Rudd's remarkable beginning
16/2 Laurie Oakes for the Daily Telegraph | ... The surprising thing is that, in his years as a bureaucrat and then an MP, Rudd had never really been part of the bleeding heart brigade on Aboriginal affairs. Until nine months ago he had difficulty seeing any real practical value in the push for an apology.
..... Rudd committed himself to the gesture that released such a flood of emotion on Wednesday and left most Australians feeling pretty good about themselves and their country. In the execution of it he showed what a clever political operator he really is.
To say he played Brendan Nelson as a fisherman plays a trout would be unfair - but he certainly manipulated events to ensure images of unity and bipartisanship overshadowed divisions in Coalition ranks and any equivocation in the Opposition Leader's words. During the Aboriginal "welcome to country" ceremony at the opening of Parliament, for example, Rudd involved Nelson by giving him just a few minutes' notice that he would be invited to speak. After the sorry vote, Rudd - again with no warning - invited Nelson to join him in parading around the chamber waving to the galleries before presenting to the Speaker a gift from Stolen Generation representatives. And the PM deliberately ambushed Nelson with his public invitation to co-chair a kind of "war cabinet" on indigenous housing and other issues, giving the Opposition Leader no chance to confer with colleagues or lay down conditions before accepting.  |
One last sorry kick at Howard
16/2 Tim Blair for the Daily Telegraph | ... The mood overall was one of celebration, which is an odd response to being implicated in the systematic racist theft of children... As the Prime Minister [Kevin Rudd] said the words "I am sorry", the crowd erupted in applause and cheers ... Oh, there was anger, too, but not over any guilty involvement in toddler snatching. According to the Herald Sun: "When a clip of former prime minister John Howard from 1997 was shown on the big screen the crowd erupted into booing.
"That's why we didn't vote for you," yelled one man. And that is the hidden story of Apology 2008. For many, it was the last chance to take a righteous kick at Howard, pursued by the Left over the Stolen Generation ever since the Bringing Them Home report was released 10 years ago.
It didn't matter to Howard's opponents that he wasn't elected to Parliament until after the alleged offences detailed in Bringing Them Home occurred. By making an apology from Howard their central demand, those who postured as champions of the Stolen Generation betrayed their political motives. Some of them, such was their piety, actually hardened attitudes against an apology.
A few years ago I was the token right-winger at a Brisbane writers festival when the young audience got a little worked up over the whole Howard non-apology issue. I said I'd take them seriously when they made similar demands of Gough Whitlam, who'd been Labor party leader in opposition and then prime minister at a time when a generation of Aboriginal children was actually said to have been stolen. That took some heat out of the room. Perhaps they'd never quite thought of things that way. Or maybe they just didn't know who on earth I was talking about.
Well, old Gough was there in Parliament on Wednesday, still unmolested by apology requests. But Howard stayed away, which left miscast Brendan Nelson to stand in as the Official Figure of Evil. ... |
