Worst political speech ever - then shameful editorial

Is Garth George (?) :


now quoting the appalling Brendan Nelson?


The leader of the opposition's speech (in response to Rudd) was so sickening that people who had gathered in public places for this momentous occasion turned there backs on him en masse. But from our point of view Nelson's tone deaf prejudice bespeaks of the delusional state of denial that many white Australians seem to be under about their origin and the true context of their history.

Ominously he starts his speech saying:
We will be at our best today - and every day - if we pause to place ourselves in the shoes of others, imbued with the imaginative capacity to see this issue through their eyes with decency and respect.
- if only that were right. He was at his worst because he failed that very test he had just set for himself. The prism through which he views the world is an airbrushed euro-centric fantasyland:
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.
- No, the "visionary hope" was a desperate decision by the British government to send its overcrowded prison population somewhere after the American colonies rebelled in 1776. And it wasn't to "build an Australian nation" it was to build prisons for British criminals. Those are the facts. Any credible narrative about an "Australian nation" as such came many, many decades later.
We cannot from the comfort of the 21st century begin to imagine what they overcame - indigenous and non-indigenous - to give us what we have and make us who we are.
- Well the Aborigines are still suffering and struggling as he will later comment upon, so what he's saying is that he can't imagine.
Though disputed in motive and detail and with varying recollections of events by others, the removal of Aboriginal children began... Our generation does not own these actions, nor should it feel guilt for what was done in many, but not all cases, with the best of intentions.
- So he's questioning and then attempting to down-play the policy and then says it was done with "the best of intentions"!? And just when you thought it couldn't get worse he then drops this:
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.
- OK, so he's now saying that the systematic policy to separate Aboriginal families and sell the children to white people in order to further the policy of destroying the Aboriginal race was unknown to the officials who were doing it and the politicians who were backing it. That policy was entirely concerned with a long-term strategy of promoting genocide - that was the policy, it was never a short-term policy - it went on for almost 70 years!

Who doesn't want to turn their back on this idiot. And he represents the white Australians that New Zealanders perhaps think of as the old stereotype: an ultra-racist, ignorant, uncouth, yobbo arsehole - the sort of fuckwit that drapes themselves in their colonial flag and goes around attacking people who aren't white enough for their liking. And I'm afraid this abomination just rolls on:
No one should bring a sense of moral superiority to this debate in seeking to diminish the view that good was being sought to be done.
- and on:
There is no compensation fund, nor should there be.
- and on:
Separation was then, and remains today, a painful but necessary part of public policy in the protection of children.
- and on:
In offering this apology, let us not create one injustice in our attempt to address another.
- and so on:
spare a thought for the real, immediate, seemingly intractable and disgraceful circumstances in which many indigenous Australians find themselves today.
- and so forth:
Sexual abuse of Aboriginal children was found in every one of the 45 Northern Territory communities surveyed for the Little Children are Sacred report. It was the straw breaking the camel's back, driving the Howard government's decision to intervene...

What vile stuff. What totally inappropriate material. What an historical white-wash. The man doesn't sound like he's sorry at all - it sounds like he's making excuses and unable to understand that the federal and state governments' anti-Aboriginal policies created all the mess his predecessor's government only did anything about when the last election came round. I strongly dislike this man.

And so I was actually quite amazed that the NZ Herald (and it might well be the aging reactionary Garth George who penned it - I can't really think of anyone else that out of touch) ran an editorial of eerie similarity:
Aboriginal leaders who are demanding that compensation follow the gesture discredit their cause.
- and if that didn't floor you:
If hand-outs could make much difference many more Aboriginal communities would be living in better conditions today.
- and:
Aborigines now have official national acknowledgment of their past mistreatment, in particular the so-called "stolen generations"
- you know, like the so-called "holocaust":
the well-intentioned paternalism of the "stolen generations"
- and:
Historical apologies do their own injustice to the past.
- and so on:
A court case established the children were not kidnapped; their parents were induced to let them go. The ethos of that time did not value cultural roots as we do today.
To the contrary, they valued cultural roots alright - white cultural roots - that's why they grabbed the children - to give them different cultural roots. That was the whole point.

It is to the Herald's shame that they printed that editorial. Incredibly poor judgement.

The reason for displaying these tawdry thoughts from these bigoted men is to illustrate how they nevertheless represent an old and underlying racial consciousness of much of the white population in Australasia and their way of understanding contemporary issues in terms of their self-serving mythology. They, despite what they may claim, are utterly incapable of understanding anything from the indigenous people's point of view. Just a quick glance of the extracts above will prove that. The way in which personal success and national development is measured explicitly in material terms is just one of many examples of how they continue to assert their own cultural values as universal norms.

The next generation will not be so dismissive or small-minded or down-right ignorant. And in the near future, hopefully, we may have a lot less hysteria over compensation and a lot more understanding about indigenous communities and their issues.