Troy Bramston in The Australian writes
Rudd was a far from perfect prime minister; he made many mistakes and misjudgments. But his national apology to the Stolen Generations was his finest moment as prime minister.
Hemingway said courage was
Grace under pressure
While Kennedy wrote in Profiles in Courage
And these are the stories of the pressures experienced by eight United States Senators and the grace with which they endured them – the risks to their careers, the unpopularity of their courses, the defamation of their characters, and sometimes, but sadly only sometimes, the vindication of their reputations and their principles.
Does anyone really think that Rudd’s apology was courageous? That it was difficult or challenging?
No, the apology was an insignificant event which pandered to a noisy lobby group. There was no courage; it did not achieve anything and it failed to improve the wellbeing of Australia’s aboriginal people. Where it counts, Rudd continued the failed policies that have cemented welfare dependency among many of our fellow Australians.
The apology was for a non-event: the ‘stolen generations’ are a post-modern myth as Keith Windshuttle has demonstrated many time. It was an act of symbolism without meaning and without significance.
When presented with an opportunity to assist aboriginal Australians by moving them off welfare dependency, Rudd was missing in action. The events of the past five years proves that Rudd’s apology of 13 February 2008 deserves to be forgotten. It is not for the present generation to apologise for actions or non-actions of the past.
If Bramston is right that Rudd’s finest hour was this apology, Rudd achieved nothing except the destruction of Australia’s wealth.
UPDATE
Thanks to sdog for pointing out this article on False Apology Syndrome. It is well worth a read.
Who was the Queensland pollie who suggested that the apology be accompanied by a statement of forgiveness by Aborigines? That would’ve been courageous, and it might have achieved something. Imagine being able to wipe the slate clean – ‘We apologised for the past, and you forgave us, so let’s move on’. Instead, the black armband culture of resentment and division continues, aided in no small part by the do-gooders and rent-seekers who live off the aboriginal industry by revisiting past wrongs.
Turtle
11 Feb 13 at 3:16 am
Courage? Good Lord no. Apology for something that didn’t happen in a generation so far past that no-one is left to haul into Court to mount a defence?
No. REAL Prime Ministerial courage would be to apologise to the thousands of heartbroken fathers every year who have their children taken from them by the Family Courts.
Courage would be in getting rid of the ‘no-fault’ Family Court altogether and the army of rent-seeking scum who feed off the misery of falsly accused fathers.
Courage would be apologising for the 80,000 Australians murdered in the womb every year and replacing them with non-Australian, illegal immigrants.
Courage would be to apologise to all Australian men for the increase in the mortality that has risen from one year to seven years since Federation due to starving men’s health funding and the continual bolstering of women’s.
Courage would be apologising to men for the lack of an equal Office for the Status of Men to match that for women.
Amfortas
11 Feb 13 at 3:42 am
Exactly so.
C.L.
11 Feb 13 at 3:51 am
It was seen as courageous by a certain type of luvvie that believes there are vast numbers of racist Australians who would object vigorously on racist grounds.
If you can create a picture in your mind where you are facing off against hordes of vicious, depraved enemies, then you’re being courageous.
Once you’ve created lots of imaginary enemies, you can find courage in any action.
I’m off to courageously hunt some drop bears. Wish me luck, and give me a medal when I get back.
boy on a bike
11 Feb 13 at 6:10 am
Even were an apology needed, the Governor-General had already given one a few years earlier. The hysterical gratitude shewn by so many after Rudd’s apology reveals how lamentably ignorant the media and public are: the G-G is Head of State, not the PM.
Deadman
11 Feb 13 at 6:58 am
Rudd’s apology did little but allow Rudd and the Left to preen themselves in front of the slobbering media class.
Meanwhile, aborigines far removed from the cameras, continue to live in conditions that, if they were dogs, the RSPCA would be called in.
Ant
11 Feb 13 at 7:15 am
The left and the luvvie brigades need to apologise for their mistakes.
The activists who encouraged the aboriginal stockmen at Wave Hill to walk off began the process which has led to welfare dependency and vastly increased aimlessness, drunkenness, and despair.
Those who have been demonised for helping kids escape the vicious cycle and get an education deserve an apology. Those who persist in the stolen generations lie should be made to apologise.
Those who have mindlessly opposed assimilation and condemned aboriginals to stay in hopelessly non viable outpost situations should apologise.
Those in our own media who have spread the lie that terra nullius was a fabrication to steal the land, and those who maintain that an islander garden plot allocation system has applicability to mainland walkabout hunter gatherers should also apologise, for they have misled a whole nation.
Aboriginal politics is for the most part a farrago of false witnessing backed up by the left. It’s what they do, after all. When someone does talk sense they get howled down by the “rights collective”.
If you’re into irony, it’s ironic that the same aboriginal representatives who are so articulate and effective (even when wrong) are those who grew up with the benfits of our modern western way of life, perhaps even in white homes, but certainly in homes where at least one parent worked and where the basics of self betterment were drummed into them. Not stolen, but saved.
Blogstrop
11 Feb 13 at 7:24 am
“sactly. Took the words right out of my mouth.
Bramston is an idiot.
Jc
11 Feb 13 at 7:28 am
I must admit I am surprised that there hasn’t been a class action yet with the apology as evidence. Must be saving that for the next coalition government.
entropy
11 Feb 13 at 7:54 am
That apology was seriously cringe inducing, nauseating drivel.
I was absolutely disgusted with the preening li’l ponce at the time and have remained so ever since.
And yes, JC, bramston is an idiot.
Rabz
11 Feb 13 at 8:21 am
And to contrast Rudd with the mean spirited Howard, who refused to apologise.
jupes
11 Feb 13 at 8:26 am
Good luck, don’t let the Hoop Snakes get you!
Popular Front
11 Feb 13 at 8:29 am
Not necessarily. As a triumph of seeming over doing, it deserves to be remembered for that reason alone.
In the meantime (i.e. the last five years) significant numbers of aborigines continue to ‘exist’ in monstrous dantesque hellholes blighted by drugs, alcohol, illiteracy, unemployment, sickening squalor and utterly criminal, endemic levels of abuse of women and kiddies.
Meanwhile labor imbeciles continue to actively sabotage the intervention (macklin, I’m looking at you) and preside over triumphs of stupidity and incompetence such the aboriginal ‘housing program’ that wasted over $10 million on bureaucrat salaries and yet still didn’t manage to be responsible for a single dwelling being constructed.
Inner city lefty wankers need to have a good long look at themselves. That they’re no friends of aborigines goes without saying. Just a bunch of smarmy, self congratulatory pillocks who lerve oppressing blacks.
They make me sick.
Rabz
11 Feb 13 at 8:30 am
Courageous is what they call the special needs kiddies who show up to the athletics carnival and race though they know they will come last.
That is the type of courage Rudd showed.
Token
11 Feb 13 at 8:32 am
Trot Bramston.
Is that Mavis’s boy?
Leigh Lowe
11 Feb 13 at 8:32 am
Troy …. Not Trot.
Doh!
Leigh Lowe
11 Feb 13 at 8:33 am
One of the disgusting sidelines to the Apology speech was one of Rudd’s closest advisors leading the crowd outside the House watching on a big screen, in turning their back during Brendon Nelson’s contribution,(which he was invited to do with about five minutes notice). So much for bipartisanship in reconcilliation.
Rafe
11 Feb 13 at 8:34 am
As a great philosopher I am getting into says – its eaither Bramsont is a moron that does understand he is bullsh*ting. or he is nakedly lying.
Bramston is one of the many Labor hacks participating in that crass Labor tradition of re-writing history to cover up their endless string of colossal clusterf**ks.
Bramston knows what he is doing as is shown by the series of articles he has written over the past 6 months.
Token
11 Feb 13 at 8:35 am
Hahahahahahaha!
Rabz
11 Feb 13 at 8:38 am
Hoop snakes scare me silly – it takes real guts to face one of them!
boy on a bike
11 Feb 13 at 8:39 am
I listened to John Howard talk to the agrian socialist this morning discussing preventable eye diseases, and how Australia is the only developed country where it is a problem. He is working to raise money and awareness.
It is prventable as it comes done to basic hygene over a lifetime (i.e. don’t rub your eyes with hands you have not washed), and how those we had to apologise to do not practice it and do not teach their children to practice it.
Thus, huge amounts of money needs to be spent to fix the problem & JWH is leading the efforts to raise the money.
Of course, the Novis Peris Windbags of this world call Howard like Abbott “racist”.
Token
11 Feb 13 at 8:45 am
It’s probably even worse than that.
The British settlement of Oz doubtless saw great evil visited on innocent Aboriginal people.
It’s a tragedy a new relatively modern victim-hood is visited on them by the Left on what is a very arguable premise.
“Stolen generation’ is almost certainly ott emotionalism rather than a reflection of a widespread reality.
For the most part without doubt people acted, they thought, nobly and in the interests of the children.
Rudd and his sycophant leftist MSM probably has done Aboriginal people more harm than good by that national apology – not least because it’s not premised on any widespread (and certainly not intentional) wrongdoing.
JamesK
11 Feb 13 at 8:53 am
Upon this lie, so many other lies are built.
Token
11 Feb 13 at 9:04 am
Dalrymple: False Apology Syndrome – “I’m sorry for your sins.”
“There is a fashion these days for apologies: not apologies for the things that one has actually done oneself (that kind of apology is as difficult to make and as unfashionable as ever), but for public apologies by politicians for the crimes and misdemeanours of their ancestors, or at least of their predecessors. I think it is reasonable to call this pattern of political breast-beating the False Apology Syndrome.”
It’s long-ish, but go RTWT.
sdog
11 Feb 13 at 9:06 am
Did Peter Beatty have FAS Tourette’s?
Token
11 Feb 13 at 9:19 am
It was a moving speech beantifully done and a very remarkable event.
I can’t see how anyone can argue against that …
Tony Abbott has praised and appreciated it’s signficance to aboriginals.
candy
11 Feb 13 at 9:23 am
So Aboriginal peoples weren’t dispossessed of their lands often violently during Settlement and they didn’t die of introduced pathogens for which they had no immunity?
JamesK
11 Feb 13 at 9:23 am
It was a moving speech beantifully done and a very remarkable event.
I can’t see how anyone can argue against that …
Me.
I do
JamesK
11 Feb 13 at 9:24 am
“I’m off to courageously hunt some drop bears. Wish me luck, and give me a medal when I get back.”
Part of the Drop Bear Taskforce?
http://www.facebook.com/DropBearTaskForce?
blind freddy
11 Feb 13 at 9:33 am
Quite right Token. As the journals of the early explorers and in particular Captain Cook and his oficers make clear, the aboriginals were a savage lot. Innocent they were not.
Sirocco
11 Feb 13 at 9:34 am
I never discussed about that.
Any ship that arrived on the Australian coast line would’ve introduced pathogens. We now have evidence of trade between aboriginals and people of the Indonesian archipeligo. Why don’t they also get pinned for the same “crime” against the “innocent” aboriginals?
Violence. I think Lizzie and others have put to bed the myth of the gentile existance of the “savages” pre-white settlement in multiple threads.
Token
11 Feb 13 at 9:49 am
Well, he would say that. Bramston is a former principal speechwriter for Kevin Rudd. In praising this speech, he’s probably admiring his own work. And, much like ratifying Kyoto, the apology has accomplished no tangible benefits for anybody, while increasing (potential) liabilities.
Cold-Hands
11 Feb 13 at 9:54 am
No shit!
Do you seriously think that’s an argument?
That with the British Settlement, Aboriginals who were clearly dispossessed violently and had European diseases introduced (albeit unwittingly) wasn’t an evil visited upon the native peoples?
So now the Aboriginals had it coming according to Token.
They were a threat to the perfectly innocent British invasion and subsequent settlement under force of arms presumably?
Those innocent Brits just wanted to trade.
Is that it?
Is that your argument?
Really?!!!!
When arguments like these woefully pathetic ones from Token are mounted it provides ammunition aplenty for leftists.
It makes the task of unmasking the lie of the ‘Stolen Generations’ so much harder.
You are harming not helping the cause here Token.
JamesK
11 Feb 13 at 10:14 am
Yes, that addresses the pathogens canard effectively.
The effects of disease are horrible, yet as horrible as it is, the reality is that once technology was available to overcame the isolation of the Australian continent, the poor isolated people would encounter visitors who would bring the all pathogens developed on the Euro-Asian & African super continent from the date the isolation began.
I know this reality does not address a touchy feely feelings, but this truth can not be denied.
Again, you make a statement for me. No.
No. The UK was following the tradition of all pre-industrial empires and took over land occupied by people who were technologically inferior and poorly organised.
The “Stolen Generations” lie may be related to the oolonisation of the Australian continent by the British and the suffering caused by the people on this continent “catching up” on 40,000 years (less considering those the Indoneisans introduced) of pathogents.
This is an absolute moral statement made based upon the morality of the current day. Absolute statements are destructive as they stop proper review of the facts so the real lessons can be learned.
Token
11 Feb 13 at 10:24 am
…pre-
industrialinformation age empires…Token
11 Feb 13 at 10:31 am
John Howard gave Kevin Rudd a free hit. Naturally he milked it for all it was worth.
It doesn’t matter how you whine about it, the Apology is going down in a history book as a milestone moment and you all just look like dinosaurs. You would be better placed directing your energies to other causes rather than refighting yesterday’s lost battles.
Grey
11 Feb 13 at 10:33 am
We “steal” more Aborigines now than ever before.
There were, of course, no “stolen” generations.
Howard’s rescue of the East Timorese – who suffered for decades because of the Labor-approved holocaust of the 1970s – was the greatest moral achievement vis-a-vis dispossessed natives of the past half century.
A brave apology – a genuine one – would see the current Labor prime minister (standing alongside her predecessor) saying sorry for killing 1000+ boat people because they hated John Howard.
C.L.
11 Feb 13 at 10:39 am
Fixed it for you Grey:
…for people who delight in meaningless guestures that actually do not change the lives of the people “apologised to”.
Token
11 Feb 13 at 10:39 am
No, it actually doesn’t.
No one has suggested that the British introduced pathogens intentionally.
Koch’s postulates had not been described at that point in history
So what?
Did the dispossess native peoples under violence or threat of violence? Yes or no?
As I’ve said they didn’t believe they were immoral whilst doing it but that doesn’t mean evil was not perpetrated on native peoples.
My original statement that you mindlessly gainsayed was this:
“The British settlement of Oz doubtless saw great evil visited on innocent Aboriginal people.”
No matter your frankly silly arguments that is patently true.
That paragraph is unintelligent and unintelligible
JamesK
11 Feb 13 at 10:42 am
Bramston needs to find a more appreciative audience for this tosh. Can I suggest the Sydney Writers Festival?
H B Bear
11 Feb 13 at 10:43 am
You could say the same about the Gettysburg address or Ataturk’s words at Gallipoli. They are invested with significance because they express the sentiments that the nation – aside from a small minority of malcontents – feel.
Grey
11 Feb 13 at 10:44 am
It seems that symbolism was more important that pragmatism in the case of the apology. Like the ‘Act of Reconciliation’ and the Referendum in the future on Aboriginals, it is all about tokenism and pandering to the minority groups. It does nothing for Australia or the problems Aboriginals face. I agree with John Howard on the apology. I don’t believe the current generation should have to apologise for past generations mistakes. The apology only means something when it comes from the person.
Andrew
11 Feb 13 at 10:45 am
You probably could Grey.
Anyone with a modicum of intelligence who was not as thoroughly ignorant as Grey, could not.
JamesK
11 Feb 13 at 10:47 am
Right, you are all more brilliant than me. But since history is going to be written by those dullards who don’t populate the shrill comments section of Catallaxy, you had better get used to seeing the Apology being seen as a milestone moment.
‘Cos people as brilliant as you know that isn’t going to change.
Grey
11 Feb 13 at 10:51 am
The nuance you present here changes the absolute nature of your initial statement. I wouldn’t have contested the statement if it came with this qualification.
Sure, you are entitled to your opinion and to label the events of history as you like.
I agree what happened to the aboriginals at the hand of the europen settlers was disgraceful. I thank God that I was born into the modern society where the values you hold are the norm and the criminal acts against aboriginals have been stamped out.
What is patently true is that unlike the apology to the “stolen generations”, the intervention into the horrendous abuses that were occuring in the NT did make a tangible difference.
Token
11 Feb 13 at 10:51 am
Certainly a majority of Australians are appalled that Labor killed 1000+ asylum seekers. A small minority of leftists are indifferent, of course, but that’s to be expected.
C.L.
11 Feb 13 at 10:52 am
To be frank Token no it fucking well doesn’t.
It is just suddenly dawning on you that I didn’t say what you chose to believe I said.
JamesK
11 Feb 13 at 10:54 am
Does that mean you are still asserting that “you could say the same about the Gettysburg address” Grey, you dunce?
JamesK
11 Feb 13 at 10:57 am
Are you really comparing Rudd’s speach to the Gettysburg address?
The waffling technocrat against that concise and precise speech?
The Gettysburg address set in motion a political process. It was not symbolic.
You clown.
Token
11 Feb 13 at 10:58 am
As an addendum:
I don’t want David F.cking Cameron apologising to the Aboriginal people of Australia either
JamesK
11 Feb 13 at 11:00 am
Grey(10,33am) They also reckon Adolf was a great orator, and there seems to be little doubt that he connected with his target audiences. See Nuremberg Rallies etc.
So what are we to make of his speeches? Were they “great”….”fine moments”?
Are we allowed to say “That bloke was crazy” or must we say his speeches “were milestone moments” and leave it at that for fear of appearing to be dinosaurs?
BTW; I could’ve apply this line to any historical figure (Mugabe, Franco, Castro etc) but I’ve chosen Adolf, not because he was the naughtiest, but because his greatest moments are easier (for most) to recall.Cheers.
Mantaray
11 Feb 13 at 11:03 am
The Gettysburg address was a gesture that did not change anybody’s lives – so yes. If it has meaning, it is only because we invest it will meaning.
The Apology will also having meaning for the same reason – because as a nation we choose to invest it with meaning. Doubtless there were a number of Confederate diehards who saw the Gettysburg address as rank hypocrisy – but their opinions have been confined to the dustbin of history.
Just as your views on the Apology will be.
Grey
11 Feb 13 at 11:03 am
I am guessing you don’t know what the Gettysburg address was. It was a dedication speech for a battlefield cemetary.
Anyway its quite short and well worth a read (I agree you probably wouldnt say the same about Rudd’s Apology)
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/gettyb.asp
Grey
11 Feb 13 at 11:07 am
You clown
Token
11 Feb 13 at 11:09 am
Where’s my apology? With english, scottish, welsh and irish blood, i can only imagine that my ancestors were treated badly over and over again.
At least aborigines know who “wronged” them. Then again, we don’t need no stinkin’ apology!
The Beer Whisperer
11 Feb 13 at 11:10 am
What the contrary side is arguing is that there should have been no maritime ventures by Europeans or anyone else away from their own countries to do anything except perhaps trade and wave as they went by.
Get real. It was going to happen, and it only mattered who was here and claimed then settled first – and were able to defend against other similar Euro powers. You may as well join the Greens if you want to revert to some fantasyland where nothing much happened after the middle ages.
blogstrop
11 Feb 13 at 11:10 am
To
Token, where is the thanks? How about having the self-respect to say something along the lines of: “Thanks Grey, It is true I really didn’t know what the Gettysburg address was about. I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge with me.”
Grey: “That’s alright, Token. That is what I am here for – it was my pleasure.”
See? Isn’t that so much more pleasant?
Grey
11 Feb 13 at 11:15 am
“What the contrary side is arguing is that there should have been no maritime ventures by Europeans or anyone else away from their own countries to do anything except perhaps trade and wave as they went by.”
They tried that, but the Ottoman empire had other ideas. Murder, theft and slavery made heading west into the unknown an imperative. Without this necessity, aborigines would have remained free of British settlement.
Really, if they could have an alternative history, who would they rather have settled here? The climate of Australia isn’t conducive to spontaneous technological progress. Rather, archaelogical and anthropological evidence suggests that they, quite the opposite, regressed upon arriving here.
Someone was going to do it, so which one is it? I can imagine a few others laughing at the notion of apologising for such a thing.
The Beer Whisperer
11 Feb 13 at 11:20 am
I agrre
Although the British were rather better for African natives than Asutralian it would seem.
Is that true and if so why?
I suspect something specific to Aboriginal culture.
JamesK
11 Feb 13 at 11:25 am
You clown Grey. Let me re-iterate:
Yes, the process of reuniting the US & the Confederacy. This was a tangible and important process which in many ways was screwed up by the radical republicans after his death.
By contrast, Rudd was seeking to apologise for the tragedies of colonisation. Instead of addressing the core issues, he played political games with a manufactured tragedy based upon the politicking of the left during the 2000′s.
So fixed for you Grey:
Token
11 Feb 13 at 11:26 am
Token, you really have no shame.
Remind me to bring this up again anytime you are caught saying how bad State education is these days. Then again maybe you are a product of State education?
Grey
11 Feb 13 at 11:31 am
Grey’s spot of sensible commenting didn’t last long.
blogstrop
11 Feb 13 at 11:32 am
“Grey’s spot of sensible commenting didn’t last long.”
I missed it. I must have blinked.
The Beer Whisperer
11 Feb 13 at 11:45 am
By the way, speaking of phoniness, John Kennedy didn’t actually write Profiles In Courage. The real author was Theodore Sorensen.
C.L.
11 Feb 13 at 12:50 pm
“Although the British were rather better for African natives than Asutralian it would seem.”
Would you rather be a modern day aborigine or african tribesman JamesK?
Do the British pay out $100,000 per remote tribesaman in welfare and specialised programs every year like Australian Governments do for aboriginals?
You can’t say Aboriginals get a worse outcome than ex-British Africa with a straight face. 1 word – Zimbabwe
ugh
11 Feb 13 at 1:00 pm
But I’m sure Two Minute Jack would have written Profiles In Courage had he not been totally off his bonce on drugs while trying to copulate with anything that moved.
Being shot dead wouldn’t have helped either…
Rabz
11 Feb 13 at 1:11 pm
I called bullshit on this
Prat
Grey
11 Feb 13 at 1:27 pm
test
Grey
11 Feb 13 at 1:28 pm
I called bull++++ on this
Grey
11 Feb 13 at 1:30 pm
[Yes, Grey - the p-word goes to moderation. The c-bomb too. Sinc]
Grey
11 Feb 13 at 1:30 pm
Not the c word as well, damn it. I love calling people c*ns*rv*t*v*s.
Grey
11 Feb 13 at 1:37 pm
So what did the civil war achieve Grey? Carnage and destruction, a million casualies and slavery would have been killed by mechanization in a few years anyway. 150 years on the nation is still divided by race as the Democrats relentlessly play the race card.
And the truth of the matter is that Lincoln was not all that concerned about slavery anyway, it was a card he played to get the numbers for other purposes. Check out his concern for civil liberties in the North during the war.
Rafe
11 Feb 13 at 1:48 pm
That was very amusing, Grey, have no idea what the”p” word is but.
candy
11 Feb 13 at 1:48 pm
The p word was p**d*ph*l* – in the quote from Jeremy Fernadez.
Rafe – actually I more or less agree with you. I think he was concerned about slavery, but didn’t want to go to war over it. He went to war because he didn’t want to be the President who destroyed the union. In 1861 it was only a minority of extreme abolitionist opinion that thought a war to end slavery was a just war.
Having made the decision to go to war then the restrictions on civil liberties were justified, in my opinion. If you go to war, you go to win. Keeping Maryland and Kentucky from seceding was worth throwing a few editors in jail.
Grey
11 Feb 13 at 2:04 pm
Interestingly enough, well to me anyway, reading through Hansard beginning with the First Parliament, the arguments and concern for aboriginal welfare have not changed much in over 100 years. Indeed the bipartisan concern back in the early days of Parliament was the “disappearing” Aboriginal race. I was struck by the real concern and efforts to raise living standards, (health, education, traineeships) and the notion of the Commonwealth as “protector” meant in a compassionate way and certainly not to end the Aboriginal race, but employ policies to ensure the continuation of the race. The arguments are still the same today, however I wonder when Aborigines will shake off their shackles of victimhood and help themselves too?
Gab
11 Feb 13 at 2:40 pm
There will be no class action because there simply isn’t enough evidence to stand up in court.
That’s why Rudd’s apology was so empty – it committed no-one to anything, and allowed maximum grandstanding at the same time.
Philippa Martyr
11 Feb 13 at 3:04 pm