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Saying Sorry: Australia’s journey of healing

5 June 2008 - Australian Times UK - As Australia marked its tenth National Sorry Day, Esme McAvoy spoke to John Bond, former Secretary of the National Sorry Day Committee. British-born Bond was one of the leading campaigners for a formal apology and was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for his work with the National Sorry Day Committee.

John Bond speaking at Sorry Day UK 2008 photo courtesy Louise Jeffersen

When Australia’s Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, stood up in Parliament three months ago to offer a formal apology to Indigenous Australians, John Bond was there and knew more than most about the decade-long journey of campaigning it had taken to make it happen.

For Bond, Rudd’s words were ‘10 years in the making’. In 1995, when the Australian Government commissioned a national inquiry into the policies that led to the removal of tens of thousands of Aboriginal children from their families, few were prepared for the agonising report it produced. Titled ‘Bringing Them Home’, the report catalogued the tragic stories of hundreds of those affected.

But the newly-elected Prime Minister, John Howard, was unmoved. ‘Howard was utterly hostile to the report’s findings,’ said Bond. ‘It was the last thing he wanted to hear and he chose to ignore it.’ By contrast, the report horrified ordinary Australians and it proved a catalyst for a ‘Sorry’ campaign.

The report was led by the former High Court Judge, Sir Ronald Wilson, who decided to bring together community leaders, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, to discuss whether a Sorry Day could be organised without Government involvement. Bond was at that meeting and May 26th, exactly a year after the report was tabled, was chosen for the nation’s first Sorry Day.

The response was overwhelming. ‘As the Secretary of the Sorry Day Committee, I was suddenly getting many phone calls a day from people all over the country who were organising events’, said Bond.

‘Hundreds of events took place on that first Sorry Day. There were theatrical presentations, cultural displays, live music, town barbecues. Over half of the 30-minute national TV news that evening was devoted to Sorry Day events.’

‘People ask how we managed to get so many people involved but I don’t feel we really galvanised support for the Day. We didn’t have to. The great thing about Australians is that they are not afraid to take action if they feel the authorities are in the wrong. Acknowledging the wrongs of the past was something suppressed in the minds of ordinary Australians. We simply created an avenue where those feelings could be expressed.’

But the campaign’s success in engaging so many Australians angered those in power. ‘The Minister for Aboriginal Affairs saw me at a reception and came striding across. ‘It’s not a Journey of Healing at all,’ he said. ‘You are just scratching the wounds.’’

Despite the Government’s silence, the movement gained momentum and the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation organised a symbolic walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was the largest demonstration in Australian history.

A walk across a bridge in Melbourne soon followed and the idea rippled out to cities and towns nationwide, involving nearly a million people.

For Bond, organising face-to-face meetings between individuals from the Stolen Generations and government officials was critical. Bond recalled the words of Brendan Nelson after one such encounter. ‘[Nelson] stopped me in a corridor of Parliament. ‘We have arguments in the Party room as to whether the Stolen Generations are exaggerating their story,’ he said. ‘But when you hear a story like hers, you just know it is the truth,’’ Bond said.

The election of a new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, unquestionably marks a new beginning for Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations. Bond is already upbeat about the media’s evident transformation since the apology. ‘Whereas last year stories portrayed Aboriginal people as hopeless addicts and worse, now there is vigorous debate on how best to make progress.’

‘But the apology is just the start. In his speech, Rudd has committed himself to some major reforms to tackle the problems facing the Indigenous population, particularly in housing, employment, education and health. There’s a huge amount to be done. But now, the whole tone is different. The talk is focused less on the problems but on what can be done to improve things.'

The continuing work of the Sorry Day Committee hasn’t gone unnoticed abroad. Bond was recently invited to Canada where similar numbers of the Indigenous population were also forcibly removed.

‘In Canada, the Government have been much more pro-active. There’s a great deal of state money put into improving the health of Indigenous people, a compensation fund and a special Reconciliation Commission.

There’s a lot we can learn from them but, equally, the Canadian Government is keen to find out how to increase community involvement and improve public awareness about the past. And this is where Australia leads the way.'

John Bond is now back in the UK working for the London Centre of Initiatives of Change

Source: Australian Times UK

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