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"My view is that Aboriginal people's lives were stolen by history.

It wasn't just that children were stolen in a literal sense, it was more the case that the prospects of Aboriginal people being able to pursue any form of sustainable and decent life were stolen.

Yes, there was grog, there was prostitution, there was untold misery in Aboriginal camps. And if an Aboriginal mother brought her child to the gates of the mission for their protection, were not these lives stolen from them?

Even where Aboriginal people carved out a life in an unforgiving and unrelenting white society, they were still vulnerable to the state's arbitrary removal powers.

This history cannot be understood simply through the specific policy intentions of the governments and the missions. It must be understood by reference to the severe life options available to Aboriginal people in the wake of European occupation and indigenous dispossession ..."

Bill, If you had listened on past the formal bit of the apology you would have heard Rudd specifically target the federal and state Parliaments for passing and sanctioning what he made clear were genocidal laws. There is absolutely no doubt that the intent of these laws was to "breed out" the aboriginal "race". Rudd pointed this out.

I think the transcript of his later words is worth publishing.

I think your and Pearsons demand for "compensation" is a bit rich after you both railed against "handouts". Not also that Pearson and Howard were not present at the speech.

Dalek

The Nelson speech in reply to Rudd did not go down too well in Federation square or the Great Hall. Basically it was the Pearson line.

Editor of The National Indigenous Times Chris Graham writes:
As a member of the Canberra parliamentary press gallery, I had the substantial honour of sitting in the House of Representatives chamber this morning to watch the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd deliver the long-awaited national apology.

I started out inspired. I left halfway through Brendan Nelson's speech almost in tears, and white-hot angry. But I'll get to that.

All of the living Prime Ministers, save for one of course, entered the chamber a few minutes before the scheduled start. Keating, Whitlam, Fraser and Hawke came in together, and a packed public gallery full of black faces gave them a standing ovation.

And then Wilson Tuckey turned up. It was only for the Lord's Prayer, which began proceedings. Wilson left the chamber before the 'sorry'. It seems a strange thing for a Christian to do, but at least he had the decency not to flaunt his contempt and disrespect in the faces of hundreds of members of the Stolen Generations, who sat only metres away in the public gallery.

Unfortunately, Chris Pearce, the Member for Aston, wasn't so forgiving. Pearce sat and casually flipped through a magazine throughout Rudd's entire speech. At the part where Rudd was talking about the tragedy of infant mortality ­ the "little ones" in Rudd's words,­ Pearce was cracking a joke to the rather uncomfortable looking member of parliament sitting next to him.

In fact, Pearce was so against an apology, that he also sat and read through his own leader's entire speech. When Rudd finished and received a standing ovation, Pearce was the only member of parliament to remain seated. It begs the question, why did he even show up?

As to Nelson's speech, I got up and walked out just after the bit about "nepotism, the "squandering of resources", and the s-xual abuse of children. Several black journalists ­there as guests of the gallery followed me.

It turns out we weren't alone in our disgust. While the chamber itself remained quiet and respectful ­-- an irony, in the circumstances -- the thousand or so people in the Great Hall of Parliament stood, turned their backs on the massive TV screens, and began a slow clap. Several hundred people reportedly walked out.

Outside, thousands of people on the lawns of parliament booed, hissed and chanted.

Shortly after the chamber emptied, I ran into Valerie, an Aboriginal woman I've known for quite a few years. She was removed as a child, placed as a domestic with a white family, and then repeatedly raped (over several years) by her 'protectors'.

Valerie thought it ironic that Nelson chose to speak of the sexual abuse of Aboriginal children by Aboriginal men, but mentioned nothing of the s-xual abuse of Aboriginal children by those who removed them "for their own benefit".

"This was supposed to be our day, Stolen Generations. He had to go and try and ruin it by saying that," Valerie told me.

But the important words here are "try and ruin it", because Nelson didn't succeed.

His speech, ultimately a homage to the conservatives inside and outside his party, will be remembered for what it was. Dog whistling. That Nelson chose to do so during a national apology occasion is a personal tragedy of epic proportions. I feel genuinely sorry for him.

The power of Rudd's words,­ not Nelson's -- will endure. Rudd spoke of building bridges and historical truths. Of dark chapters and of bright futures.

"This is not the black armband view of history. It's just the cold, uncomfortable, confronting truth," said Rudd.

Nelson, by contrast, spoke of s-xual abuse, 'nepotism' and squandering of Aboriginal resources. He claimed it was the work of other generations.

Someone else's fault.

Rudd inspired. Nelson tried to divide. Rudd will be remembered. Nelson won't.

So where to from here? Of course, Rudd must deliver on his promises to halve the infant mortality gap. He must deliver real health, housing and education to Aboriginal people and having defined his leadership so early on this issue, I have little doubt many in the media will seek to hold him to account.

Rudd's talk of a bi-partisan committee headed by himself and the Leader of the Opposition to tackle Aboriginal disadvantage is a good gesture. Now if the Opposition can only find itself a leader, then there's hope on that front.

For Indigenous Australia, the talk over the next generation will be of a treaty, or a national settlement.

Whatever you choose to call it, Australia has an opportunity, not to mention a mood, for change.

The challenge that confronts us all now is whether or not we, as a nation, are mature enough to face this now, or whether we condemn future generations of our children to deal with this issue, and all the tragedy and misery that will inevitably ensue if we fail to act.

Given the sincerity of Rudd's speech, and the genuine support of many of his colleagues, there's some reason for optimism.

Let's hope Rudd's right, that we are at a new beginning.

If you had listened on past the formal bit of the apology you would have heard Rudd specifically target the federal and state Parliaments for passing and sanctioning what he made clear were genocidal laws. There is absolutely no doubt that the intent of these laws was to "breed out" the aboriginal "race". Rudd pointed this out

There are no words that could heal the wounds of those people who were taken from their families by the Commonwealth and other Australian governments with no reason other than to deny them their Aboriginal legacy and hence the future of Aboriginal society. But those people who lived through such crimes against humanity demand an apology. They are right to demand an apology, because there can be no justification for those heinous policies. And so it is incumbent on the Commonwealth to apologise; to say, as the Prime Minister of Australia, on behalf of all Australians: I am sorry. I am sorry that you have suffered. I am sorry that your families have suffered. I am sorry because your suffering has diminished us as citizens of a nation that claims to be a Commonwealth, a government for the well being of all.Those who have departed this life in the several generations affected by these policies are remembered, and as Prime Minister of Australia, on behalf of Australians, say: I offer this apology to their descendants: I am sorry for what happened to your ancestors and that such a terrible burden has befallen you; the denial of your family and cultural legacy is a terrible loss.
- even the hard men know, it must be said

I think your and Pearsons demand for "compensation" is a bit rich after you both railed against "handouts"

.... who will be able to move on after tomorrow's apology? Most white Australians will be able to move on (with the warm inner glow that will come from having said sorry), but I doubt indigenous Australians will. Those people stolen from their families who feel entitled to compensation will never be able to move on.

Too many will be condemned to harbour a sense of injustice for the rest of their lives. Far from moving on, these people -- whose lives have been much consumed by this issue -- will die with a sense of unresolved justice.

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.

We have been -- and the people who lost their families certainly were -- victimised in history, but we must stop the politics of victimhood. We lose power when we adopt this psychology. Whatever moral power we might gain over white Australia from presenting ourselves as victims, we lose in ourselves.

My worry is this apology will sanction a view of history that cements a detrimental psychology of victimhood, rather than a stronger one of defiance, survival and agency.

Is it possible to have been a real victim and yet not be consumed by the politics of victimhood? Dalek glibly points out a contradiction whilst Pearson is gutsy enough to actually try to resolve it.

 Bill I think we can now all agree, the actions of Rudd and his government will be the critical thing.

I am not so sure about the "politics of victimhood", I strongly suspect that it may be an uneasy construct. Pearson has been seriously wrong footed by his support for the racist Howard and has to find a way to  come back to the centre.

It's one thing to demand that genocidal policies of the recent past be recognised it's another to demand the status of victims. Perhaps some empirical evidence of blackfellas calling themselves victims would be good ?

Dalek

Pearson has been seriously wrong footed by his support for the racist Howard and has to find a way to  come back to the centre

Dalek its more anecdotal than empirical but last night I heard an interview with Archie Roach where he said words to the effect that he knew lots of Aboriginal people who see themselves as victims.

I don't see what the argument here is about. I would see it  that any group of people that had experienced a huge insult to their physical existence would develop passivity and self defeating behaviour. Anybody from those communities that decides to "stand up" will have to address self defeating attitudes within that community.

Bill, My take on Noel Pearson is that he represents an idealistic return to the paternalism of the mission system. Lots of happy blackfellas working in the mission plantation (enterprise) for real wages, with real jobs and long white smocks. In his vision of course the white missionaries are replaced by corporations run by educated blackfellas and owned by invisible white investors. Order will be maintained by white police, troops and elite "professsionals" - Highly paid teachers for example. From your remarks I guess you share this vision.

There is a name for it:

Dalek

The 19-year-old Bavarian missionary who came to the year-old Lutheran mission at Cape Bedford in Cape York Peninsula in 1887, and who would spend more than 50 years of his life underwriting the future of the Guugu Yimithirr people, cannot but be a hero to me and to my people. We owe an unrepayable debt to Georg Heinrich Schwartz and the white people who supported my grandparents and others to rebuild their lives after they arrived at the mission as young children in 1910. My grandfather Ngulunhthul came in from the local bush to the Aboriginal reserve that was created to facilitate the mission. My great-grandfather, Arrimi, would remain in the bush in the Cooktown district, constantly evading police attempts to incarcerate him at Palm Island but remaining in contact with his son and later his grandson, my father. My grandmother was torn away from her family near Chillagoe, to the west of Cairns, and she would lose her language and culture in favour of the local Guugu Yimithirr language and culture of her new home. Indeed it was the creation of reserves and the establishment of missions that enabled Aboriginal cultures and languages to survive throughout Cape York Peninsula.

Schwartz embodied all of the strengths, weaknesses and contradictions that one would expect in a man who placed himself in the crucible of history. Would that we were judged by history in the way we might be tempted to judge Schwartz: we are not a bootlace on the courage and achievement of such people. ...

This history cannot be understood simply through the specific policy intentions of the governments and the missions. It must be understood by reference to the severe life options available to Aboriginal people in the wake of European occupation and indigenous dispossession. The life options of the Guugu Yimithirr on the frontiers of Cooktown in the 1880s had near collapsed. Without the Cape Bedford Mission, the Guugu Yimithirr had no good survival options. Yes, like missions throughout colonial history, the Cape Bedford Mission provided a haven from the hell of life on the Australian frontier while at the same time facilitating colonisation.

It was Schwartz's possible role in bringing about the end of the traditional life at Barrow Point, north of Cape Bedford, through his influence on government policy, that troubled my old friend Urwunjin Roger Hart -- the last native speaker of the Barrow Point language -- to his dying day. On many counts this old man had reasons to respect and thank Schwartz, but history is never simple.

- when words aren't enough

Then there is the historical angle on the apology. The 1997 report by Ronald Wilson and Mick Dodson is not a rigorous history of the removal of Aboriginal children and the breaking up of families. It is a report advocating justice. But it does not represent a defensible history. And, given its shortcomings as a work of history, the report was open to the conservative critique that followed. Indigenous activists' decision to adopt historian Peter Read's nomenclature, the Stolen Generations, inspired Quadrant magazine's riposte: the rescued generations.

The truth is the removal of Aboriginal children and the breaking up of Aboriginal families is a history of complexity and great variety. People were stolen, people were rescued; people were brought in chains, people were brought by their parents; mixed-blood children were in danger from their tribal stepfathers, while others were loved and treated as their own; people were in danger from whites, and people were protected by whites. The motivations and actions of those whites involved in this history -- governments and missions -- ranged from cruel to caring, malign to loving, well-intentioned to evil.
- when words aren't enough

Bill, Rudd made it clear that he apologised for the racist and genocidal intent of the laws under which the children were stolen. The fact that there were unintended consequences of these acts (some good) is irrelevant.

The public support for the Rudd apology was unexpectedly immense, so suddenly Nelson was faced with a dilemma ; oppose the apology and go down in infamy or find a way to support the apology and placate his extremist racist party faction.

Nelson on the other hand could not make a clean speech in support as he owes his position as deputy leader to the extreme right wing of the Liberal party. (This faction demanded that he repudiate the support for an apology position of Turnbull as the price of support). Nelson's speech was at the least, churlish and descended into irrelevancies and snide asides.

Pearson now has a real problem. His support for Howard and the howard extremists and his gratuitous denigration of Rudd prior to the election has left him outside the tent shouting about "compensation" and appearing for all the world like just another spurned rent seeker. The fact that he completely failed to see the Rudd express coming down the rail is proof of his political ineptitude.

The program of housing improvement is in my view the most effective thing that could be done to rescue the children from abuse. Where you have a wide-spread situation where 20+ people are living in a 2 bedroom house or worse; you have a recipe for disaster.

Combine this with the reinstitution of CDEP and a serious extra-CDEP program of job and industry creation and you will see some improvement. I am appalled by the hypocrisy of those who condemn CDEP for Blackfellas and then suck mightily on the public tit themselves.

Dalek 

Pearson now has a real problem. His support for Howard and the howard extremists and his gratuitous denigration of Rudd prior to the election has left him outside the tent shouting about "compensation" and appearing for all the world like just another spurned rent seeker. The fact that he completely failed to see the Rudd express coming down the rail is proof of his political ineptitude.

Oh no Bill, Inside Rudds tent is where you would like me to be. Rudd is basically just another social democratic opportunist but he is doing the right thing (more or less) at the moment, in my view. (Conditional unity and all that). The thing you may not know is that Pearson and Rudd have a history going back to the Goss government days in Queensland when they had a serious falling out.

Pearson has made a good job of covering his support for the Howard racists by his Post Modern blather about "other and self" regard etc. Unfortunately you seem to have fallen for it. Pearson has recently characterised Rudd as a"heartless snake" and raved about the disaster that will befall "his people" if Howard was to be defeated. This is not the talk of a professional and principled fighter for Blackfellas- it is the talk of an opportunist who saw a threat to his position in the right wing take-over of the "Aboriginal industry" that was fronted by Brough and Howard.

Dalek  

Oh no Bill, Inside Rudds tent is where you would like me to be. Rudd is basically just another social democratic opportunist but he is doing the right thing (more or less) at the moment, in my view. (Conditional unity and all that). The thing you may not know is that Pearson and Rudd have a history going back to the Goss government days in Queensland when they had a serious falling out.

As any student of the history of Christianity knows, conscience, guilt, atonement and forgiveness can be double-edged emotional swords. The person who gives also receives. Bestowing an apology on another can cause us a perverse kind of pleasure: the pleasure of feeling better about ourselves as apologisers.

Perhaps that's why so many of the people whose hearts were raised to the skies in sorrow managed at the same time to be so mean-spirited towards the hapless but basically well-intentioned Brendan Nelson. They were distancing themselves from the other Australians out there, those less virtuous than themselves.

So seductive was the call of the moment that otherwise hard-nosed journalists (such as The 7.30 Report's Kerry O'Brien) seemed determined to adopt an aura not unlike that of Mother Teresa.

Now it's true that many commentators, as well as the PM himself, have striven almost ostentatiously to avoid any impression of losing hold of their faculties.

So we've heard a great deal about the apology being the easy part, and how the hard part of the job is yet to begin. And Kevin Rudd has announced some decidedly bold benchmarks for attacking indigenous mortality rates, school attendance figures and housing availability.

And yet these gestures, I confess, serve only to stoke my anxiety. To be blunt, I worry whether a PM who seems increasingly to be cast as the deliverer of Aboriginal Australia will muster the strength of character to be hated (vociferously hated, perhaps) by many Australians - white and black alike - for making the kinds of unpopular decisions that are surely required.

Benchmarks are hardly a novelty in Aboriginal policy. Similarly stern aims to close the gap between the two nations have been invoked by every PM since Robert Menzies.

Yet too often they have become ritual words, uttered without any tangible effect. No bread has turned into flesh; no wine has become blood. Indeed, so far as can be told from the publicly available figures, on some key indicators the gap has probably widened.

To be frank, while I would dearly love to believe in them, I have no idea right now how the PM intends to turn his benchmarks into working reality.

Bill. your depth of research astounds me "based on Rudd's reluctance to help indigenous people when he was a Queensland state based politician". Rudd never was a "Queensland state based politician". He was the minder for Goss so he certainly worked for a "Queensland state based politician". Not exactly the same thing. Now you should cite an instance from this time where Rudd was "reluctant to help indigenous people".

Like I said Rudd and Pearson have history, they hate each other. Now watch Pearson come crawling back into the tent, he has no option, his dream of becoming the first black missionary to his people has been shattered because he chose the wrong conservative patron.

Dalek

My first official job was on a task‐force appointed by Queensland Premier Wayne Goss in 1991 – led by his wunderkind head of the cabinet office, Kevin Rudd – to develop Aboriginal land rights legislation. In opposition since time immemorial, the fledgling Labor government dreaded its commitment to introduce land rights legislation in the most conservative of states. In dramatic circumstances, at a national conference hosted by Premier Goss as part of Justice Tony Fitzgerald’s Fraser Island Inquiry, the Premier announced the government’s intention to develop land rights legislation. I was there with a delegation of Cape York elders and colleagues; I had begun my own trajectory in pursuit of land rights for the people of Cape York Peninsula by forming the Cape York Land Council the year before.

Kevin Rudd and Wayne Goss eventually produced miserable legislation – an opinion that I have not changed sixteen years later. The new law provided for a slightly different form of title to replace that previously granted by the National Party government of Sir Joh Bjelke‐Petersen. The practical effect of the title transfer was negligible and did not grant any more land than that already under Aboriginal ownership. Most of these title transfers have still not taken place.

Provision was made for Aboriginal groups to claim lands on the basis of their traditional affiliation or historical association, or economic and social need. National parks and vacant Crown lands were the only land that could be claimed before a specially established Land Tribunal – but only those parcels of land that the executive government had decided were available. This provision, which Kevin Rudd designed, enabled the government to control what could be claimed, and when it could occur. There was no right to claim land other than what government determined. In the sixteen years of this legislation, very few parcels of vacant land were ever gazetted for claim: I know of only one claim that went through the process. Around a dozen national parks were made available – principally in Cape York but also the Great Sandy Desert National Park in the south‐western corner of Queensland – and they were all successfully proven before the Land Tribunal.

I represented the traditional owners in the first claim to the Flinders Islands and Cape Melville National Parks in 1993. The claim was successful. However, the Yiithuwarra traditional owners have still not received title to the park. They have no role in its management, and not one of them is employed by any of the plethora of government agencies responsible for the “natural resource management” of these lands and seas. The managers are all white. Half of the Yiithuwarra who gave evidence in the 1993 claim, including almost all the elders, are now dead. The implementation of the original commitment to hand over title and management of national parks to traditional owners has been in abeyance during the three terms of Premier Peter Beattie’s government. The government fears an electoral backlash if it proceeds with the Goss/Rudd scheme.

I recount this story first to make the point that if I had a dollar for every time I heard that phrase “social justice” fall easily from the lips of a Labor politician in my home state, I would be an extremely wealthy man.

My first experience of the realpolitik of fighting for Aboriginal rights was bitterly hard. The most shameful thing occurred on the day Premier Goss tabled the Bill. It contained nothing to distress the miners or the farmers, whose interests were fully accounted for. Then Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane Peter Hollingworth duly came out and gave the government’s paltry legislation his extraordinary blessing. It was the Premier’s language that was shocking. He and his advisers had determined that the best way to sell the new law to an unsympathetic Queensland public was to make it clear he was not giving any free handouts to the blackfellas. The grab on the evening news was to the effect that the provision for the payment of royalties for mining would not allow any Aboriginal “sheiks” to drive around in Rolls Royce motorcars. It was appalling. True to his promise, the minor provision for the payment of royalties for mining applying to only one of Queensland’s numerous mines – the Cape Flattery Silica Mines owned by Mitsubishi on the land of the Hope Vale community – has not paid one cent of royalties to the community sixteen years later.

I learned a bitter truth through this experience: that Aboriginal people are lepers in the Australian democratic process. I have watched with awe how the progressive lobby turned al‐Qaeda recruit David Hicks into a relentless, irrecusable and finally triumphant national cause – from Taliban terrorist to latter‐day Nelson Mandela of Guantanamo Bay. It has (occasionally) been said that it is not the man, it is the principle. There is a much clearer principle involved in the breach of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by operation of the Australian Government’s Native Title Act, but this could not be made a cause célèbre. In terms of marketability, it is easier to sell a terrorist than an Australian Aborigine subjected to ongoing racial discrimination by the country’s laws relating to native land title. Australia’s democracy is telegenically allergic to blackfellas.

This got me thinking about pragmatism and realism in political leadership. The new breed of Labor apparatchiks running state governments after the disasters of the 1980s were more hard‐headed about the imperatives of holding on to power: no more Whitlam‐esque indulgences, no more socialism. Goss, Rudd and Swan were the new pineapple heads of the Sunshine State. I understood that Aboriginal causes were political hard‐sell. I felt at the time that Premier Goss could have produced more just legislation without cutting his government’s throat in the process. I thought about low‐level, poll‐driven pragmatism versus ideals. Wayne Goss had been part of the Labor lawyer brigade who had spent time working in Aboriginal Legal Aid, yet in two electorally handsome terms his government did nothing to improve the lot of Queensland’s most abject people.

Later the albatross of Australia’s lepers hung around the throat of Paul Keating’s prime ministership in 1996. Never before, and likely never again, would indigenes be invited in from the woodheap to sit at the main table as they did during those Keating years. This just confirmed the opinion that Aborigines are electoral poison. No more bleeding hearts. No more prime ministerial insistence that the blackfellas come in from the cold
- white guilt, victimhood and the quest for a radical centre

Bill, it is clear from recent events (the apology) that there has been a major advance in public support for Black fellas. In 1993 it was a different country. Pearson had played a role in advancing public opinion as have many other Aboriginal activists and spokespeople. A mass movement based upon Aboriginal rights etc has grown up since then. Like many mass movements it has made errors in strategy etc.

Rudd took no risks at all in making his apology, he managed to read the public mood. By contrast 9% Nelson, was totally discredited and Pearson and Yourself were left bleating about compensation. Pearsons rhetoric has been overtaken by events, he totally failed to see that Howard was fucked and that his 19th century rights and responsibilities program is about to be seriously modified. I doubt if the new dispensation will permit the workhouses and plantations that are implicit in the post modern -return to the 19th century - blather that comes from Pearson.

That's the realpolitic.

It is clear that the Australian public is of a mood to support a program that avoids this retrogressive punisher philosophy.

If you doubt my words think deeply on Pearsons (and your) support for the abolish ion of the CDEP for Aboriginal People and his and your failure to condemn the CDEP programs (by another name) that support white workers in the Automobile and other industries. Not counting of course the CDEP programs that support teachers, doctors and public servants.

Why did you single the Blackfellas out for special treatment ?

Perhaps you should confront your own racism?

Dalek

Today, whilst leading conservatives and liberals (notably former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser) are avowed opponents of racism, the polarity between those who consider racism a serious problem and those who do not is generally seen as a left–right split. As progressive people predominately come from left of the cultural and political divide, the ALP (and the progressive minor parties) are generally regarded as opponents of racism, whilst the Liberal and National Parties are considered racist – or at least indifferent to racism. Individuals from both sides often contradict this generalisation.


This dichotomous view of racism is simplistic and misleading. My analysis looks at six positions which Indigenous and non‐Indigenous Australians take in relation to race and history concerning the country’s original peoples. This is an arc for non‐Indigenous Australians that goes from denial to moral vanity, to acknowledgement and responsibility. For Aboriginal people, this arc ranges from separatism to victimhood, and to pride and principled defence.


There is a strong tradition of denial in Australia. The eminent ethnographer W.E.H. Stanner named this tradition in the country’s historiography up to the late 1960s the “Great Australian Silence” (Boyer Lecture, 1968 ). There is a very large constituency which denies that the treatment of Indigenous people in Australia’s colonial history (and up to the present) was as bad as those historians who have contributed to the genre known as “Aboriginal history” demonstrate. These people deny that racism in Australia against the country’s Indigenous peoples is a serious problem. Keith Windschuttle’s refutation of massacres and violence on the frontiers, and Pauline Hanson’s galvanising resentments against alleged preferences to Aboriginal people (and other racial minorities) are just the most egregious representatives of a wide constituency which adopts a position of denial. Denial is a strong word. It is only a general characterisation of a spectrum of views amongst non‐Indigenous Australians which range from David Irving‐style ideological denialism to those who acknowledge the depredations suffered by Indigenous people through history and the racism in our society, but who minimise its nature and extent (“we shouldn’t dwell on the past”). Many join this constituency because of political and cultural affiliations with the political right.


There are two important things to understand about this constituency. First, most of them are defensive about their own identity and heritage. The accusation that they are racist and their colonial heritage is a catalogue of shame and immoral villainy – and they should therefore feel guilt for racism and history – makes them defensive. If race and history are raised in such a sharply accusatory and unbalanced way, then people who may otherwise be prepared to acknowledge and take responsibility for the truth end up joining the hard‐core ideologues. There is some truth in the proposition that “political correctness” has had this effect. There is also truth in the proposition that the political right has deliberately and wilfully galvanised this defensiveness by mischaracterising the progressive position as being about guilt, rather than what former Prime Minister Paul Keating referred to as “open hearts” in his landmark 1992 Redfern speech. This has provided great fodder for the right in their prosecution of the culture wars.


The denialists also keenly understand how debilitating it is to adopt the mentality and outlook of victimhood. It is easy for them to say that victim‐hood is worthless, as it grows out of their ideological contempt for interventionist social policy that seeks to ameliorate the impact of the market even on the most vulnerable, but this does not make them wrong. Those on the cultural and political right are therefore more correct than their opponents in recognising the folly of the impact of policy that turns people into victims.


The second major constituency in contemporary Australia is morally vain about race and history. Its members largely come from the liberal left and are morally certain about right and wrong and ready to ascribe blame. For them, issues of race and history are a means of gaining the upper hand over their political and cultural opponents. The primary concern of the morally vain is not the plight or needs of those who suffer racism and oppression, but rather their view of themselves, their understanding of the world and belief in their superiority over their opponents. There are two things about this constituency which need to be understood. This constituency contributes most to, and actively supports, the outlook that casts Indigenous people as victims. Its members have no understanding of how destructive, demoralising and demeaning this mentality is. Their most telling catchphrase in rebuke of their opponents, whenever there may be a suggestion made about the personal responsibility of Indigenous people (or indeed the disadvantaged at large), is “don’t blame the victims”. They excuse and provide a justification for those on whose behalf they are advocate, in order to avoid responsibility. They infantilise Indigenous people by not allowing those whom they seek to protect to face the consequences of their actions: Indigenous people’s status as victims means they require protection from the real world.


Moral vanity is perhaps an unfair characterisation. There is a broad spectrum of views within this group, and many within this broad spectrum have decent motivations. They empathise with the plight of Indigenous people who face racism and other real injuries; they acknowledge what has happened through history and recognise that the present is not unconnected with the past. They understand the hypocrisy of the prescription to forget the past, especially in a country whose most famous lapidary exhortation reads: Lest We Forget. But at some point empathy and acknowledgement turn into moral superiority, and the relative failures of one’s cultural and political opponents become the basis of accusations of insensitivity or racism. At this point, race becomes a useful club to beat the Neanderthals from the right, and racism serves the cultural and political purposes of the progressive accuser rather than the humanity of those subjected to it.


Let me offer an example: the enforcement of laws to prevent drinking in public places which results in “homeless” Aboriginal people binge drinking in the parks (policies that are tried in Australia) could be combined with controlled management of income support to “homeless” people so that accommodation, food and other essentials are provided and cash for alcohol is not (policies that have not been tried in Australia). If this were proposed, it would be characterised as racist by morally vain progressives and vehemently opposed. Indeed, these people run campaigns on behalf of “long grassers” to the effect that the homeless have a “right to sleep”. Long grassing is romanticised as some kind of final act of resistance against authority, but patently people do not “choose” to live like this.


Rather than denial or moral vanity, the optimum position for non‐Indigenous people to take is that of acknowledgement – of the past and its legacy in the present, recognising that racism is not a contrivance, that Indigenous people endure great hurt and confront barriers as a result of racism. They need to take responsibility for the fact of racism, and work to answer and counter it.
- white guilt, victim hood and the quest for a radical centre