Opening of Parliament

[arthwollipot]

I suspect that a lot of people outside Australia won't be aware of this, but this morning marked the opening of Kevin Rudd's new Labour parliament. I watched this morning when members of the indigenous community performed a Welcome To Country ceremony for new parliament.

This has never happened before.

This is the first time that such a ceremony has been performed. There was one indigenous Australian present when parliament was moved to Canberra in 1927, and he was removed by police officers because he had bare feet.

We have come a long way since then.

There are a couple of very significant points about the ceremony this morning. It is the first time that an Australian Parliament has officially recognised the indigenous population. It is also the first time the indigenous population has officially recognised an Australian Parliament.

The Prime Minister committed the Parliament to this ceremony at every future opening. It is now (essentially) protocol.

Tomorrow we will have the Apology. The Government will officially apologise to the indigenous population for the injustices of the Stolen Generations. This is something that, like the Kyoto Protocol, the previous government swore that it would never do. But Kevin Rudd ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and he will deliver the Apology on the floor of Parliament tomorrow.

I'm looking forward to it.

 

[gtc]

The whole process seems silly to me, but I guess I am OK with it if it makes some Aborigines feel better without costing the Government too much in compensation claims

It is the first time that an Australian Parliament has officially recognised the indigenous population.

I find it hard to work out what this means as the law has recognised Aborigines as full citizens since 1967 and has dealt positively with Aborigines (and Torres Straits Islanders) on a collective basis (in areas such as Abstudy etc)

It is also the first time the indigenous population has officially recognised an Australian Parliament.

I also find this hard to understand. Individual Aborigines and Indigenous Groups have served in Parliament and have served in all levels of government and recognised the laws passed by Parliament etc. If you are saying that Indigenous People as a collective have recognised Parliament then I question just how representative this group is; on what basis they were selected and whether it really is a good thing to think of Australia as a collection of groups rather than as a nation of people.

Tomorrow we will have the Apology. The Government will officially apologise to the indigenous population for the injustices of the Stolen Generations. This is something that, like the Kyoto Protocol, the previous government swore that it would never do. But Kevin Rudd ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and he will deliver the Apology on the floor of Parliament tomorrow.

I hope he doesn't use the term 'Stolen Generations'. The term indicates that the problem was that Aborigines were unnecesarily taken from their families. Some Aborigines were taken unnecesarily from their families (though I would like someone to post some research into what proportion of people taken into care were taken unnecessarily and how this compared to other races).

However many aborigines seem to have been taken into care for very good reasons. In these cases, the problem is the fact that more wasn't done to ensure that their families weren't disfunctional in the first place and that more wasn't done to ensure that they recieved proper care once placed in care.

It is a shame because the stolen generations narrative seems to have led to a culture where removing a child is seen as being worse than keeping a child in a very disfunctional community (as we saw in North Queensland last year) and is used to condemn any and all intervention aimed to improve Aboriginal lives.

 

[gtc]

The text has been posted.

It focuses more on the future than I thought it might but statements like this:

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

Make it appear as if the removal of children was the main problem.

 

[arthwollipot]

I was wondering whether I should reply to what appears to me to be a very short-sighted and insensitive view.

I have decided that I should not.

ETA: Thanks for posting the link to the Apology.

 

[gtc]

OK.

Maybe you could respond to Pilger's views.

BTW, I think it is short sighted to take children from non-Indigenous families for fear of creating another stolen generation. In this case it led to the gang rape of a 10 year old even though the government knew she had already been raped.

 

[arthwollipot]

He's got a point, but we whitefellas will never leave the blackfella's land, and what's done can't be undone. Pilger is absolutly right that it's nothing more than a symbolic gesture unless it is backed up by something concrete. The Welcome to Country ceremony this morning and the delivery of the Apology tomorrow will open the door. The Apology is certainly not going to set right all the wrongs of the past in and of itself, but it's a start.

I am of the opinion that the Liberal government's "intervention" in NT was doomed to failure from the start, because the Liberal government always distanced itself from the indigenous population. It was always "us and them" for Howard and (dog help us) Abbott - they never really acknowledged that indigenous people were "us" too.

Rudd is doing that. He has shown by his statements at the ceremony this morning, and by his insistence on giving the Apology tomorrow, that he is willing to see indigenous Australians as "us". I think that he has shown that he is willing to go further towards genuine reconciliation and recompense than any other government before him, and I wish him all the best in that endeavour.

I don't personally like the man, and I didn't vote for him. But I think he represents a hope that one day we will see indigenous Australians treated with real equality in this country.