Shame on us all

By Hugh Mackay
Sydney Morning Herald, March 30 2002.

In all the talk about who should apologise for what - the Federal Government for maltreatment of Aborigines, the church for various sins of omission and commission throughout history, the Germans for the Holocaust, the Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus, the Athenians for the execution of Socrates - there's a recurring theme, designed to assuage any sense of inherited guilt: We can hardly be held responsible for things done in the past that we wouldn't do today.

A variation of the argument leads some people to excuse "the sins of the fathers" by arguing that most of our forebears themselves didn't know what was going on. The various atrocities and misdemeanours were committed by a tiny minority of officials (often, it is claimed, with the best of intentions), while the bulk of the population remained blissfully ignorant.

How can we blame previous generations of white Australians for abuses of Aboriginal society and culture, the argument runs, when they didn't even know what was happening? How can we tar all Germans with the genocide brush when so many of them say they either didn't know about the concentration camps or, if they did, felt powerless to do anything about them?

I'm not going to debate the concept of inherited guilt, or guilt by association, or even the question of when, if ever, it's too late to apologise. Wiser heads than mine can sort all that out.

But what about wrongs being committed right here, right now, in our name, by our very own Government? How will we deal with the collective guilt that history will ask us to bear for the way we have imprisoned asylum seekers and maltreated their children?

We won't have to wait long for history to start asking its questions. What will we say to our own children or grandchildren - tomorrow, or the next day - when they discover what went on at detention camps such as Woomera? It won't be any use saying: "Oh, that was the Government; it was nothing to do with us." We elected this Government (not that there was any real alternative at the time, at least when it came to the policy on asylum seekers).

The argument that "we didn't know" certainly won't wash. Never has a population been better informed about the inhumane treatment being meted out in its name. What will you say when your grandchildren ask you: "Didn't you know that little children were kept behind razor-wire fences for two years or more?"

When they learn that psychiatrists were worried about the likely effect on the mental, emotional and physical health of infants being raised in detention centres, how will you defend your indifference to that? How will you describe your reaction to the young doctors who wept as they described the conditions under which children were being held?

Will you be able to say that you honestly supported the imprisonment of children and their mothers; that you had thought the whole thing through and decided that, on balance, the children should be made to suffer for their parents' decision to come here?

Will you hold your head up and say: "I never really believed they were refugees anyway. I thought some of them were terrorists, disguised as refugees. I thought they were rich people abusing the system, paying people smugglers to herd them into leaky boats and bring them here"?

How will you respond when your grandchildren ask: "But if they were so rich, why didn't they get a visa and come by plane?" Perhaps you'll say: "They were dirty rotten queue jumpers who got everything they deserved. Now, go outside and play."

But your grandchildren will persist: "Which queue did they jump?" Presumably you'll be ready with a description of the string of Australian immigration offices scattered across Afghanistan; you'll be regaling the kiddies with heart-warming stories about immigration officials who roamed the streets of Kabul with their clipboards, handing out application forms. ("Pull the other one," your grandchildren will say, being better informed than you.)

The questions won't stop: "But didn't you know about the children? Didn't you ever wonder what was happening to them? Couldn't you think of a better way of caring for them while their parents' applications were being processed? Didn't you even try? Didn't you ever complain to anyone? Didn't you write to your member of parliament? Didn't you ring anyone up? Didn't you offer to look after one of these children?"

The names of John Howard and Philip Ruddock will be forever tarnished by their intransigence over the imprisonment of these children and the harshness of their treatment.

But that won't let the rest of us off the hook. We're here. We know what's going on. Australia is doing these things, and we are Australians. We're in it up to our necks.