Words are easy, words are cheap

A parliamentary inquiry into the development of indigenous enterprises is presently investigating how the federal government can support the indigenous economy, and how indigenous participation in the mainstream economy can be increased. Kevin Rudd has also endorsed the notion of formal recognition of indigenous Australians and their rights in the Constitution, but this is secondary to the "practical challenge of closing the gap".

The 1967 referendum, which conferred citizenship rights upon Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders peoples, was viewed as promising to deliver equality for the nation's indigenous population. Similarly, the unprecedented Mabo land rights decision had the potential to right past wrongs and deliver social justice. So too does the formal apology issued to members of the Stolen Generations.

It is the disjuncture between rhetoric and reality which is an omnipresent danger.

We cannot allow the powerful symbolic force of the apology to overshadow the political community's responsibility for past injustices. To appropriate Yothu Yindi's line, "words are easy, words are cheap".

Perhaps it is too soon to expect tangible, practical outcomes from the government's apology. But we must be careful that one "S" word - "sorry" - does not simply become another - a symbol.

What will take longer to gauge is whether the apology to the Stolen Generations does indeed signal a "new beginning" for the nation, or whether it is simply another phase in the cycle of ambivalent and shifting relations between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.