Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | A | Arena Magazine

Just a beginning.

Article Excerpt
How has the Australian nation lurched from fairly widespread support amongst white Australians and the media for a militaristic intervention into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory only months ago, to the serious, joyous occasion of Australia's Sorry Day in February 2008? Of course we have had an election, and the beginnings of a new agenda for black-white relations has been rapidly put in place. But is it true, as some commentators are saying, that the electorate has come a long way since November 2007?

Of course, for many Australians, black and white, the reconciliation agenda had never gone away. It had been bubbling along--all the while that John Howard had been actively attempting to crush the spirit of that movement--in the dedicated work of reconciliation groups from Castlemaine to Cairns, Ballarat to Broome, and in the continuing, dogged advocacy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It only needed a political opening on the national scene for that spirit to appear again; for it to be given the legitimacy it had achieved in the lead-up to the remarkable reconciliation marches of 2000.

As for the media, what can one say? No doubt they have aided the sense of good will and overcoming of division and hurt experienced by so many people on Sorry Day. But the transformation of some elements of the media into advocates for saying sorry has been truly incredible. It beggars...