26 May, 2015. 14:34
CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | Contact
Local man, Campbell Bligh (55) says that the Australian Government should not have to apologise for things that happened several decades ago.
After observing yesterday’s 19th anniversary of the Bringing Them Home report, Mr Bligh still can’t believe former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd went out of his way to apologise to the Stolen Generations in 2007.
“It wasn’t his fault,” says Bligh, a recruitment officer from Geelong.
“Why should he have to apologise for things that he didn’t do!”
Mr Bligh, who has worked in recruiting after injuring his back as a landscaper in the early 1980s. Says that it’s not even worth acknowledging that the current life expectancy, social issues and medical inequalities faced by Australia’s Indigenous population mostly stems from 150 years of Government policy aimed at eradicating them from their traditional lands.
“It doesn’t affect me in the slightest to know my Government has apologised to them, because I know I had nothing to do with it,”
“Why would they even bother. It was a different time,”
The Stolen Generations is the term used to describe the mixed-race children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent who were removed from their families by the Australian Federal and State government agencies and church missions, under acts of their respective parliaments.
Despite the fact that these removals were still happening in Mr Bligh’s lifetime, he says it doesn’t make sense to apologise.
“It’s not like when I did my back… The company apologised and compensated me when it happened because that’s what ya do,”
“To apologise thirty years later just flat out doesn’t make sense. Whats next? Compensation for the actions of previous Australian Governments?”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got plenty of Aboriginal mates. But they didn’t deserve getting apologised to nine years ago,”
