The Blue Cross,

"He probably deserved a turned back."

I disagree. I have no love for Dr. Nelson (nor most Liberals), but there's just no call for that sort of rudeness. Even if you don't like the man, you should still show a bit of civility and be gracious when he's offering an a apology.

TBC "He probably deserved a turned back."

Sure, that's your opinion, and a political one .. good for you, being able to separate the welfare of aboriginals from hatred of the Howard government or individuals in that government, keeping in mind as I'm sure you have, that they are representatives of Australians.

So I'm just as sure you have no problem with the rest of us turning our backs now on the aboriginals and the ALP left who care less about the state of things .. and like you, more about the politics of it.

Hatred by the left of the Howard government has blinded them to the plight of the aboriginals who need support, the highly politicized victim industry, like the author, do them absolutely no help at all and in fact the opposite.

2008 .. Rudd was PM, Howard was gone, Brendan Nelson was leader of the opposition .. seems the value of the Apology to you was diminished after Howard left .. pretty typical of the left I guess, no principles, just causes

As other posters have noted, the article is just pious nonsense.

The vast bulk of Australians don't give two straws about reconiliation. If they are ever cornered by the lunatics you find in this area, rather than provoke the lunatic over an issue that is of essentially no importance to them, they will mutter its a good idea and slide away.

This attitude is easy to maintain for the vast bulk of Australians do not see an indigenous person - or at least a recognisable, indigenous person - from one year's end to the next. This is because indigenous people are now only a tiny proportion of the population, and those that might be recognisably indigenous in the major cities wher most people live even smaller. I say recongisably, because I've seen people who, to me, look to be of European origin claim to be indigenous. They may well be for all I know, but they already seem reconciled.

In any case indigenous people have their apology, now its time to make their future as part of a broader Australian society, rather than wasting time with additional gestures such as a mention in the constitution. Time to move on.

Nelson was part of the Howard government, and cannot be removed from that connection. Those Australians who supported Howard, who he represented so well- so what?

The plight of some Indigenous people today is not deeply linked to Howard at all, in my view, thank you Amicus. They hardly had an elevated position in the world before Howard did they?

Whether his invasion was a political scam might be for those people whom it most effect on in the NT to determine but it certainly looked to be that from here.

Rudd-Gillard's continuation of it under Macklin looks just as dodgy.

I have a chum who works in the NT house rebuilding scheme. It pays 'whitie' very well and leaves hardly any money left for the houses. Never mind, that's always been the way, eh?

As for the 'value' of Rudd's apology, it was what it was, a quite remarkable public statement with no money value attached to it, as Rudd had always said and I am sure Howard would have been happy with, even though Howard would never had made an apology.

There really was no need for Nelson to enter the fray, since the nation's PM had apologised on behalf of all of us, including Nelson and indeed Howard.

Australia has always turned its back on Indigenous people, it's not new, it's not restricted to the Coalition or the ALP, it's ubiquitous, in fact.

Only a pretend historian would say otherwise.

There is no 'victim industry', only halfwit rightwhingers who see conspiracy everywhere.

Did we see Nelson offer his own apology during his time as a minister? Hardly, but he could have done that. So when he offered his version after Rudd, not that I recall this at all, it was just a piece of 'form', and hardly believable, so it's not a shock to be reminded that backs were turned.

I'd interpret that as a snub to the whole Coalition, not to Nelson personally, since he was just there as a tool of that crew, who had happily refused to apologise for so long.

Had any of your focus group ever met a real aboriginal, or had their contact been limited to urban, or worse, academic aboriginals?

Years of training have these urban types well schooled to play the heart strings of particularly the academic types among us, & boy doesn't it show.

Many of us are thoroughly sick of the more cunning members of the so called stolen generation, playing those strings all the way to the bank.

I wonder how much money the one who coined "the stolen generation" made from the phrase. I'll bet he didn't make any where near as much as the more cunning of those who were lucky enough to be pulled out of the tribal society, into the real world have made by being part of it.

Australia's Colonies signed up to the Commonwealth of Australia Act 1900, becoming States on 1 January, 1901. After a campaign led, amongst others, by legendary Aboriginal activist Oodgeroo Noonuccal, culminating in a referendum in 1967 which achieved overwhelming support, Aborigines came under the auspices of the Constitution of Australia. Subsequently, the Australia Act 1986 (Cth) severed all ties with the Westminster Parliament and the Queen in her capacity as the British Monarch, but not as the Australian Monarch. Unless Aborigines have superior force of arms, which is not the traditional way anyway, negotiations with the Crown to reconcile Aboriginal Sovereignty with the governance of the nation will occur appropriately under the terms of the Australian Constitution.

First up is the requirement for a women's jurisdiction consistent with Aboriginal protocol. The international Courts are of no assistance because international law doesn't recognise a women's jurisdiction. The Constitution will need to be reformed to provide for a women's legislature to enable a women's jurisdiction, a simple task since there's hardly anyone left in Australia who doesn't support equality between women and men, such that a referendum on the provision of a women's legislature, embedded in governance conducted by agreement between women's and men's legislatures, presided over by a Council of Governors-General, accompanied by Courts of women's and men's jurisdiction, in the Aboriginal tradition would receive overwhelming support if conducted this weekend. The Queen can use her reserve power to reject a Referendum Bill on the provision of a women's legislature but to do so would invoke the ghost of Magna Carta and incite major political turmoil and a severe backlash against her reign. Alternatively, she can accept the extraordinary legacy of passing her sovereignty to senior citizens presiding over the first women's legislature of the modern era, which, in all probability, would be her preferred approach. Global recognition of a women's jurisdiction will occur once Australia takes the lead, consistent with the depth and extent of the Aboriginal tradition.