As a nation, we’ve rarely done right by our Aboriginal brothers and sisters.
But while the crimes committed against the original inhabitants of our country can never be truly ‘made up’ for, our political leaders have done a little bit better in recent years than they did in the decades that preceded them.
In 1975, Gough Whitlam poured dirt into the hands of Vincent Lingiari, as he handed the land of Wave Hill station back to the Gurindji people.
In 1992, Paul Keating delivered the historic ‘Redfern’ speech, which proved to be a turning point for race relations in this country and a trigger for broader acceptance by white Australians for the wrongs of the past.
In 2008, Kevin Rudd said “sorry” for the acts of previous government in forcibly removing the Indigenous children now known as the Stolen Generation from their homes.
And, in 2014, our current Prime Minister Tony Abbott said this:
“I guess our country owes its existence to a form of foreign investment by the British government in the then unsettled or, um, scarcely settled, Great South Land.”
Yep, that actually just happened.
In a single a sentence the Prime Minister dismissed 40,000 odd years of Aboriginal culture, history and beliefs; claiming that Australia was ‘unsettled’ before European arrival.
We’re not sure what’s worse, the fact that Mr Abbott believes the outdated and historically inaccurate notion that Australia was ‘unsettled’ prior to Captain Cook’s lot showing up, or that Mr Abbott felt correcting himself with ‘scarcely settled’ would somehow make us all nod in agreement and forgive him instantly for the error.
The estimated 500,000 to one million people who lived on this continent before the big ships turned up were ‘sparsely settled’?
So scarce…
Right.
The comments were made in Mr Abbott’s keynote address last night at the Australian-Melbourne Institute Conference, while he was speaking about foreign investment in real estate.
Funnily enough, when we were at school we don’t remember learning about the ‘STEALING LAND OFF ANCIENT CULTURES’ variable on our country’s balance of payments. Maybe we were too busy in history class, learning about the land rights movement.
Remember Mabo, Mr Abbott? And the vibe of the thing?
The vibe of that thing was that European settlers stole one of the world’s most ancient culture’s land. The vibe of that thing was that this land was and is inextricably linked to their system of beliefs.
The vibe of that thing was that we needed to stop pretending that the land your predecessors in governance stepped on over 200 years ago belonged to no one, because it had belonged to someone for 40,000 years before white Australians turned up – and still belongs to them today.
The vibe of that thing was that Indigenous land rights are not something to dismiss while you tell a room full of suits to market their waterfront properties to cashed-up Chinese investors.
So, please, Mr Abbott. Learn from this. It’s just getting embarrassing now.
Top Comments
If Tony Abbott doesn't have a prepared speech he puts his foot in his mouth, Australians have to face it we have a Prime Minister who is an embarrassment.
Definition of settled from google:
"Establish a colony in.
Eg European immigrants settled much of Australia"
There was a lot of land taken in the 1700s... that's how things worked, 100s of non-associated tribes that were widely seen as relatively unevolved (Tasmanian aboriginals were possibly the 2nd least advanced race from what I've read) and without a common language isn't a settled country by many definitions.
Aboriginals deserve a fair go, but the entitlements that exist currently are enough without more... and don't get me started on the stolen generation, look at aboriginal family abuse rates, they're higher than the % taken by the government.. maybe a proper stolen generation is what is needed for aboriginal advancement. The true problem here is that aboriginal people, like Africans, need white management; otherwise child, women, drug and alcohol abuse will run rampant like it already does.