Sorry, but it’s no time for minds to slam shut
Riamond Gaita; 7/5/08
Even if Kevin Rudd believes (as clearly he doesn’t) that some of the Stolen Generations were victims of genocide, it would have been foolish for him to have said so on the day when he offered them a prime ministerial apology. It would have been unnecessarily offensive to many Australians who would understandably have been hurt as much they would have been scandalised. Paul Kelly said of the Bringing Them Home report that its “verdict of genocide (was) so extreme that it provided no resolution to the injustice it identified” (The Australian, May 16, 2001). Rudd would agree, I suspect. Adapt what I quoted so that it no longer expresses Kelly’s judgment on the report but instead is a statement about how many people perceived it, and you have the reason why it would have been foolish for anyone to want Rudd to mention genocide on the day of the apology.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23620246-25132,00.html
Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Genocide, Holocaust