KEY POINTS:
When Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered the long-awaited formal apology to indigenous Australians for historical injustices since the arrival of Europeans, hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of Australians stopped to listen. Schools rearranged their timetables and crowds gathered, heedless of the rain, to watch broadcasts of the
proceedings on the kind of giant outdoor screens normally deployed for great sporting moments.
Aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike responded with cheers, tears and applause. John Howard's resolve that he would never say sorry on behalf of the country looked more than ever the politically bloody-minded and passionlessly prudential stand that it always was.
Predictably, perhaps, some commentators have sought to unpick distortions in the historical record. In particular the extent of the policy by which aboriginal children were removed from their families is questioned. There is no harm in that: revisiting history only becomes revision of history when its agenda is to deny what occurred.
But it is worth observing that "stolen generations" became the catchphrase of this history only partly because it made a good headline: it was also because the sundering of families is a concept more easily apprehended than the minutiae of social and economic policy or the health and education statistics demonstrating generations of aboriginal disadvantage. The idea that those responsible for enforcing those abhorrent policies were acting in good faith and with honourable intentions is widely acknowledged across Australia and Australians in general have moved beyond nitpicking disputes about the detail of events. They accept responsibility for the injustices of the past. If they did not, Rudd would not have had the mandate to deliver the apology he did.
Rudd said that Wednesday's apology was "a first step in acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians". He has said this does not imply a commitment to direct compensation, but it must be seen as a promise of money and resources to improving the social and economic status of Aborigines.
It is sobering to consider what lessons may be drawn here about the week's events across the Tasman. As part of the treaty settlement process, successive New Zealand Governments have apologised to individual iwi for the injustices visited on them and apologies have also been made to the Samoan and Chinese communities for specific outrages. But, as Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia remarked this week, the Government has never said sorry on behalf of the nation "to all the tangata whenua for past atrocities and past injustices".
It is curious that this should be so - the danger that an apology may open the floodgates of compensation demands is mitigated by the fact that we have a formal treaty claims process - but it is also instructive. The attitude of non-Maori New Zealanders towards race relations in Australia has long been characterised by a holier-than-thou self-righteousness. (Maori, by contrast, have more commonly felt a solidarity with aboriginals, which is why Maori voices of opposition were conspicuously silent when Hone Harawira called John Howard "a racist bastard").
We need not wonder whether schools would stop or crowds gather in the rain here if such an apology were to be made, since there is no chance of that happening anytime soon. No Government would have the mandate for it because too many Maori New Zealanders say that there is nothing to apologise for or, at least, that the present owes no apology for the past.
That position, which assumes that the past can somehow redress itself independent of the present, remains a barrier to true reconciliation and unity between this country's first peoples and its later colonial arrivals. It also, importantly, disqualifies us from any entitlement to smugness. In the last decade, and particularly in the last week, Australia confronted its past with a boldness that we are still not completely ready to show.
