Sorry, but not sorry enough

Since 1976 it has created a communist system of land ownership for Aborigines that even Marx would have thought bizarre given their initial economic poverty.

It shut off remote communities to “non-Aborigines”, requiring entrance permits granted by local “elders”. It has undermined the teaching of English in remote schools, leaving 80 per cent of young remote Aborigines illiterate, and many unable even to communicate in English.

On top of this Labor governments have wasted public resources pursing futile, divisive symbolic issues, and all this in order to pursue “reconciliation”, a wholly unverifiable and unobservable goal.

Even the law has been afflicted. In 2002, a Northern Territory judge sentenced a 50-year-old Aboriginal man to one day’s jail for raping a 15-year-old Aboriginal girl, citing traditional culture in his defence. In 2006, a Queensland judge let nine Aboriginal men go free after gang-raping a 10-year-old Aboriginal girl, who, the judge thought, “probably agreed” to the rape.

We have known about the tragedy of the commons since Aristotle wrote “every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest”. The basic economics of wealth creation were uncovered by Smith six years after the British discovered Australia, and principles of legal equality across individuals predate the 1689 English Bill of Rights. Yet, for vast numbers of black Australians, for whom it was obvious socialism would fail, this core human knowledge has been withheld. The implicit racism of the Left is breath-taking, yet its constant moral posturing renders most blind to it.

On February 12, the new Labor Prime Minister Rudd apologised in the national parliament, to the great acclaim of left-thinking people everywhere. For decades many had agitated for such a “national apology”, its necessity had become the pre-eminent shibboleth of polite society. Rudd said “… we apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on [Aborigines]”.

But do you think, dear reader, that this apology was referring to the ideologically-driven laws and policies outlined above, or the Hogarthian social conditions of today’s Aborigines? Of course not; the academics, politicians and commentators who supported such policies are alive, and would never admit to gross negligence, bordering on economic manslaughter.

The apology was given for the “stolen generations”: a phenomenon of highly contested nature and extent, a policy whereby Australian state governments removed some Aboriginal children from their families, between 1910 and 1970, sometimes against their mothers’ will. Children were placed in the care of churches or white foster families, who, it was thought, would provide better life chances. Such paternalistic yet racist policy is hardly out of step with the state of social progress in the West at the time (in 1924, Virginia passed a law banning white women from marrying black men).

The same day the new Opposition leader, Dr Brendon Nelson, leader of the Liberal Party offered a more balanced speech, which underlined the “complexity” of the issue, warned against “moral superiority” across generations, and reminded the parliament of more pressing concerns. Many activists turned their backs on him, and slow clapped to drown him out.

Without doubt, the headline government report that uncovered the impact of this policy, entitled Bringing Them Home (1997), although tendentious, lists a litany of very sad stories of abuse and heartache. It also notes:

The predominant aim of Aboriginal child removals was the … assimilation of the children into the wider, non-Aboriginal community so that their unique cultural values and ethnic identities would disappear, giving way to models of Western culture [horror!] … Removal of children with this in mind is genocidal.

The genocide charge in particular has animated ongoing concern for a “national apology” for the “stolen generations”. Perhaps surprisingly, no court action has proceeded on the basis of such a serious claim in Australia or elsewhere (yet some “perpetrators” are still alive), and only one Aborigine has achieved compensation in the courts for his removal.