Sorry

[Southy]

Most of the Elders also said before the Sorry that they wouldn't try and chase compo, now a few have said they will try for it. My thinking is mostly that they won't get it now, but eventually, it may well be given to them, only time will tell I guess

 

[Shannow]

Southy, I doubt it somehow.

The genocide laws were passed with a non retrospectivity to them, after the issue was pretty well stopped. The pain and suffering laws were passed fairly recently too. I don't think that the gates are open, unless it can be proved in a civil case that person X caused demonstrable loss to person Y.

IMO.

Remember that Mabo and the land issues were tried as "ownership" under Australian/ex British definitions of title.

 

[JonBonJovi]

The ones seeking compensation are just asking for the same sort of victims compensation that victims of crimes such as sexual abuse, violence, crimes commited by authorities.
Many if not most of the children suffered sexual assaults, severe beatings and other forms of violence and abuse on a daily basis.
Yes money can never make the pain go away.
I recieved victims compensation many years ago because of the abuse etc I suffered through my teen years. This money paid for further education, a computer for my studies and a car that helped me get to work.
That is what the money is usually used for in most cases.
People who have gone through major abuse or severe up heavull in their lives as a young person have significant less oportunities and ability to become successful productive members of society.
Up until the abuse I had to face I was dux of my school and actually won a part scholarship to James Ruse High the only reason I did not end up at that high school was because my father could not afford the remaining fees( he subsequently died 9mths later).
From the time the abuse started i slowly fell to being in the bottom 5% of my school.
Compensation is worked out by the courts on a case by case basis on the evidence put forward of the crime and how the crime/s have had an affect on that individuals life. The compensation is not just handed out. It also is not always monetary.

 

[mattt]

it's a good move.

 

[Goreripper]

Reconciliation is still a long way off IMO. Love to share with you guys what I read over my morning coffee before leaving for work. Marval at the comments of my local member of federal parlament!

http://covers.ruralpress.com/frontpages/159.pdf

Obviously she's swallowed the neo-liberal conpiracy that the Stolen Generation didn't happen and that it was all about "protecting the children". I think she and Schultz (another Lib who abstained. I had a modicum of respect for him once because he stood up for single dads and got the child support laws changed. BUt he's obviously a fucktard also) and a few of the others should look a bit further for facts than something thrown at them by neo-liberal think tanks.

This article was in the Herald today:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national...d-out-the-black/2008/02/13/1202760399034.html. If you can't be arsed reading, here's some of the highlights:

"In 1933 a Sunday newspaper quoted Dr Cecil Evelyn Cook, dazzlingly qualified as an anthropologist, biologist, bacteriologist, chief medical officer and "chief protector" of Aborigines in North Australia, who pronounced there was no "throwback" to the black once enough white blood was bred in. "Generally by the fifth and invariably by the sixth generation, all native characteristics of the Australian Aborigine are eradicated. The problem of our half-castes will be quickly eliminated by the complete disappearance of the black race, and the swift submergence of their progeny in the white," he said.
"The quickest way out is to breed him white," Cook said.
Scientists and social scientists who calibrated how many drops of white blood made a person civilised gave politicians throughout Australia who were worrying about the "half-caste problem" the arguments needed to remove indigenous children from their families.
The Melbourne University ethnographer Professor Baldwin Spencer, who was made chief protector of Aborigines in the Northern Territory in 1911-12, said: "No half-caste children should be allowed to remain in any native camp."
In an official 1913 report he wrote: "In practically all cases, the mother is a full-blooded Aborigine, the father may be a white man, a Chinese, a Japanese, a Malay or a Filipino.
"The mother is of very low intellectual grade, while the father most often belongs to the coarser and more unrefined members of the higher races. The consequence of this is that the children of such parents are not likely to be, in most cases, of much greater intellectual calibre than the more intelligent natives, though, of course, there are exceptions to this."
It seemed only right to give children with enough drops of white blood a chance to join the superior race and for 50 years, from 1919, the NSW Government used its power to take indigenous young from their families and make them wards of the state.
At a pivotal Commonwealth-state conference in 1937, assimilation became national policy. The conference declared that the destiny of the natives "lies in their ultimate absorption".

Anyone who thinks this was about "protecting the children" after reading that is delusional.

 

[TRrEiTxIxRiE DTrash]

My opinion - it was a good move, and it was needed, and it is an apology on behalf of the government as well as an acknowledgement by the people of past wrongs, without being an admission of guilt or blame on the current generation.

However, I do think that any aboriginal person these days who has ever racially abused a white person without provocation (seen it many times) and tried to justify it by bringing up & blaming those past wrongs on them, has given up their right to deserve an apology...

Because as much as I do feel sorry for what happened to them, and do believe the government in particular needs to apologize and that the nation should acknowledge it.. I don't believe that I (or anyone else from this generation) deserve to cop direct abuse or blame over it from them.

So to every aboriginal who has never ever done that - I'm more than happy to say sorry also for all the injustices of the past.
But to every aboriginal who has ever released their anger or frustration through racial abuse onto an innocent person who wasn't even alive then - you ain't gettin a sorry, and please leave me the fuck alone when I'm walking down Swanston St.

 

[TRrEiTxIxRiE DTrash]

By the way, I didn't mean for any of that to sound offensive or racist. As I stated, I do agree with the entire apology thing.

I was just making a comment to that one group of individuals who manage to ruin things for the rest of them, and that comment is driven by having a limited experience with aborigines as in Melbourne aboriginals make up only a tiny percentage of our population compared with the rest of the country. I am guessing that things are quite different (no idea if better or worse) in areas that have actual aboriginal communities, and they are more a part of life in those cities.

My comment is just about how one of the main points of argument in the apology debate was that it's not an admission of guilt or blame on the current generation (which it isn't), but an acknowledgement and feeling sorry for what happened in the past.

So if aboriginal people wanted that apology, it doesn't help if they are directly blaming innocent people of this generation in the street and drunkedly shouting at them for stealing their land. It's hard to make an effort to give a group of people opportunities if you're too scared to even say "hello" for fear of ending up on the wrong end of a barrage of unprovoked racial abuse...

 

[Lord Tim]

^^ Agreed totally with Trent.

 

[phlogiston]

Just like it's not a personal apology from me, it's not an apology to individuals, as such, so you can't really pick and choose who you apologise to. I think that's important.

It's an apology to the traditional owners, not to Joe, and Bob, and Barry, but not Gary because he's an arsehole.

 

[Stonewall]

Just like it's not a personal apology from me, it's not an apology to individuals, as such, so you can't really pick and choose who you apologise to. I think that's important.

It's an apology to the traditional owners, not to Joe, and Bob, and Barry, but not Gary because he's an arsehole.

Agreed!

 

[TRrEiTxIxRiE DTrash]

Yeah I agree with that too.

Just wanted to point out the angle that hadn't yet been brought up, that some aboriginals do go and point the blame at us - today's generation - still. And usually in an abusive manner.

Wasn't saying it takes anything away from "Sorry Day" being right. Just that on a one-on-one level, completely unrelated to Sorry Day, an aboriginal who abuses me over it on a tram for no reason has way more reason to apologize to me than I ever will to that individual and it makes me not feel any sympathy for that person's sitation anymore either if they take it out on me (or I see them take it out on another bystander minding their own business).

 

[Goreripper]

But now we've said sorry to them in this grand symbolic way, perhaps they won't take that attitude anymore. Obviously some of them will, just like any person or group who simply can't be reconciled no matter what, but that happens with everyone. I remember being in a pub one night, a long time ago now, and this drunk young Aboriginal woman was in there, not being really abusive or anything but ready for a good verbal dispute. I turned to her and said something (and I really, really can't remember what it was) which made her stop and look at me like I'd said the most profound thing she'd ever heard, and she said "I've never heard one of you (a white guy, I assume) look at it like that before" and then she wandered off. Like Rudd said during his speech, sometimes you just have to look at things from someone else's point of view and imagine how you'd feel if it happened to you. Not enough people do that, and that's often all it takes.

 

[Stonewall]

So what did you say?

 

[Goreripper]

I don't know. But I know it wasn't "Why don't you just fuck off!"