Sorry

Well, finally, after years of hoo-haa, backwarding and forwarding and outright refusal, the Australian government has officially apologised to the "stolen generation" (aboriginal people taken from their parents up until 1970 or so, with the aim of raising them in white society, so that they would be "better off" than they were with their aboriginal families. Needless to say this resulted in an awful lot of alienation and misery and disconnection, not to mention all the sexual abuse and the psychological issues that arise from this, and from being forcibly removed from your family as a wee young thing anyway, even without subsequent abuse. Not that it was necessarily entirely negative for everyone, of course, but for a bunch of people it was, and in an arguably very forseeable way). This apology comes with the new government (voted in a few months ago), after the last government (all 11 years of them) refused to say sorry because they were scared of paying financial compensation or because they thought it would admit personal responsibility on the part of people involved in carrying out governmental policy or because they were a bunch of amoral bastards with no sense of sympathy or empathy or humanity, or something similar.

Anyway. Hurrah, I say, and so say a bunch of other people too.