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We're Not Sorry
Last week's apology by Australian PM Kevin Rudd to the nation's indigenous population for mistreatment by successive governments, including the stealing of children, was seen as a vital step in reconciliation. However not everyone (including members of the Liberal/National parties) thought saying sorry was the right thing to do. This 'alternative apology' - which has been circulating on the internet - is an example of the ugly, racist Australian underbelly.

AUSTRALIAN APOLOGY TO THE ABORIGINAL POPULATION

  • We apologise for giving you doctors and free medical care, which allows you to survive and multiply so that you can demand apologies.
  • We apologise for helping you to read and teaching you the English language and thus we opened up to you the entire European civilisation, thought and enterprise.
  • We feel that we must apologise for building hundreds of homes for you, which you have vandalised and destroyed.
  • We apologise for giving you law and order which has helped prevent you from slaughtering one another and using the unfortunate for food purposes.
  • We apologise for developing large farms and properties, which today feed you people, where before, you had the benefits of living off the land and starving during droughts.
  • We apologise for providing you with warm clothing made of fabric to replace that animal skins you used before.
  • We apologise for building roads and railway tracks between cities and building cars so that you no longer have to walk over harsh terrain.
  • We apologise for paying off your vehicle when you fail to pay the instalments
  • We apologise for giving you free travel anywhere, whenever.
  • We apologise for giving each and every member of your family $100.00 and free travel to attend an aboriginal funeral.
  • We apologise for not charging you rent on any lands when white people have to pay.
  • We apologise for giving you interest free loans.
  • We apologise for developing oil wells and minerals, including gold and diamonds which you never used and had no idea of their value.
  • We apologise for developing Ayers rock and Kakadu, and handing them over to you so that you get all the money.
  • We apologise for allowing taxpayers money paid towards daughters’ wedding ($8,000.00 each daughter)
  • We apologise for giving you $1.7 billion per year for your 250,000 people, which is $48,000.00 per aboriginal man, woman and child.
  • We apologise for working hard to pay taxes that finance your welfare, medical care, education, etc to the tune of $1.2 billion each year.
  • We apologise for you having to approach the aboriginal affairs department to verify the above figures. For the trouble you will have identifying the “uncle toms” in your own community who are getting richer and leaving some of you living in squalor and poverty.

We do apologise. We really do. We humbly beg your forgiveness for all the above sins. We are only too happy to take back all the above and return you to the paradise of the “outback”, whenever you are ready.

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Australia's Finest Hour
13 feb  |  Kevin Rudd’s ‘Sorry’ to the stolen generations of indigenous Australians was social democracy’s finest hour. Kevin Rudd went up onto the mountain and delivered. The first order of business, on the first day in parliament, of the new Labor government. Nothing would, nothing could, and nothing did take precedence over the apology. HALL GREENLAND reports from the watching crowds at Redfern, with photos by JACK CARNEGIE. . . read more
National Indigenous Times
21 jun  |  NIT - news from an indigenous perspective . . read more
Busting the Myths on Saying Sorry
7 feb  |  Busting the myths about saying sorry . . read more
Sorry is the First Step
13 feb  |  On the day of apology for the stolen generations, laid out before the Australian Parliament, 4000 candles flickered spelling out the words 'Sorry, the first step'.  . . read more
Moral Blindness - From Tom Morton
12 feb  |  In its initial response to the 'Bringing them Home' Report in 1997, the Howard government argued that 'We do not believe our generation should be asked to accept responsibility for the acts of earlier generations.' But many of those acts occurred within the lifetimes of generations now living.

Mick Dodson: “Who are these people, who is this generation that took my grandmother, my father, my mother and my grandfather and my two sisters? Who is this generation that tried to take me from my family in 1960? What generation do we look to if Mr Howard says it wasn't this one? Where is this mythical group of Australians who made these laws, adopted these policies, put them into practice, who took the kids?”.

Critics of the 'Bringing them Home' Report believe the report demonises the white officials who were involved in removing indigenous children. The late Editor of Quadrant magazine, P.P. McGuinness, reiterated this point in an editorial.”To denigrate the honest and sincere efforts of so many people who thought they were doing the right thing”, says McGuinness, “is merely a historical ignorance.” But according to philosopher Raimond Gaita, this view represents a kind of moral blindness about our immediate past. [More] . . read more

Howard Challenged on Aboriginal Policy
22 jun  |       homepageDAILY EXCLUSIVE

LES JOHNSON, former Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in the Whitlam Labor Government, believes Prime Minister John Howard must respond to suggestions that his decision to deal with Aboriginal child molestation has been motivated by the desire to exploit this emotive and sensitive matter to secure political advantage. . . read more

Voices from Inside the Northern Territory Emergency
7 jan  |  The former Howard's government radical intervention into indigenous communities in the Northern Territory is supported by the new Rudd Labor government. The NT National Emergency Response Legislation 2007 went much further than protecting the children. Here are some voices of those directly affected who want the world to hear. . . read more
White Australia Has a Black Past
29 oct  |  A video about indigenous policy in Australia from the last hope for the Australian Democrats, Queensland Senator Andrew Bartlett. . . read more
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