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Keywords: Apology

  • AUSTRALIA

    Sorry Days for reconciliation

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 30 May 2024

    This Reconciliation Week and Sorry Day, we consider the defeat of the Referendum and the substantial failure to close the gap between the living conditions of Indigenous Australians and other Australians. It means that for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, this week will be less about days of celebration than of grief and of grim resolve to continue to seek justice.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Building on the rock of the apology

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 February 2024
    3 Comments

    Kevin Rudd's Apology to the Stolen Generations in 2008 seems to belong to a different age. It can never be unsaid. It can, however, be disregarded. For that reason it continues to be important. It is a measuring stick by which both Parliamentary behaviour and the treatment of Indigenous Australians can be judged.

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    May this new engagement not be broken off

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 August 2023
    10 Comments

    The Catholic Bishops Justice Statement, timed with an impending Referendum on the Voice to Parliament, scrutinizes the ties between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and other Australians. Crafted alongside the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council, it underscores the urgency of deepened engagement through listening, learning, and love, advocating for Indigenous justice and healing.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Anniversary to an Apology

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 14 February 2022
    6 Comments

    The Apology by the representatives of Government was a landmark at the juncture of the road from the past and the path to the future. It defined the harm suffered by Indigenous Australians at the hands of governments obsessed by an ignorant and biased ideology. It also vindicated the Indigenous advocates who had long demanded an end to discriminatory attitudes and behaviour within non-Indigenous Australian society and its institutions. 

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  • CARTOON

    All care, no responsibility

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 08 February 2022
    2 Comments

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The uncomfortable legacy: colonisation and the church

    • Brian McCoy
    • 07 July 2021
    17 Comments

    Reading the paper, Instrumentum Laboris, written in preparation for the coming Plenary Council, I found myself quite disappointed by the lack of depth, awareness and any sense of the need for an apology. Much less an openness to any serious conversion that is needed within the Church.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Apology anniversary as a time to reflect

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 12 February 2020
    5 Comments

    In the Apology to the Stolen Generations the Australian Government spoke on behalf of all Australians in recognising that it acted wrongly in removing Indigenous children from their parents. It recognised also that the reason for the removal was the disrespectful claim that its targets were defined, not by their shared humanity, but by their race. This disrespect caused lasting damage to the children and families.

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  • RELIGION

    Child safety reforms still progressing slowly

    • John Warhurst
    • 14 October 2019
    8 Comments

    The royal commission concluded that child safety, in all its organisational ramifications, raised questions of culture and governance for the church. If the Plenary Council 2020 doesn't take such issues seriously then it will be one indicator that the momentum around last year's official national apology has slowed.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The national apology 11 years on

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 12 February 2019
    8 Comments

    It is hard to think of a more encouraging action by any government during the last 20 years than the national apology to the stolen generations. Much has been said about that apology. It is worth reflecting more generally on why apologies properly made are so gratifying, and what qualities they must have in order to be proper.

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  • RELIGION

    A new story for child abuse survivors

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 23 October 2018
    17 Comments

    Survivors and their families have been at the centre of this story, and now it's theirs to carry. For years, the people who maintained they were victims of abuse were told that they were trapped in a story about something that had happened to them when they were children. But that wasn't the story they were in at all.

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  • CARTOON

    Sorry not sorry

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 23 October 2018

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  • RELIGION

    Compassion and justice after abuse apology

    • Frank Brennan
    • 21 October 2018
    25 Comments

    May the Lord have mercy on us all. May the day come when church officials and victims will be comfortable in each other's presence in our Parliament even if not in our Church. But let's dare to pray that all might belong both in the galleries of our Parliament and in the pews of our Church seeing the light in fullness of days.

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