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Post and Riposte

By Tim Dunlop

19 April 2000 - Two emails are republished here. The first was read out on commercial radio station 4RO. The second is an answer from Tim Dunlop. The presenter who read out the first was apparently disciplined. These two are presented here side by side in the belief that views should be addressed, not suppressed.

Email 1 - Australian Apology to the Aborigines ?
We feel that we must apologise for building hundreds of homes for you which you have vandalised and destroyed. We apologise for giving you doctors and free medical care, which allowed you to survive and multiply so that you can demand apologies.

We apologise for helping you to read and write and for teaching you the English language when previously you had no written language and thus we opened up to you the entire European civilisation, thought and enterprise.

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

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

We apologise for developing the oil wells and minerals including gold and diamonds, which you never used nor had any idea of their value.

We apologise for working hard to pay the taxes that finance your welfare, medical care, education, etc. to the tune of 10 Billion dollars a year.

We humbly beg forgiveness for all these sins and are more than happy to take back all of the above and return you to the paradise of the outback whenever you are ready.

Email 2 - Aboriginal Apology to all Settler Australians
We feel we must apologise to you for being black because you are white and that must be better.

We apologise for being on this land before you and not just disappearing when you arrived.

We apologise for not dying quickly enough or completely enough and we apologise for our continued existence, our memory and our voice.

We apologise for forcing you, by our existence, to TAKE this land so that you can survive and multiply and FEED YOUR PEOPLE and so that you can remind us of how INCONVENIENT we are.

We apologise for trying to KEEP our children when you BENIGNLY wanted to take them away and so get rid of US.

We apologise for giving you an INDIGENOUS CULTURE that you can claim as your own on the sides of aeroplanes, on pamphlets promoting the OLYMPICS, and in the centres of high culture in the Europe from which you came.

We apologise for placing our sacred sites on top of your MINERAL deposits.

We apologise for demanding the rights and amenities of health, HAPPINESS, culture and self-determination that you take FOR GRANTED.

We apologise for providing you with the sports stars - Freeman, Long, Rose, Beetson ad infinitum - who you can claim as your own and who enable you to BOAST of your sporting prowess to the rest of the world.

We apologise for the Dodson Brothers, Lowitja O'Donahue, Aiden Ridgeway and all those other individuals of INTELLIGENCE and compassion who have shown you the meaning of DIGNITY and the true heart of the democratic way of life you claim to have invented.

In short, we apologise for breathing YOUR air and taking up your space and your time, forcing you to worry about our problems.

WE HUMBLY BEG FORGIVENESS FOR ALL THESE SINS AND ARE MORE THAN HAPPY TO RETURN EVERYTHING YOU HAVE GIVEN US IF YOU WILL JUST GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM WHENEVER YOU ARE READY??..

Footnotes:

• 1. The Appeal Court majority described this test as requiring a comparison of the legal nature and incidents of the existing native title and of the statutory grant to determine whether the respective incidents are such that the native title rights cannot be exercised without abrogating rights created by the statutory grant (whereupon the native title rights are extinguished). The question is not whether the estate or interest had in fact been exercised in a way that was incompatible with the exercise of native title rights, but whether it was legally capable of being so exercised. See para 71.
• 2. The Appeal Court majority noted that conflict in actual use is only a material consideration where the grant itself does not extinguish native title, but the later exercise or performance of a power or condition contained in the grant does so (this is termed "operational inconsistency"). This distinction, based on differences in the approaches of the High Court judges in Wik, is not entirely clear.
• 3. (1998) 159 ALR 483
• 4. See the qualification in paragraph 5 of the judge’s order to the superficially expansive native title rights and interests recognised in paragraph 3 of that order, and note also the Full Federal Court’s clarification of the terms of Lee J’s order: see Western Australia v Ward [2000] FCA 191 at [40]-[41].
• 5. [2000] FCA 191; see the draft determination of Beaumont and von Doussa JJ (North J dissenting).
• 6. Exclusive rights to possession, occupation, use, and enjoyment of some limited areas, apart from certain public works in those areas, are also recognised.

Tim Dunlop is completing a PhD on the role of intellectuals in Australia. The concept of the deliberative poll takes up a major chapter in this work and is the subject of number of papers he has given. He has had no involvement with the running of the deliberative polls.

Source: Online Opinion

related links :

• Bryan Horrigan's Home Page
• Centre for Commercial and Property Law
• Researching Native Title
• Simon Young's Home Page

Further information: native title issues page - includes news index and external links

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