The real stolen generation are the Australian taxpayers who are forced by Australian law to provide never-ending handouts to people who have rarely done an honest day's work in their lives & who are never likely to in the future. Just imagine how many hospitals & schools all that money would buy - past & future, how many Aboriginal lives would have been saved, how many would have received the tools to make it in mainstream society.

Of course the "throw money at them" strategy had to be tried so at least we can say - been there done that. How many other govts & nations around the world throw (& keep throwing) bucket-loads of money at their indigenous people, let alone give them a voice so they can continue to shout: “give us more, you racist scum!”.

The Aborigines must be the most favoured & fortunate indigenous group ever in history, & still they sob uncontrollably. I know how the Tutsis or Hutus or the Dutch of Spannish or anyone else would have dealt with the situation. Not even the Chinese of Nanking collectively carry on the way our indigenous folk do. I wonder how much attention the Japanese would give the "SG"?

The Aborignes got their apology - but of course that was never the real aim, & the Liberals knew it & every previous Labor govt knew it as well. This labor govt of course had no option but to apologise after Howard's refusal to led to a cacophony of wailing & shrieking by the left. Rudd could hardly come out & say...well actually I agree with Howard (& Keating & Hawke & Fraser & Whitlam et al – each a self-professed “conscience of the nation” ).

If taxpayers are forced to pay up for (yet again) the "SG", my bet is it won't end there. Place your bets folks...

Perhaps the following is apropos.

"AUSTRALIAN APOLOGY TO THE ABORIGINAL POPULATION

We apologise for giving you doctors and free medical care, which allows you to survive and multiply so that you can demand apologies.

We apologise for helping you to read and teaching you the English language, thus opening up to you the entire European civilisation, thought and enterprise.
We feel that we must apologise for building hundreds of homes for you, which you have vandalised and destroyed.

We apologise for giving you law and order which has helped prevent you from slaughtering one another and using the unfortunate for food purposes.

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

We apologise for providing you with warm clothing made of fabric to replace the animal skins you used before.

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

We apologise for paying off your vehicles when you fail to pay the instalments.

We apologise for giving you free travel anywhere, whenever.

We apologise for giving each and every member of your family $100.00 and free travel to attend an aboriginal funeral.

We apologise for not charging you rent on any lands when white people have to pay.

We apologise for giving you interest free loans.

We apologise for developing oil wells and minerals, including gold and diamonds which you never used and had no idea of their value.

We apologise for developing Ayers rock and Kakadu, and handing them over to you so that you get all the money.

We apologise for allowing taxpayers money to be paid towards a daughters' wedding ($8,000.00 each daughter).

We apologise for giving you $1.7 billion per year for your 250,000 people, which is $48,000.00 per aboriginal man, woman and child.

We apologise for working hard to pay taxes that finance your welfare, medical care, education, etc to the tune of $1.2 billion each year.

Continued

Continued.

"We apologise for you having to approach the aboriginal affairs department to verify the above figures. For the trouble you will have identifying the "uncle toms" in your own community who are getting richer and leaving some of you living in squalor and poverty.

We do apologise. We really do.

We humbly beg your forgiveness for all the above sins.

We are only too happy to take back all the above and return you to the paradise of the "outback", whenever you are ready."

Like I've said elsewhere in this forum, the Apology has really brought the racists out from under their rocks.

Ultimately, I suppose it's a good thing. In outing their odious antipathy to Indigenous Australians they demonstrate exactly why we had to have the Apology to the Stolen Generations. There are evidently still vocal elements of Australian society who are transparently - even proudly in some cases that I encounter - racist in their attitudes towards Aboriginal people.

The Apology is a good start, but as so many have said it won't mean much unless it is followed up with some real action. Housing, as Rudd has proposed, is a great start. I'm hopeful that we might see some fundamental improvements in Indigenous relations within Australian society under the new Federal government.

Mind you, they'd be hard-pressed to do a worse job than the Howard government did for more than a decade.

rehctub: "I would say to you is that I am not a racist and as a matter a fact I have an employee who is coloured and in fact very good at his job"

Yeah, right. Whatever you say.

Cripes.

VK3AUU; this racist filth has been circulating through email since the apology.

It arrived in my inbox yesterday from a 'friend' who knows full well how I would view it. On my objection I got a response that he did it to 'stir me up'.

It put an end to 30 years of friendship.

THIS IS RACIST GARBAGE AND I ASK GRAHAM YOUNG TO REMOVE THIS POST. YOU HAVE MADE YOUR VIEWS VERY CLEAR MR YOUNG, BUT I AM FULLY AWARE OF YOUR STANCE ON RACISM. AND THIS IS RACISM.

I await your decision. I've had it with this kind of race-porn; I will take it further if OLO though yourself thinks it is acceptable. Because if you DO, it will be an endorsement of racism.