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The talking cure

I have a recurring dream, set in the future. High on an outdoor platform, facing a huge crowd, stand nine figures: Kim Beazley, Peter Costello, Malcolm Fraser, Paul Keating, Peter Hollingworth, Geoff Clark, Patrick Dodson, Lowitja O'Donohue and Terry Waia. In my dream, it is impossible to tell which of Beazley and Costello is Prime Minister and which the Leader of the Opposition, but it doesn't seem to matter: nothing in their manner suggests that either man is claiming precedence.

The nine figures stand close together, hands joined and arms raised above their heads, dwarfed by the vastness of this space and the crowd filling it. The crowd is surging and cheering. A silence falls, and the Governor-General steps forward.

"We can remain mute no longer. The time has come to take that crucial, symbolic step towards true reconciliation with indigenous Australians," he says. "Some of us view the history of their dispossession with shame, some with guilt, some with no more than regret. But all of us know that, for 200 years, we have been trying to build a nation with no possibility of peace at its heart, because we seized and trampled upon this place as if its original owners were less entitled to it than we were. Now we want to apologise for the injustices of the past and the inequities of the present, and to seek forgiveness."

Beazley, Costello, Fraser and Keating, taking turns, offer the apology:

"As past and present parliamentary leaders of the Commonwealth of Australia, we apologise unreservedly for the wrongs committed against Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders since our forebears landed here. We are ashamed of their easy assumption of terra nullius and of our own continued acceptance of it, without demur, right up to 1992.

"We apologise for our sustained failure to appreciate the terrible damage inflicted on indigenous culture by our settlement here. We acknowledge the inadequacy of our response to its nuances perhaps even our initial failure to grasp that such a culture existed. For most of the past 200 years we have failed to respect your relationship to the land, your religion, your art, your music, your sense of humour. But now we honour those things.

"We are sorry for having mistaken a culture of listening and silence for passivity, and for having mocked the idea of `walkabout' without having understood its meditative significance.

"We apologise for our failure to appreciate the power of your family connections and your abiding sense of tribal identity. We acknowledge our arrogance in having deliberately set out, by government policy, to eliminate your culture by the systematic removal of thousands of Aboriginal children from their parents. Even if our predecessors thought they were doing this for the benefit of the children themselves, we now know their judgment was flawed. On their behalf, we apologise.

"We regret our reluctance to grant you the right to vote in Federal elections. We recall, with remorse, that you fought alongside us in two world wars, yet we barred you from joining our RSL clubs.

"We apologise for having so recently encouraged the use of mandatory sentencing in circumstances where we knew the law would discriminate against indigenous people. We regret the systemic failures that have produced so many black deaths in custody, notwithstanding the royal commission.

"Above all, we acknowledge our personal failure in having blithely enjoyed the benefits of a society founded on such injustice and inequity, even when we knew the truth. We seek your forgiveness."

There is a flurry of activity on the platform. People are embracing each other. Tears are being shed.

Clark, Dodson, O'Donohue and Waia respond: "We accept your apology in a spirit of trust; in return, we offer you our forgiveness. We acknowledge that the failures have been ours, as well. We have been slow to accept that many of the wrongs committed against our people were the product of ignorance, or even of good intentions. We have not engaged with your culture as sympathetically as we might have. Although the early struggles between your people and ours were unequal, our forebears committed atrocities against your explorers and settlers. We, too, are sorry.

"Now it's time to shed the bitterness of our shared history and to commit ourselves to the serious work of reconciliation. This has never been about compensation: we have only ever wanted to be acknowledged, understood, taken seriously. Having crossed the threshold of apology and forgiveness, we are now free to tackle the problems of social disadvantage together, with fresh heart. Practical solutions have become possible, at last, because we share a common purpose, without the distraction of rancour or prejudice."

Then someone says "Let the healing begin" and, in the dream, the power of that healing spreads over the people like an angel's shawl.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

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