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Kenneth Minogue: Apologising won't help Aborigines

From the Menzies Lecture, given by the political philosopher at the Australian High Commission, in London

13 June 2003 - The Independent (UK) - There is a proposal that Australians ought to say "sorry" for what they have done to their blacks [the Aborigines]. This, is simply a form of moral muddle. If you step on someone's foot, the polite thing is to apologise. But if Australians were implicated in the morally appalling drama of having attempted to wipe out an entire people, "sorry" isn't quite the mot juste. Indeed, it would be outrageous moral frivolity

I do not think that "national sorry days" in Australian universities, or many of the other forms of moral fundamentalism that have surfaced do anything more than serve to exhibit the moral obtuseness of those who engage in them.

I shall not speculate on the motives that impel some people to embrace as in some way their own acts committed by other members of the same state. But I will certainly suggest that the fallacy of the so-called "black armband" view of Australia's past is that of judging not merely in terms of current moral opinion (and a moral opinion that has been developing only in very recent times) but also on the most rigorous forms of moral theory.

Hence the Prime Minister's refusal to apologise to Aborigines on behalf of the state seems merely what any sane ruler would do. For what would an apology amount to? It would be a declaration that the condition of the Aboriginal population was nothing but the consequence of the way in which the white Australian population had treated them.

It would assign them the essential category of victims, denying them a character of their own. The position of Aboriginals is, in fact, various, but a permanent condition as pensioners of the Australian state would block the development of Aboriginal life for generations.

Source:The Independent (UK)

Professor Kenneth Minogue is based at the London School of Economics

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