I only caught bits of the Prime Minister’s speech during my morning tea break at work this morning. The bit I saw was good, but I kept thinking, why can’t he be an orator, why can’t he be more like Jed Bartlett?

When Bringing them Home was released in 1997, I was living in Meningie. Across the road was Lake Albert, the end of the Murray River, top of the Coorong (Mr Percival country) and home of the Ngarrinjerri people. Remember the Hindmarsh Island Bridge? Our next door neighbours were on one side of the argument and other people in town on the other. It was tense. There was a riot in the main street, just down from our house. At the time I didn’t take a lot of notice about the issues and remained very ambivalent about it all. I can remember having dinner with a teacher from the school who was telling me about Indigenous kids getting free breakfasts, but this service was not available to the non-Indigenous students. This made me angry and I was telling her how unjust it was until she pointed out that there were far more Indigenous students at school without breakfast, let alone with a lunch than non-Indigenous students. I could kind of see her point, but preferred to stick my head in the sand and pretend it didn’t affect me.

Fast forward a few years and I was in Adelaide. I had returned to uni and as part of the degree we had a compulsory Indigenous studies subject. I chose to sit it externally and was not sure what to expect. The book of readings arrived and I sat in the library one afternoon and started to read. It was part of Bringing them Home. I sat there and cried. For our two essays I chose to research Indigenous health and also welfare and the effect on Indigenous people. I actually received very high marks for both of these essays, but more than the marks I developed a profound sense of sadness that the Howard government refused to say sorry.

Then the move to Cairns. Living close to the CBD and next to the church I met a lot of people who needed some form of help. I discovered first hand that there was little assistance in this town for those in need, especially after hours. We always had an absolutely no money policy and really only gave out tins of baked beans and small cartons of breakfast cereal and longlife milk. I say we, but really I was the one who usually answered the back door. 90% of the people who needed help were Indigenous Australians. We got our regulars. One guy who lived on The Esplanade and had schizophrenia would come and tell me that he was taking his meds. He also knew that I would share home cooked food with him. He told us when he got in trouble and reported his court visits.

We had other regular visitors too. A large number of Torres Strait Islander people would come for assistance, usually when they were down visiting family members in hospital. I drove a lady back to a family member’s home late one night when she arrived in the middle of a tropical downpour.

Only once was I threatened. I was cooking dinner and suddenly a drunk man appeared in my kitchen demanding money. I told him I didn’t hand out money and offered to give him some tinned food. He got very abusive and fortunately my ex decided to come and see what I was raising my voice about. He took him outside where I could hear him yelling that he was coming back to burn down the house with his wife and kids in it. I rang the police to try and get an Indigenous Liaison Officer out, but none were available so i left it. He was so drunk I doubt he could have remembered his threats, let alone carried them out.

So what should sorry mean? Well to me it means that we acknowledge that a lot of what has been done to Indigenous peoples over the last 220 years has not been in anyone’s best interest. The stolen generations are one example, one only has to look at Indigenous health, life expectancy, housing, education, welfare dependency and the percentage of Indigenous Australians caught in the criminal justice system compared to non Indigenous Australians.

My hope is that in saying sorry we can admit that wrongs have been done. When I first saw the text of the apology, I thought it read like a confession. But it is more than absolution that is being sought. It is what the future brings that is important and that is what we now need to work for.

Tags: , Indigenous affairs, Politics, reconciliation, sorry day

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