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Saying sorry!

The word "sorry" is going to figure on the political landscape in Australia in the next little while - as the nature and extent of the apology to made or given to the aboriginal community is debated.

There is already a divide between the new Rudd Government elect and the Opposition.

Professor Lowitja O’Donoghue, venerable and venerated elder in the indigenous community, weighs into the debate in a piece in Crikey:

"I am saddened to hear that the new opposition leader, Brendan Nelson, will not say Sorry to Aboriginal people. But I am not surprised.

Brendan Nelson represents a party that is out of touch. They just don’t get it. He would do well to talk to former Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, to learn something about genuine liberal values.

Nelson’s are the mean-spirited responses of denial that diminish him as a person and diminish Australia as a nation. At the very historical moment when new, courageous collaboration is possible, this new Liberal leader, just like Howard before him, fuels the fires of division.

What they fail to grasp, or refuse to see, is that we cannot move forward until the legacies of the past are properly dealt with. This means acknowledging the truth of history, providing justice and allowing the process of healing to occur.

We are not just talking here of the brutality of a time gone by – though that was certainly a shameful reality. We are talking of the present, of the ways in which the legacy of the past lives on for every single Aboriginal person and their families."

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