back like a virus ... disputing the "personal responsibility" argument

After a brief hiatus - due, in part, to another blogger's return during the week - I was pleasantly surprised to see that my ramblings here were picked up in Crikey's "Blogwatch - Sorry Edition" feature yesterday.

Figuring that was probably a good sign to stop neglecting my own patch of cyberspace, I thought I'd get back into the swing of things today and go through some of those common misunderstandings about "sorry" I talked about last time.

Up first, the personal responsibility argument.

Former PM John Howard was the major proponent of this view, so I'll let him explain in his own words ...

I have frequently said, and I will say it again today, that present generations of Australians cannot be held accountable, and we should not seek to hold them accountable, for the errors and misdeeds of earlier generations.

***
The Australian people do not want to embroil themselves in an exercise of shame and guilt. The Australian people know that mistakes were made in the past. The Australian people know that injustices occurred. The Australian people know that wrongs were committed. But for the overwhelming majority of the current generations of Australians, there was no personal involvement of them or of their parents. To say to them that they are personally responsible and that they should feel a sense of shame about those events is to visit upon them an unreasonable penalty and an injustice ...

So, it seems that Howard's conception of "sorry" boiled down to individual shame and guilt, rather than pride, in the past and inter-generational or "inherited" blame.

Viewed on these terms, an apology sounds highly undesirable. But is that what it's really about?

Not according to the recommendations in Bringing Them Home. Recommendation 5a(1)specifically urged all Australian parliaments to "officially acknowledge the responsibility of their predecessors for the laws, policies and practices of forcible removal".

The reference to "parliaments" implies two things:

1. The apology is by parliament, as distinct from the Australian people, in recognition of its predecessors' wrongdoings

No one is asking individual Australians to accept guilt, shame or responsibility for the actions of previous generations. Rather, the apology is about the parliament accepting responsibility for the (morally) wrongful actions of past parliaments and governments. In short, this is about parliaments saying sorry for previous parliaments.

As some people have quite correctly observed, the parliament is obviously elected to represent the Australian people. However, representative democracy is not the sole function of parliament, and does not automatically mean that the parliament is apologising in the name of the Australian people.

Instead, the basis of the apology is the concept of continuing responsible government. That is, the notion that the government must hold itself accountable to the Australian public.

When seen in this light, the apology is simply about the government coming clean" or holding itself accountable to the people through parliament, for the racially motivated child removal policies of its predecessors, which it views as morally wrong and therefore requiring acknowledgment and acceptance of responsibility.

Of course, it would make sense that, if individual Australians want to take pride in their past, it would be logical to acknowledge that there were also some negative chapters, and to feel regret and empathy. However, a government apology does not force anyone to do so.

2. Parliament, as distinct from the Australian people, is capable of inheriting responsibility for the actions of its predecessors.

Although there are compelling arguments against "inherited guilt" in the case of individual people, institutions are different.

Unlike individuals, the institution of government does not die with individual members. So in this sense, it does not matter who is in power on the day. It is what the institution - the body politic - stands for.

This means that the government can apologise for the actions of previous governments, even if those previous governments. Although it is true that those governments considered themselves to be acting in the best interests of Indigenous people, the point is that the present government, with the benefit of hindsight, is entitled to acknowledge that the laws did not, in fact, have that effect.

So, we can see that an apology, as recommended by the Bringing Them Home Inquiry, was never about individual guilt. It would seem that the latter narrative was constructed by the government.

As the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee commented in its review of the government's responses to the implementation of Bringing Them Home's recommendations:

[T]he Commonwealth Government appears to have changed the nature of the argument from one of governments accepting responsibility for the outcome of past policies and practices, by suggesting that Bringing Them Home requested a personal or ‘generational’ responsibility in which individual Australians should feel guilty.