Australia: Parents' outrage over Aboriginal 'sorry' mural children were forced to paint at their school

It's a perfectly reasonable point to say that Aborigines deserve no apology.  Up until the Leftist Rudd government of 2007, all Australian Federal governments had taken that view.  It is true that Aborigines were dispossessed of most of their land but they obtained substantial compensatory benefits in the form of extensive welfare and modern services.  As a result it appears that their population has never been higher than it now is.

It is also a reasonable and once universal view that conquest takes away the rights of the incumbent.  Most countries today have at once stage been subjected to conquest and a loss of rights by the incumbent so why should Australia be different?

Not everybody agrees with either of those views but it is sheer arrogance and authoritarianism to coerce the utterance of a contrary view


A primary school has been slammed over an artwork saying 'sorry' to the Aboriginal Stolen Generations, with parents claiming it's making their children feel 'guilty'.

Coburg North Primary School, in Melbourne's northern suburbs, recently put the art showing an arrangement of hands spelling out the word 'sorry' up in its schoolyard.

But while the mural containing cut-outs of their hands was intended to continue the message then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd started in 2008, it has caused a stir among parents, 3AW reports.

On each of the hundreds of red, yellow and black hands arranged in the art, students had written the word 'sorry'.

Radio host Tom Elliott said it was inappropriate for schools to make children feel at fault for Australia's sins - comparing it to German kids apologising for the Holocaust.

'I don't like it. I don't mind kids learning history and that can mean some of the darker parts of Australia's history,' Elliott said.

'But at the same time, the idea that a five, or a six, or a seven-year-old now feels that he or she has to go and say sorry - I think it's wrong. 'It's like saying every young German should be taught if they ever see a Jewish person to go up and say sorry to them.'

A local parent said that despite not having children at the school, the artwork hadn't sat well with him. 'I don't think it's a primary school's responsibility to make young children feel guilty,' the man, who gave his name only as Joel, said.

The school also regularly holds 'welcome to country' and smoking ceremony rituals, Coburg North Primary School's principal told 3AW.

In 2008, Mr Rudd apologised to the Aboriginal Stolen Generations on behalf of the Australian public, giving a speech to parliament which was broadcast nationwide.

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