Dear Prof Cohen
I hope this note finds you well.
I am writing you this letter to explain my third assignment.
My third assignment rides on the lessons learnt from previous assignment and exercise we have done for this module.In the early weeks of this module, students were asked to prepare a three-page annonated biobliography and survey of important websites pertaining to natural disaster, genocide and war. The students were required to provide relevant URLs and describe the scope of the most useful websites. What I learnt from this website was what makes a good information website.
Later in the following weeks, students were required to submit a seven-page essay on a genocide. I had written on the Stolen Generation in Australia, but I felt that there was so much information in the mass media about this genocide and it was impossible for me to compress them into seven pages. I wanted to launch polls to gauge public opinion, and show videos related to the incident, but on papers I could not do those and more.
As such, I am using the opportunity in the third assignment to fuse the lesson learnt from the website exercise and the overflow of ideas from the second assignment to extend my thoughts on the Stolen Generation in Australia. In addition to this portal of information, I have also added an Op-Ed on what I think of this genocide. Australia is the only country in the world that is also a continent by itself. To wipe out its people would be to wipe out an entire continent.
Yours sincerely,
Angel Lam, Student No. HT074955R
Master in Public Policy 2007/2009
Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy
National University of Singapore
Australian Prime Minister, Mr Kevin Rudd, Apologises to Indigenous Australians
Click on play button to watch Australian Prime Minister apologise to Indigenous Australians on 13 February 2008. Ensure that your computer speakers are turned on.
Mini Op-Ed: "13 February 2008"
Not many people, especially those who lived outside of Australia, are truly aware of the Stolen Generation, much less the gravity of this genocide.
In 2000, when I was reading my undergraduate degree in Melbourne, the capital city of the Australian state of Victoria, I was one of the many international students who could not understand what had happened to the a group of Australians called the "Stolen Generation". Understandably, Australia's private education system had not prepared this important piece of education for us. We were bringing in the money - we were not to be pissed off.
I did not think much about the Stolen Generation until the beginning of 2008, when the Australians were about to get a new Prime Minister. The incumbent, Mr Kevin Rudd, of the Australian Labour Party, promised to make a national apology to the Indigenous Australians as his priority. When he took office, he kept his promise - almost immediately.
On 13 February 2008, at 9:00am ACT time, Mr Rudd took his seat in the House of Representatives in the Parliament building. After the prayers, he stood up and said what most Australians, especially the Indigenous Australians, had waited to hear for decades from the previous Governments.
This was what Mr Rudd said.
I have been following this news closely because I felt that having been living in Australia for two years previously, there is still something that I do not quite understand about the Stolen Generation. In the end, I realised that I did not know all the journalistic questions - who, what, when, where, why, how? Writing the second assignment on this topic, which I have long abandoned in my mind since leaving Australia in 2002, has forced me to exlore those unanswered questions and research on the subject matter.
When Mr Kevin Rudd first expressed his interest to contest for the position of Prime Minister, he said the first thing he was going to do was to apologise to the Stolen Generation. All of a sudden, this topic came back to me and I was wondering if it would ever happen. Australians have waited so long for it that the longer they waited, the further and the more out of reach it seems. But true enough, as soon as Mr Rudd took office, he fulfilled his promise and kept his wordn to his people.
I have read his apology speech many times, and watched the video a few times, and I think the speech was very well-written. What I felt was good about the speech was that it was written in such a humble tone in simple English, that the young Australians including the children, would be able to understand this very important speech on that very important 13 February. The speech morphed a little into a story-telling style when Mr Rudd told the story of the Nanna. For the first time, I read with so much emotions that my eyes were damp when I finished. I think Australians finally have a closure.
The most important lesson in this historic day is like what an adult would tell a kid: "When you make a mistake, say sorry like you mean it - and the whole idea of saying sorry is to promise not to repeat the mistake". We can be quite certain that in today's modernity, such act would be deplored and never happen again, but the next struggle remains - can Australians truly accept Indigenous countrymen like white Australians? Is the apology a guarantee of a change of every mindset that exists in Australia?
I think not.
In 2000, when I was reading my undergraduate degree in Melbourne, the capital city of the Australian state of Victoria, I was one of the many international students who could not understand what had happened to the a group of Australians called the "Stolen Generation". Understandably, Australia's private education system had not prepared this important piece of education for us. We were bringing in the money - we were not to be pissed off.
I did not think much about the Stolen Generation until the beginning of 2008, when the Australians were about to get a new Prime Minister. The incumbent, Mr Kevin Rudd, of the Australian Labour Party, promised to make a national apology to the Indigenous Australians as his priority. When he took office, he kept his promise - almost immediately.
On 13 February 2008, at 9:00am ACT time, Mr Rudd took his seat in the House of Representatives in the Parliament building. After the prayers, he stood up and said what most Australians, especially the Indigenous Australians, had waited to hear for decades from the previous Governments.
This was what Mr Rudd said.
I have been following this news closely because I felt that having been living in Australia for two years previously, there is still something that I do not quite understand about the Stolen Generation. In the end, I realised that I did not know all the journalistic questions - who, what, when, where, why, how? Writing the second assignment on this topic, which I have long abandoned in my mind since leaving Australia in 2002, has forced me to exlore those unanswered questions and research on the subject matter.
When Mr Kevin Rudd first expressed his interest to contest for the position of Prime Minister, he said the first thing he was going to do was to apologise to the Stolen Generation. All of a sudden, this topic came back to me and I was wondering if it would ever happen. Australians have waited so long for it that the longer they waited, the further and the more out of reach it seems. But true enough, as soon as Mr Rudd took office, he fulfilled his promise and kept his wordn to his people.
I have read his apology speech many times, and watched the video a few times, and I think the speech was very well-written. What I felt was good about the speech was that it was written in such a humble tone in simple English, that the young Australians including the children, would be able to understand this very important speech on that very important 13 February. The speech morphed a little into a story-telling style when Mr Rudd told the story of the Nanna. For the first time, I read with so much emotions that my eyes were damp when I finished. I think Australians finally have a closure.
The most important lesson in this historic day is like what an adult would tell a kid: "When you make a mistake, say sorry like you mean it - and the whole idea of saying sorry is to promise not to repeat the mistake". We can be quite certain that in today's modernity, such act would be deplored and never happen again, but the next struggle remains - can Australians truly accept Indigenous countrymen like white Australians? Is the apology a guarantee of a change of every mindset that exists in Australia?
I think not.
The Long-Awaited Day
On 13 February 2008, the newly-elected Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, walked into the Parliament House at 9:00am, took his seat and after the prayers, stood up and read the apology text.
Kevin Tells A Story - "Nanna Nungala Fejo"
Then he continued to tell the life story of Nanna Nungala Fejo, an Indigenous Australian borned in late 1920s who was snatched away from her mother in 1932 when she was about 12 years old, herded and piled onto the back of a truck, and hauled to an institution called Bungalow in Alice. A few years later, when the Australian Government changed its policies and decided that the stolen children would be raised by churches, it proclaimed Nanna a Methodist which she was not, and despatched her to a Methodist mission in Goulborn Island, and then to another in Croker Island, where she stayed until she was 16, when she discovered that her mother, the grief-stricken mother she did not get an opportunity to be reunited with, had died.
One of 100,000
Nanna Fejo’s voice is one of the tens of thousands voices of the Stolen Generation in Australia. According to the “Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families” report, commissioned by Paul Keating in 1995 and received by John Howard in 1997, between 1910 and 1970, between 10 and 30 per cent of Indigenous children (between 50,000 to 100,000 children) were forcibly taken from their parents and their families, the way Nanna Fejo was snatched from her mother in 1932. The report added that “in that time not one family has escaped the effects of forcible removal. Most families have been affected, in one or more generations, by the forcible removal of one or more children”.
Notes:
1. Paul John Keating (born 18 January 1944) was the 24th Prime Minister of Australia, from 1991 to 1996. His agenda included achieving reconciliation with Australia's indigenous population and legislating for the native title rights of Australia's indigenous people, which he successfully championed for.
2. John Winston Howard (born 26 July 1939) was the 25th Prime Minister of Australia from 11 March 1996 to 3 December 2007, serving four terms in total which made him the second-longest serving Prime Minister of Australia.
Notes:
1. Paul John Keating (born 18 January 1944) was the 24th Prime Minister of Australia, from 1991 to 1996. His agenda included achieving reconciliation with Australia's indigenous population and legislating for the native title rights of Australia's indigenous people, which he successfully championed for.
2. John Winston Howard (born 26 July 1939) was the 25th Prime Minister of Australia from 11 March 1996 to 3 December 2007, serving four terms in total which made him the second-longest serving Prime Minister of Australia.
Proposed Solutions
The “Bringing Them Home” report made many recommendations, including that: funding be made available to Indigenous agencies to allow Indigenous people affected by the forcible removal policies to record their history; that reparations be made to people forcibly removed from their families; and that the Australian Parliaments offer official apologies and officially acknowledge the responsibility of their predecessors for the laws, policies and practices of forcible removal.
But John Howard resisted, and his Government did the same. Reparation, in jurisprudence, means “replenishment of a previously inflicted loss by the criminal to the victim”. Monetary restitution is a common form of reparation.
But John Howard resisted, and his Government did the same. Reparation, in jurisprudence, means “replenishment of a previously inflicted loss by the criminal to the victim”. Monetary restitution is a common form of reparation.
Northern Territory National Emergency Response
Just before the end of his premiership, in August 2007, the Howard government announced the Northern Territory National Emergency Response to address the child abuse in Aboriginal Northern Territory communities, but critics expressed skepticism about the plan's true intention, saying it was instead an attempt to remove land rights from Aboriginal communities, given that Howard had been a long-time opponent of indigenous Native Title in Australia. Key components of the intervention included seizure by the Federal Government of local community land leases for a five year period and removal of the permit system that had allowed aboriginal communities to control access to their land.
Nothing Less Than a Genocide
Some commentators such Sir Ronald Wilson have alleged that the Stolen Generation was nothing less than a case of genocide, because it was widely believed at the time that the policy would cause Aborigines to die out.
Similarly, the expressed preferences of government bureaucrats, such as A.O. Neville, to merge the Aboriginal race into the white population by means of "breeding out the colour", and therefore eventually resulting in the former being "forgotten", bore strong similarities to the views of the Nazis in 1930s Germany.
Though the term 'genocide' had not yet entered the English language, the practices of Neville and others were termed by some contemporaries as the 'die out' or 'breed out' policy, giving an indication of its proposed intent of a typical genocide.
Similarly, the expressed preferences of government bureaucrats, such as A.O. Neville, to merge the Aboriginal race into the white population by means of "breeding out the colour", and therefore eventually resulting in the former being "forgotten", bore strong similarities to the views of the Nazis in 1930s Germany.
Though the term 'genocide' had not yet entered the English language, the practices of Neville and others were termed by some contemporaries as the 'die out' or 'breed out' policy, giving an indication of its proposed intent of a typical genocide.
Reaction of United Nations
In July 2000, the issue of the Stolen Generation came before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva who heavily criticised the Howard government for its manner of attempting to resolve the issues related to the Stolen Generation. Australia was also the target of a formal censure by the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
Socio-Economic Impacts
Although the "resocialisation" programme aimed to improve the integration of Aboriginal people into modern society, no tangible improvement was found in the social position of "removed" Aborigines as compared to "non-removed".
Most notably, the study indicated that removed Aboriginal people were actually less likely to have completed a secondary education, three times as likely to have acquired a police record and were twice as likely to use illicit drugs.
Australia's 460,000 Aborigines make up 2% of the population, are the most disadvantaged group and continue to suffer very high rates of ill-health (have three times the rate of heart disease than other Australians), unemployment and imprisonment. Read the report here.
Their communities also have comparatively low life expectancies.
Most notably, the study indicated that removed Aboriginal people were actually less likely to have completed a secondary education, three times as likely to have acquired a police record and were twice as likely to use illicit drugs.
Australia's 460,000 Aborigines make up 2% of the population, are the most disadvantaged group and continue to suffer very high rates of ill-health (have three times the rate of heart disease than other Australians), unemployment and imprisonment. Read the report here.
Their communities also have comparatively low life expectancies.
Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)
The arts community has used film as a platform to depict this apparent genocide in Australia. In 2002, an Australian multiple-award winning film “Rabbit-Proof Fence”, based on the book “Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence” by Doris Pilkington Garimara, told the story of the author's mother and two other young mixed-race Aboriginal girls who ran away from Moore River Native Settlement, north of Perth, in order to return to their Aboriginal families.
In a subsequent interview with the ABC, Doris recalled her removal from her mother at age three or four, arriving at the settlement in 1931. She was not reunited with her mother until she was 25 and, until that time, she believed that her mother had given her away. When they were reunited, Doris was unable to speak her native language and had been taught to regard Indigenous culture as evil.
In a subsequent interview with the ABC, Doris recalled her removal from her mother at age three or four, arriving at the settlement in 1931. She was not reunited with her mother until she was 25 and, until that time, she believed that her mother had given her away. When they were reunited, Doris was unable to speak her native language and had been taught to regard Indigenous culture as evil.
Losing the mother tongue
Campaigners in Australia understand what Doris meant when she said she was unable to speak her native language.
They have warned that indigenous languages are declining at record levels, and that the country's cultural heritage is at risk unless more is done to ensure the survival of these ancient tongues.
Experts estimate that before European settlers arrived, hundreds of languages existed on the Australian continent, but many of these languages have already been lost forever, and only a few dozen still remain.
As they die out, they take with them irreplaceable parts of Aboriginal culture and history. Colonisation and the forced removal of tribes from their land have had a withering effect on language.
Campaigners have said it would be "absolute madness" if politicians did not fight to preserve such an important part of the country's heritage.
For a news article on this, read here.
They have warned that indigenous languages are declining at record levels, and that the country's cultural heritage is at risk unless more is done to ensure the survival of these ancient tongues.
Experts estimate that before European settlers arrived, hundreds of languages existed on the Australian continent, but many of these languages have already been lost forever, and only a few dozen still remain.
As they die out, they take with them irreplaceable parts of Aboriginal culture and history. Colonisation and the forced removal of tribes from their land have had a withering effect on language.
Campaigners have said it would be "absolute madness" if politicians did not fight to preserve such an important part of the country's heritage.
For a news article on this, read here.
Sins of Successive Governments and Parliaments
On 13 February 2008, present Prime Minister Kevin Rudd followed the apology with a 20-minute speech to the house about the need for the apology, in which he admitted and apologised for the grave consequences of wrong policies of the Government of Australia:
“We apologise for the hurt, the pain and suffering that we, the parliament, have caused you by the laws that previous parliaments have enacted. We apologise for the indignity, the degradation and the humiliation these laws embodied. We offer this apology to the mothers, the fathers, the brothers, the sisters, the families and the communities whose lives were ripped apart by the actions of successive governments under successive parliaments.”
“We apologise for the hurt, the pain and suffering that we, the parliament, have caused you by the laws that previous parliaments have enacted. We apologise for the indignity, the degradation and the humiliation these laws embodied. We offer this apology to the mothers, the fathers, the brothers, the sisters, the families and the communities whose lives were ripped apart by the actions of successive governments under successive parliaments.”
Words Mean More Than Money
The indigenous Australians, however, will receive no compensation, the Australian government has said. Campaigners for the so-called Stolen Generations had asked for a reparation fund of almost A$1bn ($870m; £443m) as part of a promised official apology.
But Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin says money will instead be put into health and education services, and providing additional support for services needed for counselling, to enable people to find their relatives, and has pledged to invest in initiatives which she said would improve life expectancy for today's Aborigines.
Paul Keating has also said that words mean more than money. So, no payout for 'stolen' Aborigines? Take part in this poll, on the top-right bar of this website.
But Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin says money will instead be put into health and education services, and providing additional support for services needed for counselling, to enable people to find their relatives, and has pledged to invest in initiatives which she said would improve life expectancy for today's Aborigines.
Paul Keating has also said that words mean more than money. So, no payout for 'stolen' Aborigines? Take part in this poll, on the top-right bar of this website.
What is Being Done
Kevin Rudd's long-awaited apology speech was widely applauded among both indigenous Australians and the non-indigenous general public. The government hopes the apology will repair the breach between the "white" Australians and the "black" Australians, and usher in a new era of recognition and reconciliation.
Mr Rudd has also outlined a new agenda on Aboriginal issues, including a commitment to close the 17-year life expectancy gap between Aborigines and other Australians within a generation, as well as halving Aboriginal infant mortality rates within a decade.
Kevin Rudd and his government inherited the sins of their previous governments and parliaments, but are on the path the right a wrong policy.
Mr Rudd has also outlined a new agenda on Aboriginal issues, including a commitment to close the 17-year life expectancy gap between Aborigines and other Australians within a generation, as well as halving Aboriginal infant mortality rates within a decade.
Kevin Rudd and his government inherited the sins of their previous governments and parliaments, but are on the path the right a wrong policy.
"Bringing Them Home" Report
The complete title of the report is "Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families". It was 700-page and included personal accounts of those affected by the genocidal policy.
It was commissioned by the 24th Prime Minister of Australia, Mr Paul Keating, on 11 May 1995 - with the intention to possibly embrace the recommendations suggested by the report. Mr Keating, however, left office in 1996. The report was still underway.
Mr Keating was succeeded by Mr John Howard, an egoistic man notorious for his persistent refusal to apologise to the Indigenous Australians, for not wanting to bow down to a "black armband view of history". The report was received by Mr Howard's government on 26 May 1997.
Mr Howard's government rejected the 54 recommendations of the long-awaited report.
It was commissioned by the 24th Prime Minister of Australia, Mr Paul Keating, on 11 May 1995 - with the intention to possibly embrace the recommendations suggested by the report. Mr Keating, however, left office in 1996. The report was still underway.
Mr Keating was succeeded by Mr John Howard, an egoistic man notorious for his persistent refusal to apologise to the Indigenous Australians, for not wanting to bow down to a "black armband view of history". The report was received by Mr Howard's government on 26 May 1997.
Mr Howard's government rejected the 54 recommendations of the long-awaited report.
An Act of Genocide
The report concluded, among other things, that "Indigenous families and communities have endured gross violations of their human rights. These violations continue to affect Indigenous people's daily lives. They were an act of genocide, aimed at wiping out Indigenous families, communities and cultures, vital to the precious and inalienable heritage of Australia."
The (Wrong) Policy
The Indigenous Australians, or Aborigines as they are sometimes called, are the first Australians on the nation. The “Stolen Generation”, coined by historian Professor Peter Read of the Australian National University, became a term used to describe these children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent who were forcibly and systematically removed from their families by the Australian and State government agencies and church missions, denying the rights of parents and children by making Aboriginal children wards of the state, between approximately 1869 and 1969.
Children taken to such places were frequently punished if caught speaking local indigenous languages, and the intention was specifically to prevent them being socialised in Aboriginal cultures, and raise the boys as agricultural labourers and the girls as domestic servants.
Children taken to such places were frequently punished if caught speaking local indigenous languages, and the intention was specifically to prevent them being socialised in Aboriginal cultures, and raise the boys as agricultural labourers and the girls as domestic servants.
Stolen Generation as Genocide
The yardstick of the only extant international legal definition of genocide, namely Article II (a) to (e) of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1948 stated: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Cecil Cook and AO Neville
Although no consensus has been reached as to the exact extent of the removal of children, and the reasoning behind their removal, many had understood that following the colonisation and eventual settlement of Europeans in the country, the Australian Government was determined to abolish the dark-skinned natives, and that mixed-descent children were not wanted or welcome in some Aboriginal groups and communities.
Some historical documents indicated that the policy may have emerged from the belief that the civilisation of northern Europeans was superior to that of Aborigines, whose children were feared to be a threat to the nature and stability of the prevailing civilisation.
Many Aboriginal children were handed to white families from 1915 to 1969. They were brought up by white people in an attempt by the government to assimilate the white and Aboriginal populations.
In the 1930s, the Northern Territory Protector of Natives, Dr. Cecil Cook, perceived the continuing rise in numbers of "half-caste" children as a problem and proposed that:“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 quickly be eliminated by the complete disappearance of the black race, and the swift submergence of their progeny in the white.”
Similarly, the Chief Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia, AO Neville, wrote in an article for The West Australian in 1930:“Eliminate the full-blood and permit the white admixture to half-castes and eventually the race will become white.”
Some historical documents indicated that the policy may have emerged from the belief that the civilisation of northern Europeans was superior to that of Aborigines, whose children were feared to be a threat to the nature and stability of the prevailing civilisation.
Many Aboriginal children were handed to white families from 1915 to 1969. They were brought up by white people in an attempt by the government to assimilate the white and Aboriginal populations.
In the 1930s, the Northern Territory Protector of Natives, Dr. Cecil Cook, perceived the continuing rise in numbers of "half-caste" children as a problem and proposed that:“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 quickly be eliminated by the complete disappearance of the black race, and the swift submergence of their progeny in the white.”
Similarly, the Chief Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia, AO Neville, wrote in an article for The West Australian in 1930:“Eliminate the full-blood and permit the white admixture to half-castes and eventually the race will become white.”
John Howard as Opposition Member
On 22 August 1988, John Howard from Opposition, named and launched a new immigration and ethnic affairs policy entitled “One Australia”, which detailed a vision of "one nation and one future", including opposition to multiculturalism and rejection of Aboriginal land rights. Critics charged that Howard was tacitly approving policies towards Aborigines and immigration, which they viewed as xenophobic (a person unduly fearful or contemptuous of that which is foreign, especially of strangers or foreign peoples).
In September 1988, Howard elaborated his opposition to multiculturalism by saying: "To me, multiculturalism suggests that we can't make up our minds who we are or what we believe in." He rejected the idea of an Aboriginal treaty as "repugnant to the ideals of One Australia", and commented:"I don't think it is wrong, racist, immoral or anything, for a country to say 'we will decide what the cultural identity and the cultural destiny of this country will be and nobody else'".
In September 1988, Howard elaborated his opposition to multiculturalism by saying: "To me, multiculturalism suggests that we can't make up our minds who we are or what we believe in." He rejected the idea of an Aboriginal treaty as "repugnant to the ideals of One Australia", and commented:"I don't think it is wrong, racist, immoral or anything, for a country to say 'we will decide what the cultural identity and the cultural destiny of this country will be and nobody else'".
Paul Keating as Prime Minister
In December 1992, the year after Paul Keating became the 24th Prime Minister of Australia, he made clear his intention to apologise by and became the first Prime Minister to publicly admit the past when he said:
“The starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians. It begins, I think, with that act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion”.
“The starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians. It begins, I think, with that act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion”.
“Bringing Them Home” Report
Paul Keating commissioned the “Bringing Them Home” report in 1995, but he left office in 1996 before the report was completed. John Howard eventually became the 25th Prime Minister of Australia on 11 March 1996, and wasted no time in attacking his predecessor Keating’s politics on the issue of multiculturalism and reconciliation with indigenous Australians. So when the “Bringing Them Home” report which his predecessor commissioned was completed in April 1997, he was in office to receive it, and rejected it.
John Howard as Prime Minister
He also almost immediately reduced funding for indigenous bodies during his first term (1996-1998).
During his second term (1998-2001), he had received the “Bringing Them Home” report, but was resolute in his refusal to issue a national apology to the Indigenous Australians, although all state and territory governments issued their own, maintaining that "Australians of this generation should not be required to accept guilt and blame for past actions and policies."
During his second term (1998-2001), he had received the “Bringing Them Home” report, but was resolute in his refusal to issue a national apology to the Indigenous Australians, although all state and territory governments issued their own, maintaining that "Australians of this generation should not be required to accept guilt and blame for past actions and policies."
State Apologies
Apologies had previously been offered by State and Territory governments in the period 1997-2001. Please see right bar for the links:
27 May 1997: Richard Court, Western Australia Premier, issued a parliamentary statement. 28 May 1997: Dean Brown, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, issued a parliamentary apology on behalf of the people of South Australia. 17 June 1997: Kate Carnell, Australian Capital Territory Chief Minister, moved a motion in the Territory Assembly. 18 June 1997: Bob Carr, New South Wales Premier, issued an apology on behalf of the people of NSW. 13 August 1997: Tony Rundle, Tasmania Premier, moved a parliamentary motion. 17 September 1997: Jeff Kennett, Victoria Premier, moved a parliamentary motion. 26 May 1999: Peter Beattie, Queensland Premier, issued a parliamentary statement. 24 October 2001: Clare Martin, Northern Territory Chief Minister, moved a Northern Territory legislative assembly.
A detailed state-by-state list of state apologies can be found here.
27 May 1997: Richard Court, Western Australia Premier, issued a parliamentary statement. 28 May 1997: Dean Brown, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, issued a parliamentary apology on behalf of the people of South Australia. 17 June 1997: Kate Carnell, Australian Capital Territory Chief Minister, moved a motion in the Territory Assembly. 18 June 1997: Bob Carr, New South Wales Premier, issued an apology on behalf of the people of NSW. 13 August 1997: Tony Rundle, Tasmania Premier, moved a parliamentary motion. 17 September 1997: Jeff Kennett, Victoria Premier, moved a parliamentary motion. 26 May 1999: Peter Beattie, Queensland Premier, issued a parliamentary statement. 24 October 2001: Clare Martin, Northern Territory Chief Minister, moved a Northern Territory legislative assembly.
A detailed state-by-state list of state apologies can be found here.
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