Sorry Won’t Address Women In Pain.
The ill conceived and politically motivated sorry campaign climaxes tomorrow, but it will not end. It isn’t only Aboriginal peoples who are in pain, and need support. In Australia, most adult woman are in pain, and need support.
The stolen generations do not exist. There is, as yet, no one to whom it can be said that they were removed from stable family care for no reasons than that they were Aboriginal. There are three names known on which documents show they were removed from family care, and no more reasons was given that their papers were stamped ‘Aboriginal,’ but even if those labels weren’t mere cover for more extensive reasons than listed, three do not comprise a generation.
But now, as then, children needed to be removed from family neglect.
Only now, there are pressure groups and activists that risk the lives of the young on the myth of the past.
Saying ‘sorry’ will be less substantial than that proverbial dad who gives a sugar sachet to his child desiring something sweet. The child will remember the gesture, but probably not in the way it was intended.
Woman, many of whom lead single lives while bringing up their young feel hurt and betrayed by a society that is increasingly dysfunctional.
Young women no longer have the support networks that a good mate could bring them, even though our lives are more prosperous now than they have ever been. 
A good mate offers more than love. They offer stability, friendship and support. The time a good mate takes in maintenance is less than that created through interdependence.
Yet consider those to whom the Australian Government will be apologizing. Many will be the children of woman in whom the awesome responsibility of bringing up their family proved too much, often because they were too young, had no support and were abused by their mates.
The lie may be reported far and wide, tomorrow. Schools co-opted to spread the lies. Flags raised in a symbolic gesture of surrender.
===
In my own way, being of Aboriginal decent, I am aware of the heartache over this issue. My mother was not removed from an abusive home when she was growing up, and she, in turn, abused her young. 
I am aware of my own failings. But for me, what I regret is not my attempt to meet the needs of ones I love. My regret is in failing to be up to the task.
The government needs to act, as the previous one had, by supporting communities in need. The empty gesture is not as sweet as is being made out.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
When It Is Wrong To Say Sorry.
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Rudd releases his apology. It lies
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd has released an apology that contains two critical and potentially lethal flaws.
First, it apologises for the “removal” of all Aboriginal children - even those many who were bashed, starved, raped, sent to boarding school or abandoned:
We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country. For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.
But for such removals we cannot truly say sorry, because we do not mean it. If we did mean it we would not to this very day continue to remove Aboriginal children in danger and needing help.
But wait. Here is the second failing - the potentially lethal one:
We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians. A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.
Is Rudd truly promising to “never, never” again commit “injustices” of the kind he just mentioned - the “removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families”?
This is either another lie - because even today we take eight times more Aboriginal children from their families (proportionately) than we do white children.
Or, heaven help the children, this is in fact a threat - and Rudd is sincere in saying that “never, never” again will we save a single Aboriginal child from their family, not matter how desperate the danger.
This is a desperately deceitful, insincere and dangerous document. Shame, deep shame, on its author.
Read on for the full text.
Below is the wording of federal Parliament’s full apology to the Stolen Generations:
“Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.
We reflect on their past mistreatment.
We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations – this blemished chapter in our nation’s history.
The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.
We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.
We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.
For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.
To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.
And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.
We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.
For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.
We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.
A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.
A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.
A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.
A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.
A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.”
Whites demand less help for blacks
Andrew Bolt
The ABC reports:
Thousands protest to “stop the intervention”
Now count how many of those protesters in the ABC’s picture - protesters who want to stop the urgent intervention to rescue troubled Aboriginal communities - are themselves Aboriginal? How many are likely to have ever seen an Aboriginal community?
Here’s another headline for this story:
White fools demand end to black help
And so Aborigines are killed, by a white ignorance and self-regard that masquerade as compassion.
Stolen farce #2 - Stealing your own children
Andrew Bolt
The NSW Government is stealing children - or at least their minds:
PUBLIC schools have been ordered to fly the Aboriginal flag and stop lessons tomorrow while Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologises to the Stolen Generation.
Education chiefs have also told students in the state’s 2240 government schools to watch a broadcast of the Ngunnawal People’s “Welcome to Country” ceremony at the opening of Federal Parliament today.
And you thought I was kidding about recruiting new Red Guards. This isn’t educating but indoctrinating - celebrating a lie.
UPDATE 2:
Ditto in Victoria, according to this email from Education Minister Bronwyn Pike, former Greenpeace board member, to all schools:
Sorry Day, Wednesday 13 February 2008, will be an historic day and I would strongly encourage all Victorian Schools to recognise and celebrate this significant event in Australia’s history.
It is a great opportunity for individual teachers to make sure that your students are aware of the significance of this important day by:
• Listening or watching the Apology live in your classrooms from 8.55am on Wednesday 13 February 2008…
• Reading stories which affirm Aboriginal culture and customs.
At a school level I strongly encourage you to consider the following suggestions:
• Hold a school assembly at 8.55am on Wednesday 13 February 2008 to acknowledge the Apology and listen or watch the Apology live.
• Hold a flag-raising ceremony with the Australian, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags as a sign of acknowledgement of the Apology.
• Pay respect to the traditional owners of the land on which your school now lies, through a Welcome to Country at assembly ...
Children can’t just know of the apology but must “celebrate” it. And they have to fly the Aboriginal flag as well, which is paying homage to an unrelated and even more divise agenda.
I guess the Left is glad at last that John Howard made schools erect those flagpoles.
Stolen farce #3 - Saying sorry as we still “steal”
Andrew Bolt
We must still “steal” children even from the very people coming to hear Kevin Rudd’s “sorry”:
AS Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was preparing to say sorry, a six-week-old baby was taken from his father just 300m away.
The tiny infant had been living at the squalid Aboriginal Tent Embassy at Old Parliament House, where an emotional Aboriginal man watched as his son was removed by two DOCS workers at 3pm.
The father - who cannot be named for legal reasons - claimed it was a case of another Stolen Generation…
The Daily Telegraph understands the father had lived at the tent embassy for six months, making him unfit to properly care for the child, under law. The baby’s mother is in jail.
This sorry is an obscene farce. We are saying sorry for rescuing children before as we rescue them still. Will Rudd say “sorry” for that, too, and call the DOCS workers racists and child stealers?
UPDATE
Aboriginal “leader” Walter Shaw is complaining that Aboriginal families are still being stolen from poverty:
As a staff member of Alice Springs’s Tangentyere Council Mr Shaw witnessed the Howard government’s attempts to take over the town camps and turn them to suburban-style living.
If we listen to the heated rhetoric of these mad days, it seems the big white mistake was to do anything at all for Aborigines. Had we abandoned children to their squalid fate, we’d now be called kind.
UPDATE 2
Nancy Barnes is an Aboriginal teacher who grew up with Lowitja O’Donoghue in a home for “stolen” children:
We are referred to as the ‘Stolen Generation’. I consider myself saved.
Peter Garrett is a white politician who wants to rewrite Barnes’ own past:
Sometimes as young as three and four, often abused, nearly always isolated and inevitably harmed by the experience, most suffered such loss of connection with home and culture that their lives were forever scarred.
Incidentally, Garrett in his article does not refer himself to the “stolen generations” or “stealing” children. He prefers “forced removal” - a semantic shift and dodge that probably reflect what Rudd will say tomorrow.
UPDATE 3
Noel Pearson predicts no good:
One of my misgivings about the apology has been my belief that nothing good will come from viewing ourselves, and making our case on the basis of our status, as victims.
Today benighted
by Andrew Bolt
Remind me to be much more careful before agreeing to appear on a Today Tonight piece, especially if it’s about the “stolen generations”.
I was asked to discuss Bruce Trevorrow’s big compensation payout for being a member of the “stolen generations”.
I explained in snappy bites the reasons why this case - desperately tragic though it was - was not proof of the “stolen generations” at all. The judge had in fact found there was no policy in South Australia to “steal’ children for just being Aboriginal, and Bruce was stolen not because he was Aboriginal, but because a welfare officer saw he had been admitted by neighbors to hospital in a very serious condition, and she had long feared he was neglected. Indeed, when he was finally returned to his mother, she eventually beat him so badly he had to be rescued by a policeman who feared for the boy’s life. Bruce was then rejected by his mother.
None of this was included in the interview. The only comments I was allowed to make were ones denying the existence of a “stolen generation” - as if I had no idea there was a Trevorrow who was the living proof I was wrong.
This was no accident. Today Tonight wanted to present an “exclusive” - the first “stolen generations” victim to get compensation, and nothing was allowed to disturb the narrative.
In this and so many other small ways I’ve detailed on this blog, the public is misled on the “stolen generations”. Deeply, deeply misled.
UPDATE
An astonishing report on the ABC TV news tonight - interviews with a patrol officer and a woman who ran a mission for children who said the children they looked after were saved, not stolen. The patrol officer, Ronald Kitching, added he’d never taken a child unless all other attempts to make sure they were not neglected had failed.
The sorry we needed
by Andrew Bolt
David Moore, who was chief of staff to then Aboriginal Affairs Minister Mal Brough, on the apology we really needed:
The people who should be apologising are those who during the past 40 years presided over deeply flawed indigenous affairs policies that created separatism, nepotism, welfarism and isolationism: dysfunction and despair; the wide-scale abuse and neglect of Aboriginal children and the poorer health outcomes of Aboriginal people in general.
The apology should be from the Government, because it still has people who want to return to the failures of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and some who participated in the politics of nepotism. It should be from the Howard government: after all, it persisted with those failed policies for much of its time in office as a political holding strategy because it was afraid, until its last year or so, to really do something.
It should be from the Keating and Hawke governments, which fostered and cultured the policies of separatism and gave real succour to the Aboriginal industry by building ATSIC into the monster it became. And it did so not because it didn’t know this caused problems, it did it because it didn’t want to face the political challenge that really tackling Aboriginal poverty would create in its own ranks.
Every premier in every state and every indigenous affairs minister for the past 40 years should apologise for failing to provide the safety and the education that Aboriginal children deserved.
Every education minister who turned a blind eye to the appalling absenteeism of Aboriginal children should apologise for not treating those children with the same respect as white children by not enforcing the same rules.
The Whitlam and the Fraser governments, which championed policies that were never going to work (and in some cases still do), should apologise. While they railed, rightly, against an apartheid system in South Africa, they created one in Australia. Instead of moralising and commentating, they should face up to their share of the responsibility.
Leaders of ATSIC - every living former commissioner - who entrenched these dysfunctions, who cut funding for women’s programs and presided over a men’s rights agenda, should apologise. All the so-called leaders. They share responsibility. It would make it a genuine act of reconciliation if black leaders stood side by side with white leaders and they all apologised together for failing their people.
And which reporter dared today to ask Malcolm Fraser, Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating - all of whom emoted at the sorry ceremony - this question: If stealing Aboriginal children was so obvious, so common, so disastrous and so racist, why did you not apologise for it long, long ago?
And to Whitlam this further question: Kevin Rudd says our child-stealing policies were still applied in the 1970s. Why didn’t you notice and stop them? Are you a racist?
Rudd’s latest sorry - to heckled Nelson
by Andrew Bolt
So much for reconciliation.
Guess who joined the pack-attack on Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson during his own speech of sorry during this day of “healing”?
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd confirmed in Question Time that his press secretary, Lachlan Harris, and his deputy turned their backs on the giant screen erected at Parliament House when Nelson spoke, which doubtless helped to whip up the happy hate of the crowd.
A disgusting politicisation of an already divisive and politicised event. Rudd said he’s “counselled” his staffers, who will say their own sorry to Nelson.
From some of the response I’ve received, too, it seems an odd fact that those keenest on this “reconciliation” seem quite prone to hatred and abuse.
The ABC’s “stolen” generation
Andrew Bolt
The ABC continues to find “stolen generations” victims - children allegedly stolen just because they were black, not because they were abandoned or neglected:
Here is the 7.30 Report‘s example:
HELEN MORAN: We were told different stories so we were told that we were fairly poor, that we were living in bad conditions, we were told that they weren’t looking after us properly. We were told that Dad abandoned us all and Mum was left with six children. We were told that we were abandoned by both of them. So, you know, it was different stories at different times.
Here is The World Today‘s example:
Lowitja O’Donoghue
(Link not up yet to today’s report.)
But here is O’Donoghue confessing to me seven years ago that she’d in fact been abandoned at a mission home:
“(My father) didn’t want to be straddled with five kids,” the former Australian of the Year said, sobbing. “I haven’t forgiven him…
“I don’t like the word ‘stolen’ and it’s perhaps true that I’ve used the word loosely at times… I would see myself as a removed child, and not necessarily stolen.”
Asked whether it would be better to state clearly that she wasn’t a member of the stolen generation, Dr O’Donoghue said: “I am prepared to make that concession.”
Here is one of Jon Faine’s examples:
Mary Hooker
Here is Hooker’s real story:
Hooker’s mother was in fact taken to hospital unconscious from an overdose of pills, and Hooker says she didn’t wake up for two weeks.
She left behind her 12 children in a house that welfare officers found had plenty of rubbish but little food: “The only food available was three sausages and a small piece of steak.”
There is no mention of any man in the house, but the documents show the dad of seven of the children was a prisoner at the Mount Mitchell Afforestation Camp, a low-security jail.
There is also no mention of abuse in what documents I could read, but Hooker last week admitted on ABC radio “there was also abuse going on in the community”, and that she had been “raped"…
These documents confirm Hooker and three of her 11 siblings were removed not because they were Aboriginal, but because a magistrate found proven a complaint that ”they were neglected” and without a guardian.
So very much of the media’s handling of this day and this issue is not reporting, but barracking.
Column - Baby ‘stolen’ from under PM’s nose
Andrew Bolt
KEVIN Rudd will this morning say his sorry just two days after the latest baby was “stolen” - from the Aboriginal tent embassy 300m away.
Nothing better symbolises the absurdity of the Prime Minister’s apology to the “stolen generations”.
The six-week-old baby was taken on Monday by two Department of Community Services officers who judged it was in danger in that squalid camp, now filled with Aborigines in Canberra to celebrate Rudd’s sorry.
A Daily Telegraph reporter who saw the rescue said the baby’s grandmother abused the officers as “criminals” who were “taking my family away”. The child’s father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said his baby was now one of the “stolen generations” - one of the 100,000 children we’re told were stolen just because they were black, not because they needed help.
But this latest baby was in fact “stolen” for the same kind of reasons that had us “steal” Aboriginal children before.
The child’s mother is reportedly in jail, and the Daily Telegraph said the father had lived in the tent embassy for six months. If you’ve seen that “embassy”, you’ll know it is no fit place for such a terribly young child.
So why does Rudd today say sorry for “stealing” children when we still “steal” the same kind of children for the same reasons from his own doorstep, under his own eyes?
Do not think this child is much different to those of the “stolen generations” to whom Rudd apologises.
Take Mary Hooker, presented by the Sydney Morning Herald this week as a representative of the “stolen generations” - one of the black children stolen by white racists for no good reason.
Hooker, a spokesman for the Stolen Generations Alliance, told her story in a video clip on the Herald’s website, during which the camera panned over documents relating to her case.
I froze the picture to read what I could. And here is the true story of this “stolen generations” child.
Hooker’s mother was in fact taken to hospital unconscious from an overdose of pills, and Hooker says she didn’t wake up for two weeks.
She left behind her 12 children in a house that welfare officers found had plenty of rubbish but little food: “The only food available was three sausages and a small piece of steak.”
There is no mention of any man in the house, but the documents show the dad of seven of the children was a prisoner at the Mount Mitchell Afforestation Camp, a low-security jail.
There is also no mention of abuse in what documents I could read, but Hooker last week admitted on ABC radio “there was also abuse going on in the community”, and that she had been “raped”.
So guess on what grounds welfare officers “stole” Hooker from a filthy, abusive, overcrowded, foodless home, with her mother in a drug-caused coma and a father in jail?
Was it because they were white racists trying to destroy Aborigines, or because they were people just trying to save a little girl?
You guessed right. These documents confirm Hooker and three of her 11 siblings were removed not because they were Aboriginal, but because a magistrate found proven a complaint that “they were neglected” and without a guardian.
Welfare officers would have removed any white child found in such circumstances, I am sure. And most certainly should have.
Yet Hooker is one of the “stolen generations” children Rudd will say he’s sorry we “stole”, when she in fact was just another Aboriginal child we tried to save. Just like the baby we rescued just two days ago.
If Rudd is sorry we’ve saved such children, then let’s stop. And heaven help those we must now leave behind.
The Melbourne University of Group-Think
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd’s close friend and political help-mate, Melbourne University vice-chancellor Glyn Davis, sends a mass email to round up an audience for his mate’s “important” sorry:
I would encourage staff and students of the University to view this momentous event.
And I guess his historians are now obliged to teach as a fact a phenomenon that is actually strongly disputed - and which none of his historians 20 years ago suspected had truly occured:
On behalf of the University of Melbourne, I join with other Australians, led by the Prime Minister of Australia, the Hon. Kevin Rudd, to say a heartfelt ‘sorry’ to the Stolen Generations and their families and to all Indigenous Australians who have suffered the hurt and harm caused by the forced removal of hildren and families and its effect on the human dignity and spirit of Indigenous Australians.
This email is an insult to the spirit of free inquiry that should be at the heart of any great university.
Nelson cut for speaking truth
Andrew Bolt
A day meant to unite us is celebrated by division and the silencing of dissent:
A BROADCAST of Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson’s reply to the Prime Minister’s apology to indigenous Australians was cut in Perth as Aboriginal people clapped to drown him out.
More than 1000 people had gathered just before dawn on the Perth esplanade to hear Prime Minister Kevin Rudd say sorry.
But midway through Dr Nelson’s reply in support of the apology an Aboriginal woman, Catherine Coomer, started yelling out that the Opposition leader was degrading Aboriginal people. Ms Coomer stood up and turned her back to the screen showing the speech.
The crowd then began clapping loudly, and the broadcast was unplugged.
So what had Nelson said that was so offensive that at the Canberra public screening of the sorries many in the audience stood and turned their backs to Nelson, and later abused him on Channel 9?
He spoke - however cautiously and mutedly - the truth about why some children were stolen:
In others, the conviction was that “half caste” children in particular should, for their own protection, be removed to government and church run institutions where conditions reflected the standards of the day. Others were placed with white families whose kindness motivated them to the belief that rescued children deserved a better life…
But in saying we are sorry - and deeply so - we remind ourselves that each generation lives in ignorance of the long term consequences of its decisions and actions. Even when motivated by inherent humanity and decency to reach out to the dispossessed in extreme adversity, our actions can have unintended outcomes. As such, many decent Australians are hurt by accusations of theft in relation to their good intentions.
Worse, he reminded us - but without even say so directly - that the conditions from which we once saved children exist to this very day:
Sexual abuse of Aboriginal children was found in every one of the 45 Northern Territory communities surveyed for the Little Children are Sacred report. It was the straw breaking the camel’s back, driving the Howard Government’s decision to intervene with a suite of dramatically radical welfare, health and policing initiatives.
The Alice Springs Crown Prosecutor, Nanette Rogers with great courage revealed to the nation in 2006 the case of a four year old girl drowned while being raped by a teenager who had been sniffing petrol. She told us of the two children - one a baby - sexually assaulted by two men while their mothers were off drinking alcohol. Another baby was stabbed by a man trying to kill her mother.
So too, a ten year old girl is gang raped in Aurukun; the offenders going free, barely punished. A boy is raped in another community by other children.
Nelson didn’t actually make the specific connection between the abuse today and the rescues yesterday, of course, this being a day in which truth is dangerous.
Even so, so say as much as he did will earn him the vilification of many now cheering loudest this ceremony of sentimentalised history.
Rudd in his speech after the apology, alas, butchered the truth to win the praise of such people claiming “50,000” Aboriginal children were “stolen” for racist reasons that should shame us.
That is simply and utterly untrue. But if we are now to stop removing children from dangers from which we removed children before, we have committed ourselves to a crime far worse than then one for which Rudd today said sorry.
Today the truth was stolen, and I fear Aboriginal children will be made to pay.
(Thanks to reader Jessica.)
UPDATE
The ABC’s Jon Faine and Richard Stubbs attack Nelson’s speech, too. He’s like the general who capitulated, but forgot to arrange a ceasefire first.
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