I am seeking compensation for my theorums resulting in the present day micro-wave oven. As you are, no doubt, aware, my theory of the electrostatic charge always remaining on the exterior of a charged conductor has resulted in many wonderful inventions like the mobile telephone, not to mention protection for unionised workers in the field of electrical supply.

However, unfortunately my heirs are now subsisting on a diet of vampire finches, galapagos turtles and rodents with rice.

I know you have your abacus out calculating important things like who carries the greater sin but I am hoping that you might include at some juncture the small matter of my heirs and what is their due. I am not sure they are owed anything, they are white after all, but please do consider their welfare in your current calculus.

Yours electrically,

Michael Faraday.

I am told that my ‘Christian’ name derives from the Etruscan, Antony, and is one of the oldest known Christian names in ‘the West’. It would seem that my name is even associated with ‘St’ Anthony the 3rd Century monk who founded the Christian monastic order. It sickens me to know of such things.

My surname is derived from the English Munden being a compound of “protected” “Valley”.

To whom do I give or receive an apology from? Do I apologise to myself and pay requisite compensation for the disaster that I have brought upon myself or do I seek an apology from the ancestors of the Irish whom my ancestors brought here in bondage? It’s confusing, but I am sure a mind as wise as yours, Solomon like, can divide the truth and bring justice to the matter.

My first Australian ancestor was brought here in chains for the Irish uprising of 1798 at the age of 14, worked his way on the Great Western Highway to gain his Ticket of Leave to settle down in 1822 at Mt Druitt and adopt, so it would seem, my real ancestor from a widower. For all I know I am the bastard son of no one. Am I owed an apology? Can you give me the numbers of like cases?

My wife’s ancestor was a pig thief brought here for his crimes. Should she apologise for that?

For what crime should my children apologise? What are the exact numbers that we should countenance at night to include in our contrite prayers?

What are the names of the children we should include in our remittances, we children of the Australian scourge? People like you leave me impressed by your nobility, with your magic hands that wave away all hurt and know the truth of all matters. Who are the right and who are the wrong, please tell us oh mighty one.

It seems that you have reached an almost God like omniscience in your righting of wrongs. It’s just that I’m confused as to who are wronged and who are righted. What with all these Anglo-Scots-Irish-Aboriginal names registered in the book of Sorry days I can’t tell who has the claim to victimhood. Please, just list their names, oh powerful, oh compensatory one.

Just name them here and now so that I may personally deliver my apologies.

I also wouldn’t bother responding to JG at 27 because you’ve made the point eloquently at 30, but I suppose I must having been called a “fraud” and a “hypocrite”.

John, I usually try to be patient with you because you occasionally show signs of some intelligence and in any case I believe except under a lot of provocation in treating others civilly, but in view of your puerile propensity to hurl unjustified insults, I’m hardly surprised that others show less restraint.

It is very clear that Windschuttle did his little political calculus mischievously in order to magnify the likely consequences of compensation. I’ve said I regard this as a specious and blatantly political act, and I’m hardly inclined to either resile from that view or apologise to Windschuttle at your instance. Nor have I ever said that Bringing Them Back Home is sacred writ, and my view of it is identical to Ken’s. I defy you to find - with your well known googling skills - any evidence that I’ve ever discussed it much at all. Just because Sir Ronald Wilson and his colleagues recommended a certain figure doesn’t bind me, or anyone else, to it even if we agree there should be compensation. I’ve already stated on this thread my support for the sort of scheme Ken recommends.

It must also be clear to everyone that many of the 100 000 (if that is indeed the number, and I don’t assert that it is) are deceased, and therefore multiplying that number by 500k is an absurdity. Windschuttle is not a fool, so he must be being disingenuous. I don’t know whether or not you are a fool, but if not (and I hope that’s the case), you should be able to admit that it’s a specious demand.

Nor has anything like that ever been mentioned in the context of the current debate by any Indigenous leaders.

I find it difficult to understand, given the tack you take on these issues, why you went to so much trouble to go to Martin Place in the rain on Wednesday morning, as you were very loudly trumpeting. Like Ken, I’d have thought that you’d feel more at home with Andrew Bolt and his epigones.

However, that’s your affair. Let me just close by saying that your rudeness and hyperbole do little to enhance this discussion, as with many of your other interventions.

He declined. Odd for an economist who might have onpaid it to to some charity. But that’s what he did. I think my Dad was a consequentialist - but not on that it seems!

I think what you said here Ken is spot on

…not only because it’s probably impossible to know but because, whether through the courts or a statutory tribunal as I’m suggesting, no-one is going to get compensation unless they can prove on satisfactory probative evidence that they were in fact stolen (and not surrendered or removed for neglect or abuse).

Two other things (and I admit to being a bit coloured here by the only person I know who could conceivably fall into the class of ’stolen’ except he doesn’t think he was) is
* not every survivor wants compensation, although even there, as is the most human and understandable desire of many (all?) to want to know about their blood families - something that can be hampered by surviving members of their families and clans because of “culture” and
* even if you posited a worst case scenario in terms of numbers of those still alive, and even if you offerred a generous compensation, it would not drive Australia broke and/or should not be used as a reason not to consider compensation for those with valid claims (i.e removed without good reason). To do so would create what I call another Palestinian style “right of return” mantra which just keeps people imprisoned in this endless cycle of recrimination without reconciliation or recompense.

I don’t know the true number, nor does Andrew Bolt. Nor did Sir Ronald Wilson. All he did was provide a forum for indigenous people who had been removed from their parents as children to tell what they knew of their stories. However, those children in most cases weren’t/aren’t in a position to give evidence of the reasons for their removal either. They were mostly removed (or surrendered) at an extremely young age when they could have had no comprehension of such things. Some have remade contact with extended family or their former local community and managed to reconstruct some version of the reasons it happened, though even then whether it’s the full story won’t often be clear.

Bruce Trevorrow’s was a rare clear case because full documentation and contemporary evidence was available, and it proved that he was removed against his parents’ will when he wasn’t neglected or abused and was well cared for.

To be blunt, I’m really not interested in getting into a debate about how many children were stolen and how many weren’t. if you want to have that sort of discussion, then toddle off to Andrew Bolt’s place where you’ll be among like-minded souls. As I said, I used the Bringing Them Home numbers (or at least the numbers of people who gave evidence to the enquiry) only as a rough indicative guide to the maximum number of likely claimants, and then suggested that we could expect that a lot of them would probably fail in their claims even on relaxed rules of evidence. I don’t see any point whatever in arguing about how many children were “stolen”, not only because it’s probably impossible to know but because, whether through the courts or a statutory tribunal as I’m suggesting, no-one is going to get compensation unless they can prove on satisfactory probative evidence that they were in fact stolen (and not surrendered or removed for neglect or abuse).

Having re-read your OP, my original criticism is closer to the mark. You say

The Bringing Them Home report found that up to 100,000 indigenous children were removed from their families over the period of about a century of large-scale removals up to around 1970. Given the spectacular lack of forensic rigour of that process, one would suspect that the real figure is significantly lower; other estimates suggest 50,000. However, even if we take the 100,000 figure as accurate, the vast majority of these people are long dead and therefore not potential compensation claimants.

How much lower than 100,000? You do not hint at any disagreement with even the 50,000 made by unidentified “others.” What about “others” such as Andrew Bolt who claim only 2 or 3 digit numbers? Given there has been significant dialogue between Andrew Bolt and The Luvvies’ Numero Uno Australian public intellectual and Stolen Generations expert, the absence of the Bolt/Manne deabte from your post makes your claim that “In other words, I’m making essentially the same point as you just did” disingenuous.

It is yet another example of cowardly refusal to call Aboriginals out who make claims, while hiding behind the politically-correct apron of loud denunciations of “RWDB, Windschuttle” and so on.

The REAL damaging racism in this debate comes from the Luvvie Left not the “rednecks”

You make a fair point in one sense. However perhaps you’re over-emphasising the race factor and understating the gender issue. Alison Broinowski’s article in today’s New Matilda is worth reading in that regard. She argues that the most important motivating factor for removal of half-caste children was to cover up the evidence of the squattocracy and its sons bonking black women, and the social embarrassment it would otherwise have caused.

To a considerable extent, I suspect similar factors were at work in pressuring young unmarried white women to surrender their babies for adoption, especially where there was a marked social class disparity between the pregnant young woman and the bloke who impregnated her.

As a sociologist, I’m sure you’re even more acutely aware than I am that we’re talking about a different era when social values and expectations differed markedly from today, and not only in relation to issues of race.

Thus, I’m not at all sure that there’s a radical moral distinction to be made between apologising to the stolen generation and to women forced to surrender their babies (or to those babies who now don’t know who their natural parents are). The difference is largely a pragmatic one: indigenous people have a collective identity and voice that makes itself heard very effectively, whereas ageing former single mothers and former Barnardos wards don’t.

that $50 billion figure conjured up by Windschuttle is doing its vicious work

How? By simply applying the formula in the very government document upon which Rudd made the Apology? You, yourself have been an incessant champion of Bringing Them Home and laying explicit legal and moral culpability on the officials and state of the time.

Rudd could not have been clearer in endorsing Bringing Them Home as fact. Indigenous groups and leaders across the nation are demanding compensation.

If you are not prepared/brave enough and lack the integrity to attack these Aboriginals as “vicious” and “shameful” then your whole campaign over the past few years has been a fraud and you a hypocrite. It is time either to step up or to apologise to Windschuttle and shut up.

that in some ways there is nothing to distinguish the hurt of the stolen generations survivors from (say) the hurt of single mothers from the 50s and early 60s

Yes, there is.

What distinguishes it is that what they suffered was very often racially motivated and if not explicitly so, far more likely to occur to them because of their race. That’s the nub of this whole issue.

The remaining 40% don’t care that much.

I’m not sure that’s right, Nicholas.

I’ve chatted to a couple of friends over the last couple of days both of whom work in the public service. They both told me that a lot of their workmates, who’d been in support of the apology, were grumbling about compensation “demands”. And the sort of comments made were along the lines of “will it ever end?”, “won’t it wreck the economy?” (that $50 billion figure conjured up by Windschuttle is doing its vicious work), “isn’t an apology enough?”, etc. Now from what I’m told these are intelligent people, not without good will, and largely Labor voters. Public sector workplaces, remember.

It’s always useful when discussing public opinion to stop and remember that very few of our fellow citizens follow politics in any where as much detail as we do.

Now, I’m not sure how much such people actually care absent of a stimulus from the media and events. But it does seem to me Rudd has done the politically realistic thing - and I also think he has quite a talent for persuading and educating. We have to also remember that most views on this matter have been formed over the last ten years.

It seems to me that the first thing proponents of compensation should turn their mind to is the work of public education and persuasion. A key part of that might be pointing to the fact that a compensation scheme, along the lines that Ken suggests, is hardly likely to bring the walls crashing down. I think I heard on SBS the other night that there’s a similar proposal out there which has been around for a long time from the Public Advocacy Centre or some similar name?

Basically I agree with this:

But give it a while for people to forget about Howard (It’s already almost as if he was a kind of dream - so little did he get done in terms of institution building), a few nasty and very expensive high court cases and a bit of clear leadership and things could be brought around. When those things happen, they have a habit of sneaking up on us. It might be just a few years when it suddenly goes from being taboo to being inevitable.

It would be the just thing to do of course - so I’m in favour of it.

And Ken, I’m not so sure Rudd isn’t a risk taker. He’s certainly capable of acting boldly. The apology itself, and the way it was done and presented, was a bold stroke. I’m starting to think he just has a very good sense of timeing and knows how to prepare the ground and when to act boldly - a useful contrast to Keating.

I agree with Bill’s implicit point (which may well be Patrick’s as well) that in some ways there is nothing to distinguish the hurt of the stolen generations survivors from (say) the hurt of single mothers from the 50s and early 60s who were forced to surrender their babies for adoption, or Barnados children treated brutally in institutions, and so on. However (though with hesitation) I think the situation of the “first Australians” (leaving aside the race they probably extinguished when they arrived) can reasonably regarded as needing special measures to achieve a workable long term accommodation/reconciliation.

But I also don’t think it’s that important in the scheme of things compared with the broader wellbeing of those in aboriginal communities. What’s important is to stop the bashing and the rapes and the hopelessness and the lawlessness and horror of social breakdown. Not an easy thing.

Equitable ‘compensation’ to individual Aboriginal Australians claiming to have been unwarrantedly separated from parents/guardians is most probably impractical.

But some kind of amends seem necessary for what is now seen as past (and present-day) policy and service-delivery failure.

That was what I meant by number 3 above and by the reference to ’socialised’ compensation further above - ie something that distinguishes this from transport and ordinary crime compensation is that what we are compensating for is not really the problem we are worried about.

No doubt other ’stolen’ individuals could bring forward similar, provable, claims.

As could many of the ‘white’ children who were institutionalised and ill-treated in those places.

So, let the law take its course.

But, I don’t think that is the point here.

Equitable ‘compensation’ to individual Aboriginal Australians claiming to have been unwarrantedly separated from parents/guardians is most probably impractical.

But some kind of amends seem necessary for what is now seen as past (and present-day) policy and service-delivery failure.

Perhaps this is best done by looking to the future for Aboriginal families in general. ‘Compensation’ might then take the form of funds dedicated specifically to (say) more intensive support of Aboriginal family life (eg infant health & advice services, parental counselling), and specific measures to accelerate the betterment of educational opportunities of Aboriginal youth (boarding school facilities, access to ‘School of the Air’, more classroom support for learning difficulties, etc). Another managed ’set-aside’ out of the ‘Future Fund’ could do the trick — making sure this was clearly ‘on top’ of the regular budgetary allocations. How to distribute such funds to the appropriate service entities without creating another ATSIC-type mess I leave to others to figure out.

I must say that I’m surprised that compensation for the stolen generation is likened to increasing the GST as a measure of its electoral impossibility. I think that’s just an indication of how much people have been cowed by the previous government into accepting some things as normal.

How about these for some bottom lines?

1) There will be a sizeable portion of Australians who will hate it - the ones who voted for One Nation. 20% of the population max. There are at least an equal number, but probably closer to 40% who would strongly support it. The remaining 40% don’t care that much. They want tax cuts and stuff and they don’t want favouritism of any group rubbed in their noses. If the politics of it went bad, if we had pictures of aborigines trashing government supplied four wheel drives, then it could become a symbol around which disaffection could grow - as it did under Whitlam. But failing that, I can’t see it as anywhere near as hard to bring about as a rise in GST (Joshua was talking about a 5% increase - albeit temporary).

2) So the cost estimates of Ken’s suggest that it’s no big deal.

I don’t think it’s easy for Rudd to do. I’m not going to moan and prate about how he’s sold the aborigines down the river. But give it a while for people to forget about Howard (It’s already almost as if he was a kind of dream - so little did he get done in terms of institution building), a few nasty and very expensive high court cases and a bit of clear leadership and things could be brought around. When those things happen, they have a habit of sneaking up on us. It might be just a few years when it suddenly goes from being taboo to being inevitable.

It would be the just thing to do of course - so I’m in favour of it.

But I also don’t think it’s that important in the scheme of things compared with the broader wellbeing of those in aboriginal communities. What’s important is to stop the bashing and the rapes and the hopelessness and the lawlessness and horror of social breakdown. Not an easy thing.

but you aren’t similarly worried by any of the scores of tribunals around Australia with similarly relaxed rules of evidence, many of which deal with issues every bit as complex, important and delicate and involving the awarding of amounts of compensation just as great as under discussion here? It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that you think there should be tougher rules applied against indigenous Australians than against others. Why?

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Not at all. I’m not a lawyer or know enough it about the law to be aware there can be different levels of evidence required in different areas.. As a non-lawyer all I know is that if you have personal injury case for example it goes to court or if you have building code dispute you end up in a tribunal. As this stuff resembles personal injury type of claims I thought it would go to a regular court

Are there relaxed laws of evidence in various areas? Really. Ummmm.

Not kidding, here. Some of us have very little to do with lawyers except in contract origination which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Just to emphasize the point I am in full agreement in compensating people if the state has wronged them.

My own report produced just now found that up to 100,000,000,000 indigenous children were removed from their families over the period of about a century of large-scale removals up to around 1970. Please, feel free to use this as your worst case scenario and extrapolate backwards from that.