The New Liberal Leader Shames Us All
There is an important distinction between shame and guilt. As a nation we can feel collective shame and collective sorrow, and we can take collective responsibility for our nation’s past. We can collectively say Sorry.
I am saddened to hear that the new opposition leader, Brendan Nelson, will not say Sorry to Aboriginal people. But I am not surprised.
Brendan Nelson represents a party that is out of touch. They just don’t get it. He would do well to talk to former Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, to learn something about genuine liberal values.
Nelson’s are the mean-spirited responses of denial that diminish him as a person and diminish Australia as a nation. At the very historical moment when new, courageous collaboration is possible, this new Liberal leader, just like Howard before him, fuels the fires of division.
What they fail to grasp, or refuse to see, is that we cannot move forward until the legacies of the past are properly dealt with. This means acknowledging the truth of history, providing justice and allowing the process of healing to occur.
We are not just talking here of the brutality of a time gone by – though that was certainly a shameful reality. We are talking of the present, of the ways in which the legacy of the past lives on for every single Aboriginal person and their families.
It is time for non-Indigenous Australians to turn their reflective gaze inwards. It is time to look at non-Indigenous privilege – and to ask the question: ‘What was the cost of this advantage – and who paid the price?’
As former Governor-General, Sir William Deane, said in 1996: ‘Where there is no room for national pride or national shame about the past, there can be no national soul.’
Saying Sorry encourages reflection on the past. Only by understanding the truth of our past can we find a way to go forward. For the past permeates the present. The past shapes the present. The past is not past.
As Paul Keating said many years ago, saying Sorry and understanding collective responsibility is a test of our self-knowledge and of how well we know our history.
Encouraging reflection on the past is not intended to promote a wallowing in guilt. Guilt is a very unproductive emotion. Guilt cannot prise itself away from the past. Guilt is stagnant. It inhibits optimism and it inhibits action.
There is an important distinction between shame and guilt. As a nation we can feel collective shame and collective sorrow, and we can take collective responsibility for our nation’s past. We can collectively say Sorry.
I am delighted that we now have a Prime Minister in Kevin Rudd who understands these issues and has the intellectual and moral integrity to act upon them.
Saying Sorry at the highest levels of government is not only vital for reconciliation within Australia – but also vital for Australia’s standing in the global community.
And it is shamefully overdue. It should have happened nine years ago when the Bringing Them Home Report was released. Back then, the Australian public signed Sorry books and marched in the streets in their hundreds of thousands.
It is deeply shameful that the new Liberal leader is so out of touch with the mood of the people that he cannot say this one simple word – Sorry.
About Lowitja O'Donoghue
Lowitja O'Donoghue was born a member of the Yankuntjatjara people of South Australia. At the age of two she became one of the stolen generations when she was taken away from her mother. They did not meet again for 33 years. Lowitja has devoted her life to the welfare of Aboriginal people. She was Foundation Chairperson of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, is joint patron for the National Sorry Day Committee and a Visiting Professorial Fellow at Flinders University. She was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1977, a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1983, and was Australian of the year in 1984.
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