Sorry day is Nelson's disgrace

First of all- happy Sorry Day, everyone.

I'm sorry too. Sorry that I got to hear Brendan Nelson's speech on the radio this morning right after Kevin Rudd's. Ugh. I usually get annoyed when a loud vehicle shows up in our driveway and sits there making noise, but when a carpet-cleaning van showed up this morning I was thanking my lucky stars for their generator drowning out Brendan Nelson's speech. God. What a loser.

Here are some of the bits I got to hear:

It is one of two cultures; one ancient, proud and celebrating its deep bond with this land for some 50,000 years. The other, no less proud, arrived here with little more than visionary hope deeply rooted in gritty determination to build an Australian nation; not only for its early settlers and indigenous peoples, but those who would increasingly come from all parts of the world.

Firstly, none of the first settlers arrived here with a 'gritty determination to build an Australian nation'. The English who didn't arrive here as convicts were intent on building a colony, another outpost of the British Empire. The next big step in our history as a nation will be ridding ourselves of those ties.

And not a single person who settled here wanted to 'build an Australian nation' for aboriginal people- are you kidding me? They were viewed as savages, as wildlife, and essentially treated as such until 1967.

As for the thought that these 'nation building' forefathers of ours pictured a multicultural paradise filled with people from 'all parts of the world'- utter fucking bullshit. Explain the Lambing Flat Massacre, and the NSW government's response (which was to effectively ban Chinese immigration). Explain the fucking White Australia policy. Why was John Howard so preoccupied with the teaching of history in Australian schools when it's clear that the only history his former ministers are familiar with is of the Keith Windschuttle school? I suppose that was exactly the point- Howard's mission was this kind of propaganda:

In brutally harsh conditions, from the small number of early British settlers, our non-indigenous ancestors have given us a nation the envy of any in the world. But Aboriginal Australians made involuntary sacrifices, different but no less important, to make possible the economic and social development of our modern Australia.

Magic Bellybutton picked up on this one too. What Brendan Nelson is saying is that the abuse of aboriginal people, the theft of aboriginal children, was necessary in order to make Australia a good place to live. That if it hadn't happened, somehow we'd be worse off. What the fuck? As Gam said when I pointed it out- "That's like saying in order to build an autobahn it's necessary to burn a few Jews". Despicable doesn't even begin to describe what poured forth from Brendan Nelson's mouth on this momentous day.

Though disputed in motive and detail and with varying recollections of events by others, the removal of Aboriginal children began.

Translation: "Anyone who says they were stolen is a fucking liar. They were 'removed', not stolen, and because I and others of my ilk dispute the intentions, this disproves the stories of everyone in the Stolen Generation as well as their family members".

But in saying we are sorry - and deeply so - we remind ourselves that each generation lives in ignorance of the long term consequences of its decisions and actions. Even when motivated by inherent humanity and decency to reach out to the dispossessed in extreme adversity, our actions can have unintended outcomes. As such, many decent Australians are hurt by accusations of theft in relation to their good intentions.

Translation: "Everything that was done was done with the best of intentions. Aboriginal people were a miserable bunch until we came along, and don't you forget it."

I'd also like to ask a question: If 'we', meaning Australians alive today, aren't responsible for the actions of people who took part in the theft of children from their families, how can 'many decent Australians' be wounded by 'accusations of theft in relation to their good intentions'? Does 'their good intentions' mean they actually took part in stealing children? We've been told repeatedly that it's all in the past, that today's Australians aren't responsible, that we have nothing to be sorry for, so how can these 'decent Australians' be so defensive about their actions? Brain explosion impending...

Luckily that's all I had the misfortune of hearing, thanks to the arrival of the carpet-cleaners, as I could feel my blood pressure rising and that's not a good thing first thing in the morning. I was very happy to see later in video footage on the SMH that many people booed Brendan Nelson's speech, and a couple of Kevin Rudd's staff as well as hundreds of other people turned their back on him during his speech. Brendan Nelson and the other Libs (those who actually showed up, that is) whined like a little bitch in response. I was not, however, very happy to see that Rudd is forcing them to write to Nelson to apologise. Nelson deserves nothing. I don't hear talk of him forcing Wilson Tuckey to make a formal apology for shouting out the lord's prayer and then stomping out of the lower house before the apology was read. In fact, what Brendan Nelson said in response to that was "The important thing for us is to respect difference of opinion."

What a disgrace the Liberals are.

Fuck you, Brendan Nelson.