ausculture.com

A young P-plater hits a man on a pedestrian crossing and drives off. He justifies his actions by telling himself that the man shouldn’t have suddenly stepped out, and that he barely clipped him. However, the man is confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

Years later, the driver, now a wealthy, middle-aged man, motivated by a nagging guilt that won’t go away, tracks down the man he disabled and says “Sorry about what I did to you all those years ago, but I’m not giving you a cent of compensation.”

This morning, Kevin Rudd, on behalf of the Federal Government of Australia, finally delivers the long-awaited apology to the Stolen Generations. But he’s already stated that there are no plans for compensation. And it gets worse...

This quote, from the Cathy Freeman episode of ancestry program Who Do You Think You Are? on SBS, paints a picture of life for indigenous Australians in 1918:

“Under The Act [of 1897], all Aboriginal wages, including military pay, was controlled by the Protector of Aborigines, who, at his discretion, would then pass it on to those who had worked for it. The reasoning was that Aborigines couldn't be trusted to spend their own money wisely.”

Fast-forward 90 years and the current Intervention sees compulsory ‘quarantining’ of welfare payments, a Government officer with powers to seize Aboriginal community assets at his sole discretion and plans to seize land. The reasoning is much the same, and the application as indiscriminate and heavy-handed as ever.

Emotive arguments were used to justify the Intervention, Howard suddenly announcing that it was a national emergency shortly before the Federal election in 2007 – this despite the NT’s Little Children Are Sacred report following four similar major State Government reports dating back to 2002. An in-depth report by the ABC’s Four Corners in November 2007 stated that not a single arrest had been made during the Intervention’s first four months for child sexual abuse. Which is not to say the problem doesn’t exist, but nor is it confined to Indigenous Australians. And I haven’t heard of any plans to strip assets, remove employment opportunities and ban alcohol and porn in any of our Capital Cities.

Today’s apology states “...the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.” But the injustices continue.