Who's Sorry Now?

The truth really matters.  There is a whole world of difference between government or church officials who forcibly remove an Aboriginal child from a caring family, and officials who accept responsibility to look after a child who has been abandoned or otherwise given up by its parents.

Unfortunately, in the four years since the release of the Bringing Them Home report on the "stolen generations", many prominent people have done everything possible to obscure this crucial distinction.  Australians have been told time and again that up to 100,000 Aboriginal children were "stolen" from their families so they could be assimilated and lose their cultural identity, and these figures have been blithely repeated by news media around the world.

The reputation of many people who were dedicated to assisting Aborigines has been maligned.  Instead of being given their due as decent and humane individuals who often made considerable sacrifices to do what they thought was right, they have been portrayed as being complicit in a form of "genocide".

Much of the blame for this disgraceful situation must be placed squarely on the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, whose then president, Sir Ronald Wilson, was the main author of Bringing Them Home.

Rather than making the careful distinctions that were essential for investigating a controversial and painful issue, the report lumped everything together -- from cases where children really were stolen, to those where Aboriginal children in remote locations were sent off to boarding schools by parents who saw the benefits of a Western education.

Suggesting, oh so patronisingly, that in the latter cases parents would almost invariably have been subjected to "duress" from white officials, Bringing Them Home used the term "forcible removal" to cover all the cases it considered, supposedly for "ease of reference".  This is a bit like discussing an enormous range of offences from littering to murder, and referring to all of them as "violent crime".

But from the start it should have been obvious that, whatever their motives, those who have been misrepresenting the "stolen generations" issue were playing a particularly dangerous game.  If they really want Australians to reflect on the many wrongs that have been inflicted on Aborigines since European settlement, it is essential to offer only accounts of the past that are scrupulously honest, accounts that cannot be challenged or dismissed.

But the temptation for moral posturing and political brow-beating on Aboriginal issues overcame good sense long ago.  As bits and pieces of the truth about the "stolen generations" have emerged, first in court cases, and now in yesterday's Courier-Mail story about Dr Lowitja O'Donoghue, many Australians are probably thinking that it is all a con, just like the "secret women's business" of Hindmarsh Island.

This would be unfortunate.  Although the numbers are far less than those claimed, there can be no doubt that at various times and places over the past century, some Aboriginal children were wrongly taken from families who were both willing and able to care for them.  And even where neglect or mistreatment gave authorities no alternative but to place an Aboriginal child in foster care or an institution, some removed children suffered serious abuses, including acts that were criminal even by the standards of the day.

Nevertheless, perhaps it is time to bring closure to this whole sorry issue.  The Human Rights Commission and the "stolen generations" industry should apologise to all Australians, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, for the enormous damage their misrepresentations have caused.

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