KEY POINTS:
My South Asian mother taught me two golden lessons in life. First, always be wary of the prayers directed against you by those who feel wronged. They might reject God, but God certainly hears and responds to them.
Second, sometimes you should say sorry, even if you yourself did nothing wrong, if it soothes someone's pain.
Australia's former neo-conservative Prime Minister John Howard used his position repeatedly to preach against what he called the black-armband view of Australian history. He openly spoke of Australia's allegedly Judeo-Christian roots, focusing on a 220-year cultural status quo while ignoring 40,000 years of indigenous Australian culture.
In response to reports of widespread sexual abuse of children in some indigenous communities, supporters of Howard's monocultural monologue in the commentariat penned articles and flooded the airwaves with claims that indigenous cultures all promote sexual violence against women and children.
Howard fostered a warped racism in which newer Australians expressed a fraudulent patriotism by insulting the cultures of the first Australians. It was the highest wave in Howard's monocultural perfect storm.
In 1995, the then Labor Government commissioned the Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission to investigate and prepare a report on the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families by compulsion, duress or undue influence. The result was a 689-page report, Bringing Them Home.
The report's introduction reads: "The truth is that the past is very much with us today, in the continuing devastation of the lives of indigenous Australians. That devastation cannot be addressed unless the whole community listens with an open heart and mind to the stories of what happened and, having listened and understood, commits itself to reconciliation."
The report recommended that reparation be made in recognition of the history of gross violations of human rights. This should include acknowledgement and apology by every Parliament. All Australian state and territory Parliaments have formally apologised. This includes Parliaments where John Howard's Liberal Party sat on the Government benches.
By the time the commission's final report was released, John Howard was into the second year of the first term of his Prime Ministership.
He rebuffed the report's recommendations for an apology from the Commonwealth Parliament, claiming there was no reason why a generation of non-indigenous Australians should apologise for the actions of a previous generation. He also said an apology would open the floodgates of compensation claims. (He never questioned the rights of non-indigenous Australians in the same circumstances to legitimately make a claim.)
But times have changed. Last November, Australians of all backgrounds and colours soundly rejected Howard's disgraceful legacy. Howard's defeat was so emphatic that even voters in his own seat turned on him.
To use my mother's South Asian wisdom, we non-indigenous Australians as a whole have reached a stage where we feel the need to lift the curse of indigenous Australians that hangs over our heads. We realise a national apology is the first step.
If a small number of indigenous communities are dysfunctional, much of the blame lies with decades of indigenous families being forcibly broken up. These generations of broken families are referred to as the Stolen Generation.
Australians are beginning to yearn for a kind of Waitangi tang. Commentators are now making reference to the Treaty of Waitangi. As usual, all the best Aussie ideas are coming from across the Tasman.
Both Australia and New Zealand are young nations built by indigenous people and migrants. Both are former British colonies. Both are English-speaking liberal democracies with legal systems based on the English common law.
But unlike Australia, New Zealand's early European settlers entered into some kind of treaty recognising the special association of indigenous people to the land. The cultural tang of Waitangi is absent from Australia, where indigenous peoples, by and large, live in a state of institutionalised disadvantage.
For an outsider like myself, it seems the influence of Maori culture on all New Zealanders is far more apparent than the influence of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders on mainstream Australian culture. And Maori culture is shown a greater degree of both official and unofficial respect than Australia's indigenous cultures.
Last month in Sydney's Daily Telegraph, Anita Quigley wrote: "While New Zealand may look with envy at our booming economy and feel unease at the number of its citizens moving here, it has achieved something far more valuable: a united nation. Sadly, and to all our shame, we cannot say the same.
"The cohesive and integrated lives of Maori and Pakeha is by no means perfect, but it is far better than the ever-increasing ugly gulf between Aborigines and white Australians.
"Why is it that our neighbours across the Tasman seem to have got race relations relatively right and we so wrong?
" ... In 1840 there was the momentous Treaty of Waitangi and in 1869, nearly a century before Aborigines were given the vote, all Maori men could cast theirs."
Indigenous Australians have been getting a raw deal at the hands of the non-indigenous for more than two centuries. An apology won't heal the scars completely, but it is a good first step. With Howard gone, the conservatives have seen the light.
Hence, on the first day of sittings on Wednesday February 13, 2008, the Commonwealth Parliament's apology to the Stolen Generation was bipartisan if not unanimous.
* Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer.
