saying sorry.

We apologise for giving you doctors and free medical care, which allows you to survive and multiply so that you can demand apologies.

We apologise for helping you to read and teaching you the English language, thus opening up to you the entire European civilisation, thought and enterprise.

We feel that we must apologise for building hundreds of homes for you, which you have vandalised and destroyed.

We apologise for giving you law and order which has helped prevent you from slaughtering one another and using the unfortunate for food purposes.

We apologise for developing large farms and properties, which today feed you, where before, you had the benefits of living off the land and starving during droughts.

We apologise for providing you with warm clothing made of fabric to replace the animal skins you used before.

We apologise for building roads and railway tracks between cities and building cars so that you no longer have to walk over harsh terrain.

We apologise for paying off your vehicles when you fail to pay the instalments.

We apologise for giving you free travel anywhere, whenever.

We apologise for giving each and every member of your family $100.00 and free travel to attend an aboriginal funeral.

We apologise for not charging you rent on any lands when white people have to pay.

We apologise for giving you interest free loans.

We apologise for developing oil wells and minerals, including gold and diamonds which you never used and had no idea of their value.

We apologise for developing Ayers rock and Kakadu, and handing them over to you so that you get all the money.

We apologise for allowing taxpayers money to be paid towards a daughters’ wedding ($8,000.00 each daughter).

We apologise for giving you $1.7 billion per year for your 250,000 people, which is $48,000.00 per aboriginal man, woman and child.

We apologise for working hard to pay taxes that finance your welfare, medical care, education, etc to the tune of $1.2 billion each year.

We apologise for you having to approach the aboriginal affairs department to verify the above figures. For the trouble you will have identifying the “uncle toms” in your own community who are getting richer and leaving some of you living in squalor and poverty.

We do apologise. We really do.
We are only too happy to take back all the above and return you to the paradise of the “outback”, whenever you are ready.

This is what rowan posted in a myspace bulletin today (I know, myspace, ick. *rolls eyes*) but I found it really interesting. As an Australian, I didn’t even know that the government did a lot of this stuff. And I suppose that is just me being ignorant or whatever, but I bet that many Australian’s didn’t know a lot of this stuff either.

Anyway, this was my response to him:

but i think that most of this stuff came about as a result of the white settlement - they were used to living off the lands, they were used to surviving in the droughts, they were used to all that stuff.
i think that all the crime and violence stuff has developed through the sense of not knowing who they are anymore - living halfway between the life they used to live off of the land and the life that we have forced on them. if we had left them be, in the outback, and not tried to force our own values and beliefs on them none of this would have occured in the first place. so as much as i don’t agree with EVERYTHING the government does ($8,000 a wedding? crazy.), i think saying sorry is a neccesary step in the aboriginal growth, and i suppose ‘integration’ into a better society.

however, if they take advantage of the government admitting their mistakes and use it in their advantage to gain MORE regarding monetary stuff (which in all probability, they will), then i see that as abusing the system. they should take what they have already, and just see the sorry as a means of closure.

my opinion, anyway =D

how have you been anyways? haven’t seen you for bloody AGES! when does uni start again?
we’ll have to catch up soon. you heading to town next sat by any chance?

xx

lol about the ending. also, I wasn’t in the most literate mood. I’m feeling pretty crap at the moment, but that’s just me. 

But I do agree with the government saying sorry. I truly do. I think John Howard should have done it years ago, and I applaud Kevin Rudd for doing the things that John Howard didn’t have the guts to do. 

That being said, I know John Howard had his reasons. And good reasons, at that. I shudder to think about the possibilities the Indigenous population of Australia now has, in regards to gaining EXTRA benefits.