KERRY OBRIEN: Marcia Langton, how do you reflect on the apology and the way it’s been expressed?

MARCIA LANGTON, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE: Kerry, it’s a wonderful thing. If I were to in any way detract from it, I think it would be wrong to quibble about words. And I note that the Opposition hasn’t and that’s a good thing. Because I’m thinking of aunts and cousins who were removed in various circumstances, some of whom I met in my adulthood. And I know their stories. And I think for those people, many of whom have passed on, but also for my friends, who many of whom are people who were removed as children, often into situations of terrible abuse. That this apology means so much to them and as you know, I was quite cynical up until recently about the apology. But I think that it’s impossible to feel any kind of cynicism at all, if you can understand how much it means to people who have lived through these events and been removed from their families. Or, on the other hand, to know people who have lost members of their family. To know that people have been taken away from them and the pain for each side. And it really does mean a lot to them. So I’ve put aside any quibble and any philosophical objection because I think all of that is primary, it’s too important.

She has the grace to recognise that it isn’t about her, that what is being done means a lot to the people involved and doesn’t want to be negative and carp about minutiae.

You and Jack Strocchi had a go at me about this:

Kevin Rudd has said “sorry� to the stolen generations and for the treatment of Aboriginal people since white settlement.

Last night Mark was ill and sent an email around asking whether one of us wouldn’t mind doing a post on the sorry event this morning. I listened to the event on the radio while I was having a late breakfast, having already completed two errands around the suburb, while reading the Fin Review. I thought I’d hear about it umpteen times on radio during the day and could always check out the text tonight.

Then I loggged on to see what was happening on the blog on my way out to a doctor’s appointment. Horror of horrors, no-one had put anything up and no-one seemed to be about. So I tried to whack up a brief post. It got done without the niceties of reading the text, after the site crashed twice and in between times behaved like treacle. Not the way I usually prepare posts.

Yes, Rudd focussed on the stolen generations in apologising, but as Kim points out he clearly has a broader context in mind. When he talked about the present and the future this broadening of the focus is very clear.

Just on NT intervention, I listened to Parliament this afternoon for a while. After Question Time Nelson put forward a motion that the NT-style intervention be broadened. Clearly, I think, he was prefiguring his political strategy for the day in his speech. I imagine it was about internal politics, Howard’s legacy and going on the front foot politically against the Government. He was doubtless also trying to do some good for Aborigines. But he was blind-sided by Rudd’s offer to co-chair a commission.

Most of the day the ABC had programs devoted to the sorry statement. Mostly, apart from news programs, Nelson’s negativity and that of a few other people who will never change their minds was ignored. It has been a very moving day and more than once I found myself tearing up. By and large this has been a beautiful thread, but in the latter parts and definitively with the entry of Strocchi it has been tending in a direction I hoped it wouldn’t. Not here, not now, some other time perhaps.

I’m proposing to end it here. Mark can open it again in the morning, start another thread or just let it be, depending on what he thinks/feels.

I listened to the speech very closely and thought it was an efficient, measured, sober speech that hit a lot of high notes. Something as boneheaded as saying sorry “for the treatment of Aboriginal people since white settlement� would have ruined the whole thing and been the only thing remembered.

Text of the motion moved by Kevin Rudd (excerpt):

Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.

We reflect on their past mistreatment.

We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations - this blemished chapter in our nation’s history.

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

The apology went beyond the Stolen Generations. It particularly highlighted their mistreatment. But as is VERY CLEAR it was for everything within the scope of the Parliament’s responsibility which had led to wrongs being committed, and in the context of a reflection on that as well as the specifics of the Stolen Generations.

(Reminds me of a skit I once saw on some 70s Brit comedy in which Tim Brooke Taylor, as host of a rigged game show, asks a hapless contestant “How many Britons voted for (some politician) in the (some year) elections AND NAME THEM.” Hapless contestant dunked in the drink.)

Don’t these people have any empathy at all?

One thing this mob won’t be claiming any more - “nothing changed because Kevin Rudd is basically the same as John Howard”.

The Strocchiverse is a universe far far away.

Strocchi, Windschuttle, Howard & Henderson.

Sounds like a failed 60s folk group…or should we say Volk group.
They re-formed as Circle Jerk.

Kevin Rudd has said “sorry� to the stolen generations and for the treatment of Aboriginal people since white settlement.

I listened to the speech very closely and thought it was an efficient, measured, sober speech that hit a lot of high notes. Something as boneheaded as saying sorry “for the treatment of Aboriginal people since white settlement” would have ruined the whole thing and been the only thing remembered. Had you had a few at the early opener first?

Strocchi, Windschuttle, Howard & Henderson. Let ‘em weep for’emselves.

The only ones cranky that a formal apology will not be a magic wand for generations of oppression are the ones who didn’t want an apology in the first place.

Presumably you have sent Marcia Langton an email pointing out the error of her ways?

Howard absented himself from today’s events because he discounts symbolic, sentimental, warm-and-fuzzy, feel-good, politics.

Damn straight. Howard favours literal-minded, unfeeling, cold-and-hard, feel-bad politics.

We knew that.

On who wrote Rudd’s speech - Paul Kelly reckons it’s nearly all Rudd.

Thanks, Ag. That’s very good to know. Not that I think he necessarily should have written it himself, more that I’m glad it was him what wrote it.

About time for a Liberal Party split, methinks.

Jack, if you think today was a victory for Howard then you don’t merely live in a parallel universe. You live in a orthogonal hyperplaned universe.

Spiros, please read for comprehension and dont write for obfuscation. Perhaps your grasp of the English language disappeared in the “orthogonal hyperplaned universe” that you seem to be suspiciously familiar with.

I did not say today was a “victory for Howard”. QUite the opposite.

I suggested that that if there was any justice Howard should have been celebrated for making the issue of Aboriginal child care a hot button issue, mobilising political activists and public interest. And for leading the way to the correct solution, which is restoring law and order, not shovelling money into corrupt and unaccountable authorities.

Spiros, here is what I said verbatim, to prevent disingenuous or fantastic interpretation:

But if any one should have been celebrated today it was Howard.
…
So “sorry day� became a way of exorcising the demon of Howard, the scapegoat for all whitey’s sins. Of course this ingratitude is typical of our species benighted psyche. No good deed goes unpunished.

How you constructed a “victory for Howard” out of my “exorcising the demon of Howard” will be one for the logicians to puzzle over down through the ages.

I know, I know, theres a fine line between the hypothetical and the categorical. Try to stumble accross it one day.

Spiros says:

Do you think Howard absented himself from today’s events because he was celebrating the occasion? Or because his lifetime’s work in this area has been flushed away and he couldn’t bear to see it?

Howard absented himself from today’s events because he discounts symbolic, sentimental, warm-and-fuzzy, feel-good, politics. Especially when it comes from the worlds acknowledged experts in the field: the Wets.

His “lifetimes work” is to restore proper accountability to key cultural institutional authorities. Obviously the bi-partisan support for his martial law intervention means that his life’s work is an enduring legacy. (Same deal for border protection and multiculturalism.)

The only thing being “flushed away” is the liberal-Left’s ideological garbage and institutional wreckage, the utopian fantasy of a state-subsidised Noble Savage which unleashed an orgy of child rape.

What a shamelful legacy for the professional Howard-haters.

“The historic and national apology personally penned by Rudd will partly define his prime ministership. Rudd seems to realise this and to accept the risk involved. The apology was overdue, a point conceded by many former Howard Government ministers.”

But please, put it in the second half of the year. W e already have too many public holidays in the first half

Gerard Henderson was a panelist along with Henry Reynolds on Lateline not long ago. Hendo had vicious feedback in his ear.
The slow creep of conservatism seemed to be suffering from a feedback loop.

Reynolds was smiling.

Nelson was banging on about sexual abuse because Abbott was pushing for the Liberals to support the apology as a way of defending Howard’s legacy, and in particular the NT intervention. It’s pure internal Coalition politics.

I think that you could have chosen your “banging on” figure of speech more carefully, Mark.

And mentioning the chronic problems associated with indigenous families is only “internal politics” to those who have an interest in seeing inconvenient truths flushed down a memory hole.

The “stolen” generation, whatever the merits of their claim, are mostly retired or dead. This is mostly a by-gone issue.

By contrast the remote indigenous crisis is here and now. It is the responsibility of both personal, professional and political authorities. All of whom have failed. Particularly the personal ones (since the personal is the political in cases of child abuse).

Nelson was tactless enough to mention this uncomfortable truth in order to put those responsible - Aborginal parents and white policy makers/administrators - under the pump.

But these authorities dont want to face up to the responsibility of their own failures. That would call into question their investment in the “mau-mauing” of whitey.

If people think that saying sorry, or even shovelling billions of dollars into remote indigenous housing is going to solve the problem then they are deluding themselves. Only building accountable institutional authorities to regulate Aboriginal life - at personal, professional and political scales - will combat rampant anomie.

ALso early and continual educational intervention to ratchet up Aboriginal IQ is fundamental to improving indvidual Aboriginal competence. That will require strongly paternalistic education. Prussian missionary style.

But acknowledging intellectual and institutional authorities are the last thing that Left-liberals want to do.

Advocates for an apology have always said that it would only be the first step. But the subsequent steps can’t be taken unless that first step happens.