Why sorry must be the first step
It was a day many of us thought we’d never see and one none of us will ever forget.
After more than a decade of campaigning by many thousands of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians – including ANTaR members - Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologized to the stolen generations for the policy of forced child removal which damaged so many lives.
I expected the nation to exhale a collective sigh of relief after the apology, but it generated so much more. Far from prompting the guilt that his predecessor, John Howard had predicted, Kevin Rudd’s sorry was followed by unbridled joy and celebration.
Rarely has an event in the national parliament been the centre of so many conversations in such positive terms. In the days after the apology people in petrol stations, supermarkets and pubs all around Australia wanted to talk about what it had meant to them.
When I picked up my morning coffee on the way to work a stranger came up to me and said he’d never really understood why an apology was important until he listened to the Prime Minister’s words.
“Now I realise that it’s not about black people or white people,” he said. “It’s really about families.”
More significant than all of this was the burden the apology seemed to lift from so many members of the Stolen Generations and their descendents. The healing power of that simple word that took so long to say built the bridge of trust that the Prime Minister had hoped for.
Following on from the apology, closing the 17 year life expectancy gap within a generation is now the Government’s top priority in Indigenous Affairs. As the organization that launched the Close the Gap campaign, ANTaR has welcomed the government’s commitment to our campaign aims. Our focus now will be helping shape the Government’s plan to close the gap and making sure its commitment is backed by the sustained action that will be essential to achieve this task.
We’ll also be ensuring that the specific needs of the Stolen Generations and the implementation of the Bringing Them Home report recommendations are not lost underneath the emphasis on closing the gap. As part of this, ANTaR will not be walking away from our demand that compensation to those affected needs to be an essential part of the response.
The apology renewed the faith of Indigenous people that a Government might seek to respond to their history with understanding and compassion. It showed a Prime Minister that he could do the right thing by the First Australians and take the rest of the nation with him. It gave all Australians something to be proud of.
Our task now is to make sure that we don’t look back on the apology as a brief blip in the life of a new government, but as the beginning of something much more.
Gary Highland is the National Director at ANTaR. Gary is a non-Indigenous contributor who posts information about ANTaR's activities and opinion. Photo credit: James Robertson.
