Mission & Justice

13/5/08

Whether the wrongs done to the Stolen Generations sometimes counted as genocide is obviously not a question to which we must urgently seek an answer. Your editorial (10-11/5) is right that far. The same could be said, however, about many questions whose answers will be part of a truthful account of Australia’s history. Indeed, it could be said of most of the questions raised in magazines and journals devoted to reflective discussion of the kind to which The Australian Literary Review now contributes with distinction. Any group of Australian citizens that suffered, as many Aborigines now do, would be owed the urgent attention of an Australian government because that is what governments owe to all their citizens.

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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.

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