For Australia, today was about The Apology. A speech made in parliament, by the prime minister, apologising for years of mistreatment and hurt inflicted upon aboriginal families over the hundred years leading up to 1970. The Stolen Generations. Families separated so that their children wouldn't "have to" grow up aboriginal.

There's a lot of history there, a lot of justifications at the time and after the fact, for why these actions were carried out. What hasn't happened in the intervening years, until today, is that the government said "sorry". Today, the Rudd Labour Government delivered the apology and, importantly, used that word. Sorry. A word that the previous government and Prime Minister refused, unambiguously, to use.

The apology itself was quite well written. It reads well and will be a good statement for the future. The delivery of the apology, the speech, wasn't as great. To me, Kevin Rudd is not a good public speaker, his oratorical style is not particularly inspiring or commanding. Still, today's event was a ceremony, a time to put the text on record and see the man bearing the leadership say the words. The delivery doesn't diminish the significance of the moment. The text and the fact that the apology was delivered will outlive the video.

Sadly, the event was diminished by the bipartisan nature, when opposition leader Brenden Nelson stood up to deliver his apology. His apology was very close to "I've been told I should say sorry and I'm sorry I have to be here. I didn't do it." He completely missed the point. This wasn't a wiping clean of the slate, or an assigning of blame to individuals. It was an acceptance of the consequences of a national policy that has caused long-term damage to the native inhabitants of this land. Trying to spin the impact as Nelson did was unworthy of the moment. Better that he said nothing at all, given that his party, with a dozen years in government, of which he has been a senior member for many years, did previous little in the past, certainly not up to the point of apologising on behalf of the nation (the previous prime minister, John Howard, once expressed "personal regret" that events happened, but that wasn't what people wanted to hear from somebody acting as the nation's leader).

I am highly cynical of the effectiveness of federal politics and not a particularly fervent citizen; it's simply a fact of life that I have to be a citizen of one country. Heavens knows I am not a Kevin Rudd fan and suspect his government will not be a lot better than the Liberals over the coming years. However, acts like today (at least the apology portion), are a good reminder of why I'm also not entirely ashamed to be Australian. For the federal government of the day to finally get over this hurdle, acknowledge that they are the current bearers of the mantle of responsibility and accountability, whose predecessors implemented some exceedingly poor policy with negative impacts right down to today (social workers now find it hard to intervene in genuine cases because of the resemblance of these actions to those precipitating the Stolen Generation)... for that to eventually take place, is a huge step. That was the partisan-less moment of the day, not the opportunity given to the opposition to also speak. There will be people calling for monetary compensation and other sorts of retribution. However, that's not going to correct history. Working out direct and indirect consequences and trying to right them is terribly difficult and a large cheque cannot do it. There will be debate about what could have been for months to come, I'm sure. Not everybody, whether of European, Asian or Australian aboriginal descent, will agree with what happened today. But all of that is by the wayside. The point is that this quite reasonable step, this thing that was made into an insurmountable mountain by previous governments refusal to step up, has been addressed and can now become something that happened and is not the elephant-size roadblock in the room.

I didn't really know what to expect today when I woke up to watch the speech (I am not a morning person; it required an effort). However, I decided to watch because it was something I'd wanted to see happen for many years. I remember discussions around tables when I was at University back in the late 80's about why the government of the day didn't have the spine to address the issue, I'm glad I watched this morning. The media audio grabs and summary cannot do justice to watching it in full and it was a rare moment when I was proud of what the government was doing. I don't know what the effects of today will be in five or ten years time. Maybe we'll be no better off, nationwide, than now. Maybe things will change. It's time for everybody to stop relying on the past as a crutch, a cross or a weapon and address the situation as it exists today.

Topics: home, life, politics, thinking, writing

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Walked over the railway line to "the other side of town" (no, seriously) to vote just now. Australia has a federal election on Saturday, voting is compulsory here and I'm going to be Los Angeles at the time. So it was off to pre-poll. Always a much more pleasant experience than voting on the day, since it took about three minutes, as opposed to 20 or more after waiting in queues.

Because of the way we vote, the voting process does have its lighter moments. For the lower house (where the majority party or coalition forms "the government" and the leader of that party is the Prime Minister), it's a vote to pick the guy in your electoral district. So numbering 1 through N where, in my case, there were 6 candidates. You have to fill in every box or it's invalid, so there are advantages to being above your main opponent for those people who lose patience at some point and just finish their selections 4, 5, 6, ... working down the page.

For the Senate (upper house), it's a vote for the state representatives, elected proportionally based on the number of votes the party gets. This is the legendary "tablecloth voting paper", since there are so many parties! Today, the instruction from the guy checking me in and giving me the paper was "fill in one number above the line, or 79 below" (cue laughter at the prospect). The deal is that if you number one box "above the line" (the party box), your 79 votes are spread out according to that party's pre-registered preferences. Or you can do it by hand and stand there for 15 minutes trying to fill in 79 boxes on something that is too wide to fully unfurled inside the voting booth. Yeah, right! One number for me, thank you very much.

Generally, as an accommodation to the compulsory voting law, voting in Australia is a relatively painless ordeal. The AEC website is well set out and generally fairly informative. I was a little horrified to read this report that was a summary of an audit performed on the electronic machines that are going to be used in very limited circumstances. What is worrying here is not the report itself, but what it doesn't say. Who provides the equipment? What are the standards that they claim it is in compliance with? How was the audit conducted? Why is the whole report confidential apart from the executive summary? So many questions. Since they're only going to be used for low-vision or blind voters, plus some overseas Defence Forces personnel (ironic question for the day: why do we call soldiers who attack other people on their home turf "Defence Forces"?), the damage caused by mistakes this time around should be reasonably limited. There's a thin edge of the wedge problem here, though.

Unfortunately, this election cycle has been even more disappointing than previous ones and has often made me really angry at the apathy shown by the candidates towards anything resembling the country's future. The incumbent government (the Liberal Party, who are actually the conservatives, for overseas viewers) have been in office for so long they have moss growing on them. They aren't doing a particularly good job in so many areas of importance. Unfortunately, the only credible opposition party (Labor) are also not particularly impressive. Since the whole campaign has been an exercise in seeing which party can look more like the other one, there's not a lot to choose, except that the people currently doing the damage should probably sit out for a bit to reflect on their sins. We really, desperately need strong, unselfish, globally aware leadership in this country and it's not going to happen this time around because those candidates aren't up for election. The promises that won't be delivered upon (particularly by the current government; almost nothing they've promised couldn't have been done two years ago when it wasn't an election year), the money being wasted, the manipulation of the system, with neither main party announced their "official campaign launch" until a month after the election was announced, since, until they officially launch, the taxpayer picks up the tab, even though campaigning was all that was happening... :-( It's just a drawback of the democratic republic form of government.

And thus endeth my only local political commentary for hopefully another year or so.

Topics: politics

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This is going to break all sorts of rules I set myself for this blog. Chief amongst them, not talking about contemporary politics. Screw it. Rules are made to be challenged and I need to write this thinking down somewhere.

I was reading through the overnight news this morning, catching up on the world, when I noticed quite a lot of comments about a decision from the US: the New Jersey State Supreme Court handed down an interestingly couched decision about same-sex marriages. Originally I though this was great, then I thought it was tricky, then I just thought a lot. All in the space of 12 hours. Challenging day.

(Read more...)

Topics: law, politics

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