Apology was a mistake, says feisty Howard Anne Davies, Cambridge, Massachusetts
March 12, 2008
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Audio Former PM tells Harvard University students why he refused to apologise to the stolen generations.Howard: why 'sorry' was wrong "I think we persevered for too long with the notion of separate development. I think the only way the indigenous people of Australia can get what we call a 'fair go' is for them to become part of the mainstream of the community and get the benefits and opportunities available from mainstream Australian society, whilst recognising … the particular and special place of the indigenous culture in the life of the country," he said.
FORMER prime minister John Howard has defended his decision not to say sorry to Australia's Aborigines during his 11 years in power and criticised the Rudd Government's apology to the stolen generations. In a take-no-prisoners question and answer session with students at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, Mr Howard said he did not believe that one generation could apologise for the actions of another, and, anyway, some children had been removed from their parents for good reason and others were given up voluntarily. "I do not believe as a matter of principle that one generation can accept responsibility for the acts of earlier generation," he said. "In some cases, children were wrongly removed, in other cases they were removed for good reason, in other cases they were given up and in other cases, the judgement on the removal is obscure or difficult to make." He said his view was shared by Noel Pearson of the Cape York Indigenous Council — a man whom he regarded as "the voice of contemporary indigenous Australia more than anybody else". Mr Howard warned that an apology also ran the risk of people thinking they had now "ticked the box" on action to redress the problems of indigenous Australia, which he said included unacceptably high mortality compared to whites. He also turned to what he said was the "broader issue": 20 or 30 years of failed policies in relation to indigenous affairs.
"I think we persevered for too long with the notion of separate development. I think the only way the indigenous people of Australia can get what we call a 'fair go' is for them to become part of the mainstream of the community and get the benefits and opportunities available from mainstream Australian society, whilst recognising … the particular and special place of the indigenous culture in the life of the country," he said. Mr Howard also rejected suggestions from a questioner that this issue and his refusal to sign Kyoto had cost the Coalition the election. "The first lesson I learned is you win some, you lose some," a defiant Mr Howard said of the lessons learned from the defeat. "I did have the opportunity of winning four elections." Opposition indigenous affairs spokesman Tony Abbott said last night that Mr Howard was "absolutely right" to defend his record. But he said this should not be read as criticism of the Coalition's eventual support for the apology. "When we were in government we could decide whether an apology happened or not, but in opposition all we could decide was an attitude to an apology which was ultimately in the hands of others," he told The Age. "My own view was if an apology was going to happen anyway why not make the most of the situation and at the very least not rain on the parade." Helen Moran, the co-chair of the National Sorry Day Committee, said Mr Howard's comments were a sad "echo of the past". She also challenged Mr Howard's description of Mr Pearson, saying the action of thousands of Aboriginal people in travelling to Canberra for the apology "speak much louder than Noel Pearson's words". "It was bigger than the Melbourne Cup," she said. "I think contemporary indigenous Australia clearly made their stand." Mr Howard, asked how he had changed Australia, said he had ended the "pointless debate about our identity" and engendered "a rather positive view about Australian history and Australian achievement". "I think our sense of national pride is stronger now than it was in the 1990s, less ambiguous and that's tremendously important." With MICHELLE GRATTAN AND SARAH SMILES Source Ex-PM consigns himself to past Tony Wright
March 12, 2008
COMMENT  John Howard reflects on 11 years at Australia's helm as he addresses a forum in Washington.
ABROAD in his tuxedo, John Howard is teaching Brendan Nelson a lesson: when you lead an Australian political party, you are never short of help from the past. Howard himself was rarely short of advice from Malcolm Fraser. He never took it, of course. To plenty of his supporters, his real attraction was that he wasn't Malcolm Fraser, just as Bob Hawke's virtue was that he wasn't Gough Whitlam, and Paul Keating's appeal was that he wasn't Bob Hawke. For a moment, John Howard looked as if he might be the exception. Dream on. Granted a podium, a fat speaker's fee and an audience in the US where he was once known as a man of steel, he has been as keen as Fraser to justify the attitudes that took him to power and then to oblivion. His criticisms in a Washington speech last week were a swipe at Nelson's Opposition as much as an attack on the Rudd Government, for Nelson had abandoned WorkChoices and gone soft on Iraq. And he had stood in Parliament and offered his and the Opposition's hand in the parliamentary apology to the stolen generations, which Howard clearly still believes never existed. Howard would have choked yesterday to see Nelson welcome a decision to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. The former PM has been doing Nelson a favour. By thundering on about WorkChoices and Iraq and the rectitude of withholding an apology from Australia's indigenous people, Howard has been digging himself deeper into the past. These are the issues that ensured voters consigned him to the outer. He is, in short, choosing for himself that unfortunate status: the "silly old bugger". Nelson has the chance to take the Opposition in any direction he pleases, freed from either requiring the blessing or caring about the contempt he might cop from Howard. Problem is that Nelson, having spent his first months as leader capitulating to Labor's agenda, hasn't settled on any course he might call his own. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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