KEY POINTS:
Something happened this week which made me think about the importance of voting in elections. At times, some of us feel that voting in parliamentary contests is like voting between tweedle dee and tweedle dum. In New Zealand, we are fortunate to be able to have a number of parties in Parliament offering different alternatives rather than the strictly two-party system exercised in most other Western countries.
What made me review my partial cynicism was observing Kevin Rudd's new Government's formal apology to the Aborigines. The difference between New Zealand and our Australian cousins is that we have admitted many of the wrongs that have occurred here and are attempting to settle the grievances through the Waitangi Tribunal process. It is usual when we reach a settlement with an iwi our Prime Minister turns up in front of those people and apologises for past wrongdoings when announcing the agreed compensation.
By contrast, in Australia, it seems that not only Governments but the entire white population have been in denial about the plight of the Aborigines. Only a few weeks ago, we had the then-Prime Minister, John Howard (remember him?), disputing that any apology to the Aborigines was even necessary. So it is a monumental shift in the Australian psyche when we have Howard's successor as leader of the Liberal Party join the new Labour Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in making a formal apology to the entire Aboriginal population.
From this one act of contrition, good things will follow. This is the first time the Australian people have taken collective responsibility for the devastation of the more than 100,000 Aboriginal children who were snatched from their parents by Australian authorities and put into institutional care or fostered out to white families. The parents were never told where their children went and the children were never told who their parents were.
In one event, authorities turned up at an Aboriginal home early in the morning and took the couple's six children away. The couple had never been in trouble with the law but the authorities determined that it was best for the children to be raised by white families. The children never saw their parents again, nor their siblings, as each of them had their names changed and were fostered separately. Apparently they were told their parents didn't want them.
Howard had claimed it was no one's fault, because the intentions were altruistic. The view at the time was that the Aboriginal race was close to extinction and that the only way to save them was to assimilate the children into white society. In reality, they kidnapped the children away from their parents, families and culture into an alienating environment. You can find many of these victims when you visit Australia; they are the sad and pitiful ghosts that you see in dark corners whom white Australians ignore.
Up until now, white Australians, probably through deep guilt, have ignored and blamed the Aboriginal nation for its problems. Pre-election Howard cynically tried to play on the dark racist core of many Australians by sending the armed forces into Aboriginal communities, apparently to save them from themselves once again. He got a lot of airplay for this tactic and it almost worked.
The Maori Party's Hone Harawira was in Australia on parliamentary business at the time. Harawira abandoned his official visit and went to the affected Aboriginal settlements, called a press conference and denounced Howard as a racist bastard. This caused a furore back here in New Zealand, with our MPs from all parties - with the notable exception of the Greens - tut-tutting at his behaviour. This whipped-up scandal of Harawira's actions forced him to have to reimburse Parliament for his airfare out of his own pocket.
Ironically, we now have the same critics saying how wonderful it is to see an Australian Prime Minister apologising to the Aboriginal people for past wrongs. Meanwhile, Harawira was not in our Parliament this week because the Aboriginal people asked that he be part of their delegation when the Australian Parliament made its historical apology. Although he was the only New Zealand parliamentary representative to be invited for this historic event, our New Zealand Government has still insisted he pay his own airfare and expenses.
In the 1970s, when Labour Prime Minister Norman Kirk formally apologised to the Maori people, he received vitriolic attacks by his political opponents. However, his establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal to look into past grievances and recommend settlements is now, in retrospect, an amazing act that has probably done more for race relations and justice in New Zealand than anything else. Australia is 30 years behind us, but this week's step by the Australian Prime Minister will hopefully lead to similar resolutions to the innumerable injustices inflicted on their tangata whenua. Once this is done, I'm sure we will see Aborigines regain their mana and participate fully in their society.
It took a Maori MP to break all the rules to stand against Howard with the indigenous people of Australia. There is something poetic that he is the only Kiwi invited by the Aborigines to stand with them on their historic day.
