Mr Mitchell is playing nicely with the other children in the sandpit.
The Oz, of course, might have the monopoly on ‘foaming loony’, but it is by no means alone in the short-term memory loss stakes.
In acknowledging the one-year anniversary of the apology, a host of media have been out this morning noting that a disappointed Kevin Rudd was unable to deliver his long-awaited report on Indigenous disadvantage yesterday, because of the bushfire crisis in Victoria.
One journalist on ABC radio went so far as to suggest that Rudd had decided to attend a national apology photographic exhibition the morning of the anniversary (the great Wayne Quilliam’s) to make up for not delivering the report, and to show that he’s still engaged in Aboriginal affairs despite the fires.
So Rudd is not so busy that he can’t attend an event to celebrate his delivery of a national apology (ironically, he didn’t actually turn up), but he is too busy to deliver a report to parliament on the government’s progress in closing the gap, a central theme of the actual apology speech. Call me Chris Mitchell, but that’s crazy talk.
Most journalists also appear to have forgotten that Rudd actually promised to deliver the report on the first sitting day of the parliamentary year. In case anyone’s struggling with the math, that was a week before the Victorian fires.
This is the same media that just a fortnight ago were lambasting Professor Mick Dodson for apparently accepting the Australian of the Year award, then demanding the day be moved to a more inclusive date. Of course, Dodson did no such thing - he simply responded to a question from a journalist about the ongoing debate of moving the date, and noted that he thought Australia should have a conversation on the issue.
My point being, a year after the national apology, it’s business as usual in Indigenous affairs. The Oz is still ranting, the government is not performing, the mainstream media is still navel gazing and Aboriginal people remain bitterly disappointed and grossly disadvantaged.
Sure, we gave (or got) an apology to the Stolen Generations. But we also broke the promise of providing compensation. We broke the promise of moving Australia Day. We broke the promise of signing of a treaty. We retained the Northern Territory intervention, unchanged.
Australians may have apologised for the mistakes of the past, but they certainly haven’t learnt from them. And with a Howard-lite government in power and a mainstream media that’s either unstable or downright lazy, is anyone surprised?
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