Wednesday: Kevin Rudd apologises [1] to Aboriginal Australians.
Thursday night/Friday morning: The first noises of compensation claims [2].
It was obviously going to happen, but it happened a bit quicker than even I could have predicted. One does have to wonder if perhaps this is part of the reason the Rudd government have been so enthusiastically cutting expenses anywhere they can find them since gaining power?
The compensation claims don’t have to be successful, the money which will be spent on the legal proceedings is bad enough.
Incidentally, I’ve been drafting an editorial about the apology since Tuesday, I’ll try and finish it by tonight…it’s probably better now that the compensation claims are starting.
Samuel
Comments Disabled To "That Really Didn’t Take Long"
#1 Comment By Tony McLeahy On February 15, 2008 @ 6:01 pm
People are free to pursue whatever legal action they like in Australia. The apology doesn’t change that at all.
In fact [3] was able to win compensation last year when Howard was in power and long before any apology.
By your logic this is clearly the fault of the Howard Government and must be what caused the increased inflation rate?
#2 Comment By Samuel On February 17, 2008 @ 1:04 am
Of course people are able to pursue whatever legal action they like, and nobody can deny that Bruce Trevorrow received compensation long before the Rudd government were elected.
The effect of the apology, in my mind at least, is that people have now seen an elected official admit that, somewhere along the line, government policies have caused harm. This admission of somebody at some stage being to blame, combined with the harm a person may perceive as having been done to them, makes people more willing to at least try to put a case together.
As for whether this admission of someone being to blame at some stage has any effect on the legal standing of a compensation claim is yet to be tested in a court, and I’m not going to try and pre-empt a court on this…I’m absolutely certain that we will see a court make this decision in the not-to-distant future.