Herald Sun

On Wednesday I wrote this:

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.

A spokesman for the Department of Community Services tells me the officers were in fact removing the baby to return the child to its foster carers after an access visit to its father. The baby was not living permanently at the embassy.

As for the “stolen generations” accusation, the spokesman says that while the baby was indeed removed from its Aboriginal family for good welfare reasons, its foster carers are themselves Aboriginal.

In summary: An Aboriginal child has indeed just been “stolen”, although not from the tent embassy but another ACT location.

The premise:

A radio host invites a minister to discuss a strike. She says sure, but she doesn’t want to debate on air with the union leader. But while she’s in the studio, microphone in her face, the host gets the union leader on the line, and badgers the minister into debating her on air. The host even relays questions from the union leader to the minister and demands answers.

This of course is unethical. A clear case of ambush interviewing, leaving aside the issue of a breach of good faith.

If this were Alan Jones, Media Watch would doubtless open its wildly delayed season with a stern lashing of the miscreant.

But given the name and position of the guilty party .... Well, listen and learn.

UPDATE

Apologies. I’m told this audio of Jon Faine’s show doesn’t contain that tangle with Health Minister Bronwyn Pike. I’ve been too behind on my deadlines to check.

The BBC report:

A psychiatric hospital official has been detained in Baghdad in connection with bombings by two allegedly mentally disabled women, says the US military.

The man is suspected of supplying patient information to al-Qaeda in Iraq, spokesman Rear Admiral Gregory Smith told a news conference.

Perfect symbolism.

Dennis Jensen was one of the Liberal MPs who abstained from the vote yesterday on Kevin Rudd’s sorry. Read on for his explanation. In it, he confronts Rudd with the truths of the “stolen generation” - and of the plight even today of Aboriginal children like them.

You might think Rudd must know all this already, but Jensen points out that this new saviour of the Aboriginal people never before this day showed great interest in them:

He was the mandarin (appropriate term there, I think), who was in charge of the bureaucracy during the term of the Goss Labor government. What policies came out of that period to reduce the plight of the Aboriginal people?

Well, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he has seen the light subsequent to becoming the Member for Griffith and coming to this place.  So, I searched Parlinfo, for Rudd’s speeches in Hansard.

For the search term “aboriginal” I got 2 hits - one about a local primary school and the other his speech in response to Howard’s aboriginal initiative last year, in which he supports Howard.

For “aboriginals” - 0 hits. For “ATSIC” - 0 hits. For “native welfare” - 0 hits.

So much for his genuine concern on the plight of the Aboriginal people of Australia.

But click and read it all:

UPDATE

Channel 9’s A Current Affair will tonight show another reason to doubt the use of this “sorry”. One of the promised guests will be even better than the modest other.

Continue reading 'Jensen explains why he wasn’t sorry'

A loss:

FORMER foreign minister Alexander Downer is being tipped - after politics - to go into business with the husband of former Democrats leader Natasha Stott Despoja.

A very fine foreign minister, right on all the big issues.

UPDATE

Former foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer says he has no plans to quit Federal Parliament, at least in the next six months…

Mr Downer has told ABC NewsRadio the idea of becoming a lobbyist does not appeal to him at all, but he is considering his future.

Australia has no proven power sources other than nuclear which could do the job instead, but never mind!

COAL-FIRED power stations should not be privatised but bulldozed over the next 20 years to curb greenhouse gas emissions, one of the state’s leading energy academics has told the Iemma Government.

This country is now mad enough to do it, too. Heavens, even the coal-miners’ union backs the global warming hysteria, and is soon to be renamed the Lemmings’ Union.

Allah has spoken, and let his faithful take heed:

A LANDMINE blew up in the home of a religious cleric in southern Afghanistan, killing the mullah, two of his sons and two other men who had been preparing an attack, police said today.

Brendan Nelson becomes not the Opposition Leader but a minister in Kevin Rudd’s Government:

KEVIN Rudd yesterday invited Brendan Nelson into a “war cabinet” to tackle Aboriginal disadvantage as he pledged to follow his historic apology to the Stolen Generations with practical measures to improve indigenous lives…

The bipartisan “war cabinet”, to be jointly chaired by Mr Rudd and the Opposition Leader to put indigenous welfare above party politics, will be first charged with designing a plan for remote Aboriginal housing within five years.

What’s more, Rudd and Nelson will then join in another political task:

(They) would then develop constitutional recognition for indigenous Australians which would be put to a referendum.

Why stop there? Why not also a bipartisan “war cabinet” on terrorism? On global warming?

And before all that there was this:

Federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson is backing Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s plan to hold a two-day summit to map a future vision for the country…
Dr Nelson, who will be invited to the summit, has welcomed the move.

The Liberals are being sucked into irrelevance, largely through their own loss of confidence and convictions. And Rudd is building himself a model of soft-corporatism, in which political opposition will be muted and dissenters denied political (and, increasingly, even media) representation.

This is a terrible mistake for the Liberals, and an erosion of democracy.

It is the Opposition’s job to scrutinise the Government, hold it to account and offer alternative policies. If it joins the Government, who will perform that role? And why would anyone vote Liberal?

Hillary has blown it, says Dick Morris, her husband’s former spin-master. It’s Barack Obama, the Democrat nominee for president.

Invent what you like. Invent a ”stolen generations”. Invent specific victims. And, as does Rueters, invent even wilder names for them:

Tens of thousands of aboriginal children were forcibly taken from their parents under a government policy of assimilation from the 1880s to the 1960s. Those children are called the “Stolen Generations” or ”People of the Bleaching” ...

The Sydney Morning Herald website last night listed all its “sorry” stories, showing it had covered every possible angle - provided that angle conformed precisely to the preferred Rudd narrative:

Kevin Rudd says sorry
Day for healing: Aboriginal leaders
Rain and an apology help wash away the wrong
Speech gets standing ovation in Redfern
Britain urged to back Rudd’s apology
Thunderous applause in Sydney for Rudd’s speech
A nation apologises
‘Sorry speech was magnificent’
Long queue to witness Rudd speech
Family saddened by apology that comes too late for some
A nation shocked by tales of sorrow
Protest against intervention
Welcome ritual marks opening of Parliament
Tears for those who vanished, never to return
Mother’s regret carried to grave
Bondi BBQ for live apology
Rudd’s apology revealed
Finally their voices will be heard
Full text: Kevin Rudd’s sorry speech
Full text: Brendan Nelson’s sorry speech

I’d be astonished, if I were not now desensitised.  This is coverage of the kind a Bible gives to The Sermon on the Mount.

So much for the claim that a sorry would let us all “move on”:

Headline 1: Fury over Nelson’s ‘sorry’ reply

Headline 2: Push for ‘sorry’ cash

UPDATE

3AW’s Neil Mitchell notes the obvious:

So, how is this country different today? It is no less divided.

As polls confirm.

UPDATE 2

What “moving on”? And still more sorries are demanded:

THE British government has dismissed calls for it to apologise for its role in the removal of thousands of indigenous Australian children from their families.

Britain had been urged by prominent human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson to endorse an apology delivered by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd because English intellectuals had inspired the policy of seizing the children.

UPDATE 3

First the “sorry”, and now for the official interpretation of what Rudd actually said:

THE father of reconciliation, Pat Dodson, yesterday added his voice to calls for compensation for the Stolen Generations, saying yesterday’s apology acknowledged the complicity of Australian governments in attempts to “destroy” Aborigines.

UPDATE 4

No much sign of “moving on” here, either, as a snippy Sydney Morning Herald journalist discovers:

WHETHER you call them the ignored majority or the ignorant few, it took only a mouse click and a quick flick of the radio dial to discover that many Australians did not welcome Kevin Rudd’s apology yesterday…

In one online poll 36 per cent were in favour of the apology and 64 per cent against, while another had the number at 44 in favour to 56 opposed.

What? The “sorry” did not reconcile us?

This will astonish the press gallery who show not a skerrick of this division in their own rhapsodic prose:

Paul Kelly, The Australian:

The mood yesterday was mostly hopeful, uplifting and harmonious.

Tony Wright, The Age:

That same release — the hope of an expulsion, really, of a national burden — could be felt across the country...

Martin Flanagan, The Age (not of the press gallery, though):

As little as 12 months go, a formal apology to the stolen generations appeared out of the question politically. Now it has happened, and been met with resistance by only a few recalcitrants.

Tony Stephens, Sydney Morning Herald:

A nation tired of cringing from its history looked ready to rip away the last of the white blindfolds, in Kevin Rudd’s words, “to remove a great stain from the nation’s soul”. The last of the dinosaurs were falling over… (W)hen Mr Rudd said (sorry) three times in his formal apology, and several more times afterwards, it seemed that a seismic shift had shaken the land, liberating the people.

That’s not reporting. That’s ommming.

Comment here, and point out the stuff I’ve missed.

Don’t count on much from me today, because all the arguing yesterday over the sorry has left me badly behind on my column writing today.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

UPDATE

For the benefit of some readers, particularly a dozen of those advocating apologies and reconciliation: Abusive comments will not be put up. Our policy is to refer death threats to the police.

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.

(I’ll try to put up a link. Bravo the ABC.)

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?