Perhaps Australian taxpayers will not be have to suffer after all.

Dear Nilay
I don't think there are many true aussies who don't feel sorry for the events that took place, however, if we are sorry I ask you;

Are they sorry for all the houses they wrecked and burned?

Are they sorry for all the cars they run into the ground, abandoned with many only because they ran out of petrol?

Are they sorry for all the welfare they wasted, for the millions of dollars wasted fighting chromming, for the dollars wasted on health. Some $400 million anually to what is less than 2% of the population?

Wake up to yourself, they are not sorry, in fact they will be jumping for joy as this has just handed them a blank cheque for legal cases with regards to compensation. More wasted taxes fighting an unwinable battle!

That's what I love about you Leigh - always first in, and with such warmth and generosity of heart. It must do you some good to clear the bile first thing every day.

At least you are literate enough to read the meaning of the article - which is more than be said for your acolyte, rehctub.

Nilay Patel's article suggests that the structures of Parliament, legal principles and precedents, plus the inadequacy of international "law" combine to guarantee nil compensation to individual Indigenous victims of State Kidnapping, indoctrination and virtual enslavement. I don't doubt that his opinion may be sound but no system of oppression is ever watertight. Justice sometimes is done despite institutional barriers. Many Australian's are constitutionally incapable of removing their racist, rose coloured glasses, and seeing the truth of their history which is one of imperialism, land theft, Aboriginal's exploitation, and narcissistic self-congratulations. As a descendant of a First Fleeter I am not unwilling to admit the overall truth of our past. It is obviously a very Black History. I pray that millions of dollars are directed to the victims of the Stolen Generations

You don't have to scratch the surface too hard to uncover the rehctubs of the World.

Ever heard of cause and effect?

You seem obsessed with the outcomes of lives spent marginalised, tokenised and ultimately ignored by most other Australians.

But yesterday the Parliament struck at the cause, and one of the ways we might one day get past the ugly truth of the stolen generation and all the other ways in which aboriginal Australians have been repeatedly reminded they are sitting in the 3rd class section of the bus is to devise a way to compensate people for the crappy way they were treated.

Don't confuse the right to be compensated with the right to be treated as an equal. In the Trevorrow case the SA Courts agreed that compensation was warranted. That decision occurred outside of any assessment whether the plaintiff was entitled to the same life expectancy as non-aboriginal Australians.

Get it?

Compensating people for any past wrong is fraught with potential inequities but democracy is a messy business.

Get over it. Or more to the point, try to put yourself in the shoes of a SG survivor or if you can't manage that, try to imagine what its like to be treated like lepers the majority of your life by people who don't even want to start trying to understand your culture or your fundamental worth as a human being.

There, I feel much better now.

Finally, thank you Nilay for clarifying issues that were confusing me.

Cheers
tebbutt

Probably more than half "Australians" are first or second generation Greeks, Italians, Chinese etc.

Should they feel guilt for what the British did 200 years ago?

Anyway what about them? A Greek, Italian, Chinese, Jewish, German arrived in Australia 50 years ago with one suitcase, 5 pounds and no knowledge of English. They got a job. Two jobs. They scrimped and saved.
They encouraged their children to finish school and get a degree.

Now they are well off and their children are doctors and lawyers.

Umm.. how many Aboriginal doctors or lawyers do you know?