Today, Kevin Rudd is going to offer an apology to Indigenous Australians for the misdeeds perpetrated upon them by the nation of Australia.
At a time when there's public outcry over the mistreatment, abuse and rape of Aboriginal children within their own societies, Australia is inexplicably going to apologise for taking their children away.
I realise that indigenous affairs were handled extremely poorly, and that Aboriginal people are extremely upset by this terrible episode in our nation's history, but how do we justify apologising for the wholesale removal of children, from a people who apparently consider child rape a normal part of growing up? How can we stomach apologising to a culture which tolerates that kind of behaviour?
Clearly not all Indigenous Australians rape their kids, and not all are constantly drunk or high on paint and petrol, but an extremely significant portion of them are, and the rest seem to think it's someone else's responsibility to fix it.
Of course I don't belive that the stolen generation was particularly advantaged by the efforts of the government at the time, but that just means it wasn't done correctly in the first place. I'm inclined to suggest that rather than apologise for removing children, we should take what we've learned since that time, and try again, since they're obviously not doing anything about it themselves.
All citizens of this country should be treated equally, and have the same demands put upon them. No matter what colour your skin is, if you don't seek to educate your kids and keep them in school, if you don't exercise due care for them, feed them, keep a roof over their heads, etc. If you tolerate the sexual abuse of your children, or spend most of your time fucked up on mind-altering substances, then you should have your children taken away.
It's just that simple.
Despite the best efforts and extreme amounts of money expended, Aboriginal kids are still suffering. Given that it's happening on a fairly large scale, there's no solution but to remove the children en masse. Don't like it? well, I suppose we could always apologise again a bit later, in the mean time there will be less 6 year old bleeding vaginas, and I don't give a shit who we offend to make that happen.
If it were up to me, I'd demand that the intelligent, productive and respectable members of Aboriginal society (of which there are many) stop filing pointless Native Title suits for a while (we're not going to move Sydney), and begin working tirelessly to educate their own people and bring their standard of living up to a level in which children can thrive. If they can do that, then they'll have earned the respect inherent in an apology, but until then all they're doing is using it as another excuse for their people's failure.
A blackfella's gotta be accountable. It's not all whitefella's fault, but remember... if you want compensation at any point, the British government is that way -->
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