NO PRIDE IN FEELING NO SHAME
Phillip Adams

The Australian
ory/0,25197,22862742-7583,00.html
Dec 4 2007
Australia

SORRY, but I want to talk about sorry. Although, according to the
Oxford English Dictionary, the word entered the English language 1000
years ago, it’s still finding it difficult to enter the vocabulary
of the Liberal Party.

So problematic is this simple adjective that it recently cost Malcolm
Turnbull his party’s leadership.

Bad enough that he wanted to reverse policy on Kyoto, but when Turnbull
stated his intention of tackling another symbolic issue, of saying
sorry to the indigenous people of this nation, the reactionaries
rallied to repel him. The Libs’ right-wing regiment closed ranks to
elect Brendan Nelson.

Although I don’t know Nelson, I wish him well. Australia needs a
decent Opposition party and the Libs are in a sorry state. But this
was not a good start. To mumble about the present generation having
no responsibility for past wrongs was Howardism at its worst, and it
avoids and evades the issue.

But instead of going back over the history wars as they affect
Aborigines, let’s look at the past, and our involvement in it, from
another point of view.

Tub-thumping patriotism – and few could thump that tub like the ex-PM –
involves appropriating those bits of history that seem useful.

Gallipoli is the best example.

With Nelson’s ministerial involvement in the military, he’s probably
aware that John Howard was not involved in that glorious defeat. John
did not arrive on Gallipoli’s fatal shore under a hail of Turkish
bullets. He performed no heroic feats on April 25, 1915, or in the
aftermath of the landing.

Yet, like many PMs before him, he not only identified with Gallipoli
but insisted that the vast tragedy was central to the Australian
story as a crucial – if not the crucial – ingredient in our national
character. And this may well be true. The politics couldn’t have been
clearer. Show Howard an Anzac memorial and he’d be there with an RAAF
fly-past and wreath for the photo opportunity.

The same applies to most bloodstained moments in military history,
though for decades the Vietnam War was downplayed, a collective
embarrassment. When a young soldier in Iraq died in ambivalent
circumstances, he was declared a hero and, when Nelson finally found
his body, given a military funeral worthy of a Victoria Cross winner.

And the number of Australian politicians who’ve given stirring speeches
on Kokoda or walked the track with television crews keeps growing.

That’s another part of the past they want to appropriate for political,
patriotic and propaganda purposes. No one talks of a disconnect between
now and then, them and us. No one mumbles about present generations
having no claim on past heroics. Anything but.

The brave bits of history, the proud moments belong to us all and we
collectively bathe in the glory. It’s the nasty bits of the past we
don’t acknowledge. They had nothing to do with us. They were no part
of our business.

This is a lopsided view of history. Let us share in past glories
while shunning past guilts. Moreover, we will do our best to deny
that they happened. Enter the historical revisionism of a Keith
Windschuttle. Massacres of Abos? Where? When? Show us the documents!

Show us the receipts for the corpses! If there’s no paperwork,
it never happened. Oral histories of Aborigines? Vivid, detailed
accounts of slaughter and atrocities can be discounted. They’re not
worth the paper they’re not written on. No need for sorries there.

Stolen generations? Paddy McGuinness and co seem to prefer the term
saved generations. They launched an attack on the integrity of that
decent man Ronald Wilson and on his Bringing Them Home report long
before it was released. Clearly Paddy hasn’t had the experience I’ve
had of talking with members of those generations, of weeping with
them. Listening to their experiences is among the most harrowing
experiences of my life. But forget it. No need to say sorry. Not when
the white blinker view of our history was given preference by Howard
over that bleeding-heart black armband stuff.

Australian politicians such as Howard and now, sadly, Nelson, want to
cherry-pick Australian history. They want to choose the bits where
our ancestors behaved decently, bravely, selflessly, and turn them
into mythology, sentiment and, from time to time, the worst sort of
patriotic pap. Look at us! Look who were are! In the same breath they
turn their backs on our shames and crimes. They’ve got nothing to do
with us. We weren’t there. We hadn’t been born.

Sorry, Brendan, but that’s not on. Britain has to live with the potato
famine in Ireland, Germany with the Holocaust, Japan with Manchuria,
Turkey with the Armenian genocide and the US with slavery.

You may be able to mount a convincing case that Australia’s history,
colonial as well as recent, in regard to Aborigines hardly compares.

But the atrocities and tragedies occurred and continue to affect
Aboriginal lives and Australia’s sense of itself. And saying sorry
is such a small thing.