Can the "stolen generations" issue ever be resolved? Last week, during a debate with me on the ABC's 7.30 Report, prominent historian and public intellectual Robert Manne said that three things are needed to deal with the shameful legacy of past removals of part-Aboriginal children.
He wanted an official Commonwealth apology to Aborigines. He called for a tribunal to provide compensation to the separated children, with the onus of proof on the government to show why payments should not be made in individual cases. And he demanded that the "conservatives and right-wingers" who have denigrated Bringing Them Home -- the report on the "stolen generations" -- should show some sympathy for the suffering of Aborigines.
I endorse the call for an apology, provided it is not the glib kind of "sorry" that rolls off hypocrites' tongues and which posturers wear on their suits. Such an apology only debases our moral language.
If an apology is to be truly constructive it should provoke Australians into pondering the underlying causes of the humiliation and distress that Aborigines suffered during the course of our history. It should acknowledge that most of the wrongs were the consequence of two destructive notions.
The first is the belief that Aborigines were a different kind of human being to other Australians, requiring special legislation and programs based on race rather than individual circumstance. The second is the enthusiasm for the kind of government social engineering that undermines legitimate individual freedoms.
Unfortunately, both of these notions are still prevalent today, often promoted by the people who are most prone to conspicuous displays of identification with Aboriginal suffering. This is why it is appropriate for John Howard to apologise for not doing more to undermine these harmful ideas.
The kind of compensation tribunal Manne proposes would be an invitation to deceit, as well as providing the grounds for many people to dismiss the "stolen generations" issue as just another grab for money. Aborigines who experienced criminal abuse in institutions should be entitled to compensation, but they should be expected to demonstrate that such acts really took place.
Furthermore, any compensation should come from the organisations or individuals responsible for the abuse. The recent Cubillo and Gunner "stolen generations" court case showed that, at least in the Northern Territory, it was usually church organisations who employed unsuitable personnel in their institutions, and who turned a blind eye to the excesses that were sometimes inflicted on Aboriginal children.
Manne's final point, which effectively demands that critics of Bringing Them Home belt up, is strange indeed. As Andrew Bolt pointed out in the Courier-Mail last week, Manne's new book, In Denial: The Stolen Generations and the Right, finally concedes that Bringing Them Home is badly flawed.
But at the same time, Manne bitterly attacks those of us who first marshalled the evidence to demonstrate these flaws, calling us "mean-spirited", and implying that we are racists. It seems that he is in an awful quandary. On the one hand, he realises that the credibility of Bringing Them Home is crumbling, with even left-leaning historians like Bain Attwood criticising its defects.
On the other hand however, having only recently managed to extricate himself from the smear of being a "right-winger", he seems terrified that his new-found leftist friends will accuse him of backsliding. So he is desperate to distance himself from the "right", but in doing so he destroys his own credibility even more than he would had he continued to pretend that Bringing Them Home is an accurate report.
For instance, he uses quotation marks creatively to make it appear as though his opponents have made statements they have never made and that are contrary to their actual views. And he makes claims that he almost certainly knows to be false. I have prepared a point by point demonstration of the fabrications, serious errors of fact, and other scholarly failings that occur in Manne's book in relation to my work.
By writing In Denial, Robert Manne is now in a most difficult position. He has demonstrated that he cannot be relied upon to present an honest account of documents that he has examined. For a professional historian, that is a major problem.
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