indyvidual,

We all have people furthering our causes don't we?
Be it politicians, the Murdoch Press, or whoever
happens to be the flavour of the month. Most of us
tend to see things from our own perspectives. That's
life.

I see Foxy in a previous post has sunken to sarcasm as a form of attempting to interpret others' opinions.

The fact is we must forgive the past, deal with the present, and live together as one society supporting each other. Some can never move from the past, they want payback, they cannot be forgiving and live in the present. The word "forgiveness" means letting it go. That is what reconciliation means, if payback is the system, then reconciliation will never happen.

I have a friend from New Guinea who cannot return to his homeland as a price is upon his head because one of his cousins murdered a person of an adjoining tribe. One must die to compensate for the other, it turns into a never-ending cycle of payback.

As a Christian society forgiveness allows those offended to reconcile. We must decide if our justice system is "pay back" or "forgiveness". Letting go of past offence is the only viable way of living in reconciliation.

Josephus,

Letting go of the past is what the Voice is attempting to do.
By correcting our mistakes and ensuring that we don't continue
to make them - will make it easier to "let go." We can't ask
people who are still being mistreated today - to "let go."
When nothing is changing for them. This is our opportunity
to correct our country's history in order that we can all let go.

BTW: The book mentioned in my previous post - is a satire.
And I'm not the author. But it's done very well. And gives us
some alternative facts that we can all enjoy.

The benign racists simply applies his own white settler values to a people who had a different set of values, here is the example.

"If Australia was invaded by war, then under Internation conventions at the time means the Victors own the rights to the Land. If it was settled and cohabitated, then a treaty should be established. At the time there were over 250 nations speaking languages and no formal written language. There was no concept of ownership of land and boundaries."

That is the European colonial thinking that fostered the notion of 'terra nullius' all based on a set of Protestant Christian principles/values of industriousness, land ownership, work ethic etc. Aboriginal people had none of what were these alien concepts within their society, but in no way does that negate their right to the land, which was never ceded to the British Crown.

The rest of that paragraph is a poor attempt at mitigation.

Dear Paul,

I think what is being asked by The Voice to Parliament
is such a fair request that I find it difficult to
understand why some people are objecting to it and are
trying to muddy the waters. They obviously don't
understand the simplicity of what's being asked.

We're being given a gift - by our Indigenous people.
We should be gracious enough to take it.

Foxy,

While you might think it's a simple request, most of us including Albozo don't know what the request really means.

Albozo needs to put it in writing as to exactly what he intends. Hand waving and pointing at the Harbour bridge ain't gonna cut it.