So, what went wrong with Nelson?

There's been a lot of chatter - even in the small amount of time since the Apology - about Brendan Nelson's reply to the Apology.

But what really went so wrong?

For more on the Apology itself - have a look at some of the video links at the bottom of this post:

Apology for being so proud

Nelson's Speech

For a full text of Nelson's entire speech - see Nelson's reply to the Apology, the full text.

Many people have spoken about how they were offended by Brendan Nelson's words; how they didn't believe him... but what really went so wrong? He seemed to say the right things. He said sorry - he agreed to the policy initiatives. What really was so wrong with what Nelson said?

The important thing to remember here is that Nelson never said anything that can be argued with factually. At no point am I trying to dispute the details of what Nelson said. What I am interested in, is the implication of stating certain facts and details at this particular point in time. There are many points at which someone can choose to point out truths about the world - and when and where one chooses to do so has meaning over and above the truth of those statements.

OK! Starting from the top... I'm going to rush through some of this - I can't take too long on each point, or I'll be here all year.

• Right off the bat - Minister Nelson chooses to refer to "those Aboriginal people forcibly removed from their families through the first seven decades of the 20th century", which stands in stark contrast to Rudd pointing out that some people currently in parliament were in government when the last "stolen" children were taken from their families. Somehow the phrase "first seven decades of the 20th century" seems longer ago than "less than 4 decades ago". While they are the same thing, literally - the use of language, as ever, is important.
  
  
• In the very next sentence he says that we need to "reach from within ourselves to our past" so that we may have a "deep understanding" of it. Again - placing the behaviour of previous governments clearly in the past and, I assume, a deep understanding that is aimed at sympathy towards that past behaviour. I don't deeply understand the past governments laws. On some level, I believe they should have known that removing a child from its parents on the basis of race, was wrong.
  
  
• He asks us to "pause to place ourselves in the shoes of others... to see this issue through their eyes with decency and respect." This has two frustrating implications;
• 1) it implies that there was nothing objectively wrong with the behaviour of previous Australian governments - that we need to put ourselves in the Aboriginal people's shoes in order to see it as wrong. Personally, I think it's clearly wrong regardless of your point of view... it's not a subjective issue. I'm not sorry because the Aboriginal people feel bad - because of their point of view. I'm sorry because my government did the wrong thing;
  
• 2) it implies that we need to keep our mind open to seeing it from the other point of view (the previous government's) as well. It's an ambiguous sentence, and dangerous in its ambiguity... it doesn't say whose point of view we should be open to - and in the light of some of his later comments, I don't necessarily think he's aiming at the Aboriginal's.
  
  
• "This chapter in our nation's history is emblematic of much of the relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians from the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788." Sorry? Is he saying that things are now much the same as they were when children were removed from their families, purely on the basis of race? If so, then we don't just need to say sorry for our past behaviour, we need to change our current.
  
  
• Brendan Nelson goes on to talk of one of "two cultures", "one ancient, proud" and "The other, no less proud"... so... we're proud too, don't think you've got a monolopoly on pride? Why point it out? Why do we need to compete with the Aboriginal people on pride, today of all days? Nobody disputes we were proud... so why the competition, Brendan?
  
  
• He talks of our (the settlers) "gritty determination to build an Australian nation" as if determination to succeed was an excuse for our government's behaviour.
  
  
• He claims that we were building this nation "for its early settlers and indigenous peoples"... well, I don't know about you, but I don't think that nation building for indigenous people was high on the agenda in a country that didn't consider those indigenous people citizens until 1967.
  
  
• "our non-indigenous ancestors have given us a nation the envy of any in the world". Only by taking it from the indigenous people in the first place, and then treating them badly - which is what we are apologising for... why do we need to rub salt in the wound, now, by pointing out how much we've profited from it?
  
  
• "But Aboriginal Australians made involuntary sacrifices, different but no less important, to make possible the economic and social development of our modern Australia"... see last point.
  
  
• And now a long bit:
  
  "We cannot from the comfort of the 21st century begin to imagine what they overcame - indigenous and non-indigenous - to give us what we have and make us who we are.
  
  We do know though that language, disease, ignorance, good intentions, basic human prejudices, and a cultural and technological chasm combined to deliver a harshness exceeded only by the land over which each sought to prevail."
  
  All of this is true... but what does it say? When the non-indigenous people of Australia made sacrifices, they did so as a result of their own decisions or because of bad luck. When the stolen generations were taken from their families they weren't the victims of bad luck or the repercussions of their own decisions - they were victims of laws enacted and enforced by our own government. If the harsh Australian conditions could say sorry to the first settlers, maybe they should - but they can't. We can.
  
  Quite frankly, Minister Nelson, how dare you compare the losses, hardship and difficulties of the non-indigenous Australians with those of the Aboriginal people. We are responsible for their problems, they are not responsible for ours, or even their own. That's the point. That's why we're saying "sorry"; and the fact that you tried to link the two only makes it clear how little you understand.
  
  
• "and churches heeded their Christian doctrine to reach out to people whom they saw in desperate need". Wrong actions done in the name of Christianity are still wrong.
  
  
• Nelson continues in this vain for while, now - outlining the difficulties that indigenous people faced at the hands of the first non-indigenous Australians, while still excusing the behaviour as "of its time".
  
  
• "Our responsibility, every one of us, is to understand what happened here, why it happened, the impact it had not only on those who were removed, but also those who did the removing and supported it". Thank you Minister Nelson, I am sure that there is a time and place for considering the psychological damage done to those who realise they did the wrong thing, after the event, but to bring it up now is simply to diminish the power of the moment as a heart-felt apology. The apology was from the government to the indigenous people of Australia - if we also need an Apology to the people who carried out the governments instructions, we can have one - but lets not confuse the matter now. Not today.
  
  
• "Our generation does not own these actions, nor should it feel guilt for what was done" - that's as close to saying "I'm sorry if you feel bad" as he could have gotten, and is as close as he could have come to not apologising at all.
  
  Besides which, again, "our generation" is not apologising - our government is.
  
  
  
  
• He continues, shortly after, "...in many, but not all cases, with the best of intentions". If good intentions were a reason for not feeling guilty I, personally, could have saved a lot of guilt in my life.
  
  
• "each generation lives in ignorance of the long term consequences of its decisions and actions." But we have to try! We have to make an attempt to know how what we do today will effect the future. And when we get it wrong, we say "sorry". Just like we did today. Without reservation or excuses. This is simply a cop-out; an excuse for not being careful about the reprecussions of our actions.
  
  
• "Even when motivated by inherent humanity and decency to reach out to the dispossessed in extreme adversity, our actions can have unintended outcomes. As such, many decent Australians are hurt by accusations of theft in relation to their good intentions." But they were stolen. The children belonged to someone else and they were taken without their guardian's permission. They were stolen by people who were told to do so by the Australian government - and the Australian government is apologising for telling them to do it. Decent and humane people do the wrong thing, sometimes. It doesn't mean they didn't do it, shouldn't be accused of doing it, and shouldn't be sorry.
  
  
• Brendan Nelson then quotes two stories of children being taken from their families and follows it up with this: "It is reasonably argued that removal from squalor led to better lives - children fed, housed and educated for an adult world of which they could not have imagined." Or in other words, Aboriginal children lived in squalor and it was good for them that were removed from it... why didn't you just not support the Apology?... no really - why didn't you?
  
  
• As if that wasn't bad enough - having basically stated that it was better for indigenous kids to be taken from their "squalor" he tops it off with this: "from my life as a family doctor and knowing the impact of my own father's removal from his unmarried teenage mother, not knowing who you are is the source of deep, scarring sorrows, the real meaning of which can be known only to those who have endured it." [my emphasis]... or in other words, it happened to white people too, you know - it was really bad for them as well. We may have saved you guys from squalor, but I understand it was difficult because my dad went through the same thing. Yes, I realise, that's not what he said... but again, why bring up this stuff now? Black children saved from squalor and Mr Nelson's pain... why are we bringing these things up? We're supposed to be apologising because we realised our government did the wrong thing... not making more excuses and telling our own woes.
  
  
• "No one should bring a sense of moral superiority to this debate in seeking to diminish the view that good was being sought to be done." Again, this is true - but so what? We can all accept the fact the people thought they were doing the right thing - we get it. We all agree. What we don't seem to agree on here, Mr. Nelson, is the fact that wrong was done, and we should apologise for that wrong, without reservation. I'm starting to sound a bit repetitive - but its hard to avoid... Nelson keeps repeating the same excuses.
  
  
• Now here, Nelson goes on to quote another victim of the period who says "I don't want people to say sorry. I just want them to understand the hurt, what happened when we were initially separated, and just understand the society, what they've done." That's fine Brendan, I'm glad you managed to find one victim who didn't particularly want people to say "sorry". But it doesn't sound to me like saying sorry is going to upset this woman either... and I promise you there are a lot of directly effected people who do want us to apologise. Again, surely using this quote at this moment in time can have no implication other than "we shouldn't be apologising". A little hypocritical, maybe? I will apologise, but I don't think we should be.
  
  
• After a quick reference to the fact that no amount of money could completely compensate for damages (and therefore, apparently we shouldn't give anything, or even try)... Nelson goes on to "Separation was then, and remains today, a painful but necessary part of public policy in the protection of children." Now I've heard this argument from other people, before. I'll say the same thing to Brendan Nelson I say to others. Yes, we sometimes take children away from parents today, for their own protection. But 40 years ago we were still removing children based purely on race. No white children were taken away under the same instructions - only "half-cast" and indigenous children. To compare today's policies of child protection to the previous governments' policies is, as ever, to completely miss the point - and to fail to understand what the Apology is actually for.

From here on in Nelson repeats the same mistakes, over and over again - and I really don't need to document all of them separately.

He mentions the generations that went to war, as if to say that, because they once did a grand and noble thing, they shouldn't ever have to apologise for anything ever again.

He refers to "neglectful indifference" and implies that those people who live in "comfortable, modern Australia" are "seeing their actions in the separations only"... as if to say, we wouldn't be sorry if we saw their actions from their pint of view.

He spends a long time combining a list of terrible things that still happen to Aboriginal people as a result of past atrocities, with a list of policy failures that his own party oversaw over the last 11 years - as if to say that because things are still really bad for Aboriginal Australians that we shouldn't bother apologising for the period when things were even worse.

But then he seems to defend our current position by quoting how much money we spend on the issue. Again, all true facts - but why bring it up now? Are you saying we shouldn't be sorry because we spend so much money on it?

He mentions "political buck-passing" and then has a go at state governments because they "resist the extension of a Northern Territory-style intervention."

• "I challenge anyone who thinks Aboriginal people get a good deal to come to any of these communities and tell me you wish you'd been born there." I know he's probably not doing it intentionally - but, in context, at this point in the speech, after everything else he's said, he sounds like he's saying "we should still be saving these children by taking them away from the squalor"?

And finally - to top it all off - his closing words:

"We honour those in our past who have suffered and all who have made sacrifices for us by the way we live our lives and shape our nation."

Considering the content of the rest of his speech "those in our past who have suffered and all who have made sacrifices" includes non-indigenous Australians who "sent their sons to war" and all those "early British settlers" who started this great country - not just indigenous Australians. So even in final summary Bredan Nelson made yet one more attempt to apologise without actually apologising.

No fault can be found with Brendan Nelson's facts or figures, but his sentiments, in context, at this moment in time are offensive to the reconciliation process in general and to those Aboriginal Australians who came today to hear an apology.

The only thing I can say in its defense is that it is honest. I believe it clearly and honestly reveals the true nature of the Coalition's attitude towards reconciliation and indigenous affairs - one of dismissive indifference to its importance and relevance.

Brendan Nelson, I digitally turn my back on your speech and hope that you come to realise what an oportunity you missed here today.

Apology for being so proud

I am not a man easily driven to feelings of pride.

I have a long standing argument with one of my dearest friends who often asks me why I'm not "proud of Australia" or "proud of being Australian".

To be honest, over the last decade, Australia, as a nation and political entity, simply hasn't given me that much reason. We are a lucky country - we are a wealthy country - and there are many reasons to recommend Australia, and living in Australia, over and above many other places on the planet.

But what we have chosen to do with that luck and those riches has often left much to be desired.

When I left Australia in the early 90s I was too young to know just how lucky and blessed we were, and by the time I came back, in the late 90s, we were already on the path of division, short-termism, selfishness and fear that has guided our behaviour as a nation for a decade since.

I also simply don't give my "pride" away that cheaply. I value it very highly. When I say I'm proud of something that I'm a part of, I want to know that there is good reason - and that the pride I'm giving away means something.

And that is why, with tears in my eyes, I am happy to say the last 48 hours have made me very proud.

I won't spend anytime analysing why it was so great - it just was. "I'm sorry", it just was.

The same dear friend of mine that hassles me for not being proud of my Australia, also pokes fun at me for apologising too much. And so... it now behooves me, obviously, to apologise profusely for being so god-damn proud of my country.

The "Welcome to Country" was inspirational, and will remain a yearly reminder of where our nation came from and who had it first.

The Apology said what it needed to say. It covered some great policy initiatives and had a real sense of having been planned in consultation with those people for whom it was designed - the Aboriginal people of Australia.

To see the whole thing for yourself, scroll down this post and watch the YouTube postings below.

"The apology" is, like the signing of Kyoto, very late. But, none the less, the way with which it was handled today by Rudd and the rest of the Australian government made me proud. It was a great moment.

SO...

what went wrong with Nelson?

OH... MY... GOD!

Could he have done a worse job? I don't think so.

If that was the line he was going to take - he should have simply said he didn't support the Apology. It would have made more sense.

I only heard one explanation today that went anyway towards explaining why he might have said what he said... because he wasn't speaking to the people of Australia but to his party - the conservative side of it... staying in power in his party was more important than speaking to the people of Australia in a politically positive way.

But what was so wrong with what he said then?

I wasn't sure, while listening to Nelson live, what was making me so uneasy... everything he said was potentially "salvageable" in the moment... but none of it was ever salvaged... none of it was corrected... and as a whole, the speech was simply an insult to the reconciliation process.

For more details of what I'm talking about, have a look at So, what went wrong with Nelson?


For a great summary of what happened today:



The "Welcome to Country":



Apology - part 1.



Apology - part 2.



Apology - part 3.



Apology - part 4.

Nelson's reply to the Apology, the full text

Aboriginal people across the Australia reacted angrily to Opposition leader Brendan Nelson's speech. Here it is in full.
[For my commentary on the speech and what went wrong with, So, what went wrong with Nelson]

Mr Speaker, members of this 42nd Parliament of Australia, visitors and all Australians.

In rising to speak in support of this motion, I recognise the Ngunnawal, first peoples of this Canberra land.

Today our nation crosses a threshold.

We formally offer an apology to those Aboriginal people forcibly removed from their families through the first seven decades of the 20th century.

In doing so, we reach from within ourselves to our past, those whose lives connect us to it and in deep understanding of its importance to our future.

We will be at our best today - and every day - if we pause to place ourselves in the shoes of others, imbued with the imaginative capacity to see this issue through their eyes with decency and respect.

This chapter in our nation's history is emblematic of much of the relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians from the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788.

It is one of two cultures; one ancient, proud and celebrating its deep bond with this land for some 50,000 years.

The other, no less proud, arrived here with little more than visionary hope deeply rooted in gritty determination to build an Australian nation; not only for its early settlers and indigenous peoples, but those who would increasingly come from all parts of the world.

Whether Australian by birth or immigration, each one of us has a duty to understand and respect what has been done in our name. In most cases we do so with great pride, but occasionally shame.

In brutally harsh conditions, from the small number of early British settlers, our non-indigenous ancestors have given us a nation the envy of any in the world. But Aboriginal Australians made involuntary sacrifices, different but no less important, to make possible the economic and social development of our modern Australia.

None of this was easy. We cannot from the comfort of the 21st century begin to imagine what they overcame - indigenous and non-indigenous - to give us what we have and make us who we are.

We do know though that language, disease, ignorance, good intentions, basic human prejudices, and a cultural and technological chasm combined to deliver a harshness exceeded only by the land over which each sought to prevail.

And as our young nation celebrated its federation, formality emerged in arrangements and laws that would govern the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The new nation's constitution though, would not allow for the counting of natives or for the Commonwealth to pass laws in relation to Aborigines.

Protection Boards and Reserves were established.

Aborigines in some jurisdictions were excluded from public schools, episodic violence in race relations continued, assimilation underwrote emerging policies and churches heeded their Christian doctrine to reach out to people whom they saw in desperate need.

Though disputed in motive and detail and with varying recollections of events by others, the removal of Aboriginal children began.

In some cases, government policies evolved from the belief that the Aboriginal race would not survive and should be assimilated. In others, the conviction was that half-caste children in particular should, for their own protection, be removed to government and church-run institutions where conditions reflected the standards of the day. Others were placed with white families whose kindness motivated them to the belief that rescued children deserved a better life.

Our responsibility, every one of us, is to understand what happened here, why it happened, the impact it had not only on those who were removed, but also those who did the removing and supported it.

Our generation does not own these actions, nor should it feel guilt for what was done in many, but not all cases, with the best of intentions. But in saying we are sorry - and deeply so - we remind ourselves that each generation lives in ignorance of the long term consequences of its decisions and actions.

Even when motivated by inherent humanity and decency to reach out to the dispossessed in extreme adversity, our actions can have unintended outcomes. As such, many decent Australians are hurt by accusations of theft in relation to their good intentions.

The stories are well documented. Two are worth repeating:

" was at the Post Office with my mum and auntie (and cousin). They put us in the police ute and said they were taking us to Broome. They put the mums in there as well. But when we'd been gone about 10 miles they stopped, and threw the mothers out of the car. We jumped on our mothers' backs, crying, trying not to be left behind. But the policeman pulled us off and threw us back in the car.

They pushed the mothers away and drove off, while our mothers were chasing the car, running and crying after us. We were screaming in the back of that car. When we got to Broome they put me and my cousin in the Broome lock-up. We were only 10 years old. We were in the lock-up for two days waiting for the boat to Perth.''

In his black oral history, The Wailing, Stuart Rintoul records the thin pain of an Aboriginal woman from Walgett;

"Something else that never left my mind, my memory was of a family of children being taken away and this little girl, she must have been about the same age as myself, I suppose she might have been about six. But I can still see that little person on the back of the mission truck with a little rag hat on, and she went away and we never seen her anymore. She was crying. Everyone was crying.
Things like that never leave your memory.''

It is reasonably argued that removal from squalor led to better lives - children fed, housed and educated for an adult world of which they could not have imagined.

However, from my life as a family doctor and knowing the impact of my own father's removal from his unmarried teenage mother, not knowing who you are is the source of deep, scarring sorrows, the real meaning of which can be known only to those who have endured it.

No one should bring a sense of moral superiority to this debate in seeking to diminish the view that good was being sought to be done.

This is a complex issue. Faye Lyman's life is one of the Many Voices oral history at the National Library of Australia. Faye left her father when she was eight; ``Personally I don't want people to say,
"I'm sorry Faye' - I just want them to understand.

"It was very hurtful to leave Dad. Oh it broke my heart. Dad said to me, It's hard for daddy and the authorities won't let you stay with me in a tent on the riverbank. You're a little girl and you need someone to look after you. I remember him telling us that, and I cried. I said, `No, but Dad, you look after us.' But they kept telling us it wasn't the right thing.

"I don't want people to say sorry. I just want them to understand the hurt, what happened when we were initially separated, and just understand the society, what they've done. You don't belong in either world. I can't explain it. It hurts so much.''

There is no compensation fund, nor should there be. How can any sum of money replace a life deprived of knowing your family? Separation was then, and remains today, a painful but necessary part of public policy in the protection of children. Our restitution for this lies in our determination to address today's injustices, learning from what was done and healing those who suffered.

The period within which these events occurred was one that defined and shaped Australia.
The governments that oversaw this and those who elected them emerged from federating the nation to a century characterised for Australia as triumph in the face of extraordinary adversities unknown to our generation.

In offering this apology, let us not create one injustice in our attempt to address another.
Let no one forget that they sent their sons to war, shaping our identity and place in the world. One hundred thousand in two wars alone gave their lives in our name and our uniform, lying forever in distant lands; silent witnesses to the future they have given us. Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians lie alongside one another.

These generations considered their responsibilities to their country and one another more important than their rights.

They did not buy something until they had saved up for it and values were always more important than value.

Living in considerably more difficult times, they had dreams for our nation but little money.

Theirs was a mesh of values enshrined in God, King and Country and the belief in something greater than yourself. Neglectful indifference to all they achieved while seeing their actions in the separations only, through the values of our comfortable, modern Australia, will be to diminish ourselves.

Today our nation pauses to reflect on this chapter of relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australia. In doing so however, spare a thought for the real, immediate, seemingly intractable and disgraceful circumstances in which many indigenous Australians find themselves today.

As we meet and speak in this parliament, Aboriginal Australians continue to die long before the rest of us.

Alcohol, welfare without responsibilities, isolation from the economic mainstream, corrupt management of resources, nepotism, political buck-passing between governments with divided responsibilities, lack of home ownership, under-policing and tolerance by authorities of neglect and abuse of children that violates all we stand for, all combine to still see too many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living lives of existential aimlessness.

Indigenous life expectancy is 17 years less than their non-indigenous counterparts. An indigenous baby born while we speak still has only a one in three chance of seeing age 65. Diabetes, kidney disease, hospitalisation of women from assault, imprisonment, overcrowding, educational underperformance and unemployment remain appallingly high despite gains in some areas over the past decade. Annual indigenous specific spending by the Commonwealth has increased by 38 per cent in real terms to $3.5 billion, plus $500 million this year on the Northern Territory intervention.

Sexual abuse of Aboriginal children was found in every one of the 45 Northern Territory communities surveyed for the Little Children are Sacred report. It was the straw breaking the camel's back, driving the Howard government's decision to intervene with a suite of dramatically radical welfare, health and policing initiatives.

The Alice Springs Crown Prosecutor Nanette Rogers with great courage revealed to the nation in 2006 the case of a four-year-old girl drowned while being raped by a teenager who had been sniffing petrol. She told us of the two children - one a baby - sexually assaulted by two men while their mothers were off drinking alcohol. Another baby was stabbed by a man trying to kill her mother.

So too, a 10-year-old girl is gang raped in Aurukun; the offenders going free, barely punished. A boy is raped in another community by other children.
Is this not an emergency, the most disturbing part of it being its endemic nature and Australia's apparent desensitisation to it?

Yet state governments responsible for delivering services and security resist the extension of a Northern Territory-style intervention.

I ask the prime minister to report to this parliament regularly on what his government is doing to save this generation of Aboriginal Australians from these appalling conditions.

Our generation has, over 35 years, overseen a system of welfare, alcohol delivery, administration of programs, episodic preoccupation with symbolism and excusing the inexcusable in the name of cultural sensitivity, to create what we now see in remote Aboriginal Australia. With good intentions - perhaps like earlier generations - we have under successive governments, created lives of misery for which we might apologise; I certainly do. The best way we can show it is to act and act now, as we did last year.

I challenge anyone who thinks Aboriginal people get a good deal to come to any of these communities and tell me you wish you'd been born there.

The first Aboriginal Australian who came to this parliament was Neville Bonner. A Junggera man abandoned by his non-Aboriginal father before his birth on Ukerebagh Island in the mouth of the Tweed River, Neville was born into a life hardship known only to some who are here today.

Neville grew up in a hollow carved by his grandfather under lantana bushes. The year before his mother's death when he was nine, she sent him to a school near Lismore. He lasted two days before the non-Aboriginal parents forced his exclusion.

It was to his grandmother, Ida, he attributed his final success. Arguing at 14 that the boy must go to school, she had said to him, ``Neville, if you learn to read, write, express yourself well and treat people with decency and courtesy, it will take you a long way.'' It did. Through a life as a scrub clearer, ringer, stockman, bridge carpenter and 11 years on Palm Island, it brought him to this parliament in 1971, as the events of this motion were nearing an end.

He said in prophetic words to the Liberal Party members who selected him, ``In my experience of this world, two qualities are always in greater need - human understanding and compassion.''

When asked by Robin Hughes in 1992 to reflect on his life, Neville observed that the unjust hardships he had endured can only be changed when people of non-Aboriginal extraction are prepared to listen, to hear what Aboriginal people are saying and then work with us to achieve those ends.

Asked to nominate his greatest achievement, he replied, ``It is that I was there. They no longer spoke of boongs or blacks. They spoke instead of Aboriginal people.''

Today is about being there as a nation and as individual Australians. It is about Neville Bonner's understanding of one another and the compassion that shaped his life in literally reaching out to those whom he considered had suffered more than him.

We honour those in our past who have suffered and all who have made sacrifices for us by the way we live our lives and shape our nation. Today we recommit to do so - as one people.

We are sorry.

Howard's End Director's Cut

It has come to light that, on the night of the election, John Howard's concession speech was, in fact, pre-recorded and broadcast in place of his actual speech.


A certain member of the Liberal party, who thought it important that his final message to the electorate be revealed, recorded this on their mobile phone.


This is what he really said.