Apologising to the “stolen generation” of Aboriginals was a bad idea which would set a dangerous precedent. Well, it looks like it did just that, and has created an open invitation for people to blame the government for everything which happened their childhood, and demand compensation for it.
The federal government should apologise to children who were abused and assaulted in institutional care, a parliamentary report recommends.
[..]
The new report recommends the government apologise to the victims, as previously recommended in Forgotten Australians.
The government should request apologies and redress from relevant church and religious agencies, which it said showed “a lack of proper acknowledgment of the issues raised” in the original reports.
The government should also provide further financial support for former child migrants to re-establish family connections, the report said.
Whilst there wasn’t a large crowd of weeping people outside parliament house today, as there was for Kevin Rudd’s apology to aboriginal children, there was a large enough weeping crowd in the public gallery.
Around 100 people who were in the public galleries clapped and cried as the report was handed down.
I suppose we can wait and see how many turn up if Kevin decides to apologise to this group as well.
One thing’s for sure though, based on the television footage, this lot are much angrier than the aboriginals were, although why they have decided to blame the government is beyond me…perhaps it’s because the government has a lot more money to spare than charitable organisations.
ABC Radio’s AM program pre-empted the release of the report the other day, and Jim Luthy, one of the apparently hard-done-by, seems to sum up the misguided anger of the group:
“It was identified as one of the most brutal homes in New South Wales. So that’s how I ended up there. My mother died, my father shot through, for no other reason than that you could just be virtually kidnapped and taken off the streets and placed into a home.”
Your parents disappeared from your life, you were a kid on the streets, and you don’t think this is a good enough reason for you to be placed in care? The only difference these days is that you would be placed in foster care which, whilst having the benefit of a closer relationship with your carer, is much harder to regulate.
I can understand your frustration and anger Jim, but rather than jumping on the “stolen generation’s” bandwagon and blaming the government for the way you were treated, take your group, get some lawyers, and launch class actions against the people and/or organisations responsible. If various governments happen to be one of your targets then so be it.
Do this properly, and if you have a case, the courts will make sure that you are properly compensated. Trying to push the entire blame on to the government, and trying to make them cough up for your compensation, rather than making the people who are truly guilty pay, will only punish innocent taxpayers (of which I assume you are one).
Let the courts do their job of being impartial, apportioning blame and setting out a compensation schedule. That is the role of the courts, not of the government. If it is then found that the government has something to apologise for, then let them apologise.
In a case where blame, if there is any, is even more widely spread than was the case with the “stolen generation”, the government apologising before a court has made a decision would be plain stupid. One can only hope that Kevin Rudd understands this…although based on the federal government’s statement that it:
is committed to acknowledging the past hurt caused by Government actions
on the AM program, I doubt that he has learned his lesson from the Stolen Generation fiasco.
I am expecting New South Wales to play better in this match despite having an even worse lineup than they did in the last match. Despite NSW’s better performance tonight, I doubt that they will have the staying power to defeat Queensland.
I’m tipping a close encounter (although there may be some decent margins at times) with Queensland winning by five points.
Another one of my odd dreams. This one occurred at what can only be described as a badly mangled version of the old Belconnen Bus Interchange, mixed with a derivation of my primary school. A few copies of the interchange’s bridges exist, with the interchange itself being replaced by the school canteen.
For some reason in this dream I happen to be a student in a Year 6 music and dance class at my age, which makes me ten years older than any of the other students. The task for the day is that the teacher will play three songs, and in pairs we must all sing along and dance to the songs…and if we don’t, we fail and must start primary school again.
I recognised two lines of the first song (Taylor Swift’s “Love Story”) and didn’t recognise the other songs at all. I tried to inform my partner of this but she wasn’t in the least bit interested, so I tried to break away from her and chase the teacher who was on on of the other bridges and was yelling about how naughty I was being.
Eventually I broke away, much to the disappointment of my partner, and chased the teacher through large crowds on these tunnels, and eventually caught up to her in the canteen as the songs were finishing. I informed her that I didn’t recognise the songs, which annoyed her as they were her three favourite songs. She informed me that my punishment would be lunchtime detention, in which I would have the songs played to me continuously until I knew them well enough to write the lyrics accurately without hearing the songs.
I walked outside and started reading the canteen menu to decide what to eat for lunch (although the teacher was quite angrily yelling “no eating during detention”) when the partner who had refused to let go earlier came over and apologised to me.
I then decided to resign from primary school on the grounds that I didn’t really need to graduate from primary school, after all the last time I graduated from primary school I didn’t want to graduate and broke down in tears at the end of the ceremony.
Message from Samuel: Why am I doing this? I’m not really sure. I suppose I would like to help Maritz with her English and I find it easier to do that if I actually have a use for what she writes. She seems to keep losing the password to her own blog, so if she wants to login and write something once a week, them I’m happy to publish it and write back to her with a translation of it (if I can work out what she is going on about).
I was going to start this yesterday after she wrote in by request on Sunday, but didn’t. So enjoy it today instead.
Samuel End Message
Dear to hello and all is much of wonderful today.
I am have been doing much enjoyment of the rains of recent which did do fall from sky and cluods and were good for the gradens. I have been doing work of gradens and have been find of coldness at night time of when I dod the singing to gradens and think I am must be doing used to getting of temperature in of the Sydney which is warmer than of previously in of the Russia.
I am of the do whcih is much lovely.
My boss did do say of nice things in time of last week when he did do see of big gardren of the flowers which I have been doing hide from him for few weeks as while I have been doing move of and from the other areas to new area and he did ask of time in last week of where did some the flowers do go as he did not see them and did think they had been stolen. I was much happy to tell him that it was secret and he should not be doing worry as time would come ine ventually which would be good and lovely for the newses and the seeing.
I am do remember in time of previous when big bid do to steal of the flowers. It is good that this is not now of happen.
I am will be do bring of nice cat Slavcatchski to the work of gardens in days of coming as he is much lovely cat who does do like of the flowers and the singings of to gardens and I will be do try to have and make Slavcatchski do singing to flowers.
Please be having the day and week of good and many nices.
From Maritz
Ms. Maritzkrozlavsky Throrglasnishozly
As much as I’m happy to be getting some decent sleep, I have to admit that the ongoing series of peculiar dreams is starting to become tiresome, especially when I wake up and can’t quite work out if the dream was real, as was the case for this dream.
The dream started off with me digging in the backyard, trying to find one of Nattie’s bones. I didn’t find a bone, but I did find half of a VHS cassette, so I took it inside, cleaned it, and polished it, and put it in the video player which, through some piece of weird dream-induced logic, was able to play it.
The video turned out to be a video I lost a few years ago with the Garfield animated television series on it. Back when I was in primary school, Channel Ten were screening the Garfield episodes at 7am and I was recording them. I don’t know what happened to that video.
Anyway, when I woke up it took me a few moments to work out that none of it had actually happened, and I only managed to work it out by realising that the video player is not currently connected to anything, and therefore could not have been used in this manner.
For those of you who are wondering (I was surprised to receive a couple emails about it), I arrived at home shortly before 7pm.
I am now heading to bed, having been up since 4am (a bit over 20 hours) after about four hours of sleep, which came after a rather long day and a couple nights of interrupted sleep thanks to peculiar dreams.
Whilst I have about five things I would like to get done before 6am, I’m just too tired to attend to any of them, so I wish you all a good night, and a good sleep if you happen to be one of the people who chooses to sleep during the night.
During the day I remembered the other dream which I had last night, and in many ways I wish that I didn’t remember it.
In this dream I had broken in to a house in southern Canberra and somehow landed on the resident cat, killing it. The cat’s owner then arrived home and found me with the deceased cat…she was mortified and called the police. I offered to send her a new cat, before running home.
It is entirely possible that the dream which I mentioned earlier in which I was arrested, was a sequel to this dream.
This one could just be a withdrawal symptom due to not seeing any Stargate SG-1 for nearly a week.
I only remember small amounts of this dream, however the basic premise of it was that replicators (the metal bug-like creatures from Stargate SG-1) were spawning in my bedroom and were starting to take over Canberra. I, and a few other people, moved to the highest ground we could find (the top of my bedroom cupboard) to avoid the plague of replicators, however this didn’t last long as the replicators started to eat the cupboard, and we faced imminent doom.
I remember the dream ending just as a replicator was about to reach my leg…so I suppose it could be considered a nightmare really.
In this dream I was walking down a street (which appeared to be a cross between an alleyway in Reid, and a street in the fictional Borough of Sun Hill, from The Bill) and was being followed by police driving very slowly on the footpath. It was not apparent to me why I was being followed.
I then walked inside (in to a building which looked like a Dentist’s waiting room), sat down, and started filling out a form which had many questions about my mood and activities over the course of the last week. A woman from ACT Mental Health then turned up and wanted to verbally ask me all of the questions on the form.
I was happy about this and obliged, and the dream ended.
As I write this, a vague recollection of a dream from last night is coming to me…it seems that I was arrested in this dream and sedated with a kettle (not that I have the faintest clue how that works).
It’s funny how technical issues never seem to come alone. When one thing fails, you can be sure that something else will go on holiday as well. The following is from Tuesday’s “A Current Affair”.
What amused me even more than the technical issues (and is sadly lacking from the YouTube footage) was when Tracy went back to the story about teenage girls attacking each other, she read the same introduction word-for-word, without a hint of it being the exact same story she introduced earlier.
Thankfully though, when she went back to the Moran story, she did refer to it as “returning to our top story”.
As for why I was watching ACA…well I was watching WIN News while I was having dinner, and couldn’t be bothered changing the channel.
I have had some very strange dreams this week, including about half a dozen last night which I kept waking up from, and don’t remember any of.
The dreams started earlier in the week when, in the first dream, I was going to walk from my hotel room to the 2QN studios and decide to take a shortcut. I walked in the opposite direction to the studios, and walked through the common garden area of an apartment block (which doesn’t actually exist, as far as I know) and ended up on the stairs of the apartment block where I was stopped by a woman who claimed to be one of the residents.
She informed me that she didn’t recognise me, and that I must be a guest. She then informed me that every key in the apartment block opens every door, and guests are sent to random apartments.
The dream ended at this point, however it had a sequel the following night.
In the second dream I once again walked over to the apartment block and encountered the same woman, still rambling about all the keys to the apartment block being the same, but this time she was with her husband, and they both started complaining about the local FM station which, according to them, was called “The Voice”.
The woman then went on quite a rant about how she doesn’t like people saying “raffle tickets” on the radio, and is quite appalled that people would even consider “saying such messy words”.
She also complained about short people hunching over microphones, despite the fact that, as a listener, she wouldn’t be able to see it happening. Amusingly, her husband posed as a short hunching person while she complained about short people hunching over microphones.
The dream then (thankfully) ended as I was woken by my alarm clock.
It’s a few days behind schedule thanks to the weather, but it’s finally happened, James Scott is broadcasting live from a hot air balloon this morning on Canberra’s 1WAY FM, 91.9 and 94.3 FM.
A pilot on a Continental Airlines flight died in mid-flight and the plane landed safely near New York City under the control of two co-pilots, authorities said on Thursday.
Continental flight 61 from Brussels landed at Newark Liberty International Airport, according to Continental’s website.
“The captain of Continental flight 61, which was en route from Brussels to Newark, died in flight, apparently of natural causes,” Continental said in a statement.
“The crew on this flight included an additional relief pilot who took the place of the deceased pilot. The flight continued safely with two pilots at the controls,” it said.
The plane was a Boeing 777 with 247 passengers on board.
The pilot, 60, was based in Newark and had worked for Continental for 32 years, the airline said. Continental has one flight daily between Brussels and Newark.
It’s nice to see an aeroplane story where an airline has taken precautions to ensure that a bad situation doesn’t turn in to a disaster.