I have an opinion - what's yours?
$orry, but I’m not $orry.
I don’t want anyone to apologise on my behalf, or for my relatives for that matter.
Crown me queen of the politically incorrect, but I have nothing to apologise for.
I’m with Wilson Tuckey.
Old Ironbar walked out of Parliament before the apology, saying it would do little for the Aborigines.
“Tomorrow there’ll be no petrol sniffing, tomorrow little girls can sleep in their beds without any concern – it’s all fixed, the Rudd spin will fix it all,” Tuckey quipped.
He’s right. It’s insincere, it solves nothing but it was a lovely photo opportunity.
We said it to make you feel better… did it work?
As P.G. Wodehouse said: “It is a good rule in this life never to apologise. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.”
To be honest, I’m sick of all this namby-pamby boo-hooing about bloody saying sorry.
How much of this is hype and how much of it actually happened? Perception and reality have blurred.
For every Aboriginal child who was stolen, another was saved, some were given a chance to change their lives.
It’s a shame they refused to take it.
How many terrified white teenagers paid the price for their sins with babies ripped from their arms in the name of religion and political correctness?
But I have to say sorry.
Sorry for giving you free medical care, for giving you money, for building you homes which you vandalised and destroyed and treated with contempt and we paid to fix.
Sorry for developing large farms and properties, which today feed your people.
Sorry for providing you with warm clothing made of fabric to replace the animal skins you used before.
Sorry for building roads and railway tracks between cities and building cars so that you no longer have to walk over harsh terrain.
The fact is, we won.
All right?
We came in and we killed lots of them and we took their land and we’re not giving it back, unless the High Court makes us and then, frankly, the High Court will have to go.
They weren’t using the land for much. They’re still not, to tell the truth. This is what conquering nations do. It’s what Caesar did and he’s not going around saying, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered, I felt really bad about it.’ The history of the world isn’t about people making friends, it’s about cultures conquering other cultures, usually by force of arms. We had better weapons – end of story.
We built cities, roads, we made our homes here and we created a nation.
Can we move on now please?
This stance is not proving popular and led to a huge argument with my brother. This in itself is not unusual, because he’s wrong a lot of the time and as his brilliant, talented younger sister, I consider it my right, nay my duty, to enlighten him.
El Crazy, as I have come to call him, is what we might call one of this diehard political fanatics who prefers it when all people think the way he does.
I’m much more of your ‘what’s in it for me’ kind of girl – and there’s nothing for me in saying sorry except a giant payout my taxes will fund.
He’s all in favour of saying sorry for the wrongs of the past if it helps our nation move forward. I say why stop there? If we’re going to have this pointless political posturing of a National $orry Day, then let’s widen it – let’s take it international.
The British can say sorry to the Irish for that pesky ‘invasion’ and the IRA can apologise for blowing people up and shooting them in the kneecaps.
While we’re at it, the Brits should have stayed home instead of colonising the globe.
And the Romans – who did they think they were? Someone find me a Roman descendent and get him to apologise to someone.
The Americans – they’d better get started, there’s a lot to apologise for – for that whole revolution? That was just rude. Poor form, chaps.
The Boston Tea Party, a complete waste of perfectly good tea.
The treatment of Native Americans and slavery? Sorry about that.
The wars in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq? Sorry, sorry, sorry.
South Africa. The whole apartheid thing was probably just a misunderstanding.
The French should apologise for just being French.
The Russians? They should apologise for the pointless exercise of communism.
Check under every rock, there’s something to apologise for everywhere you look.
The tribal war in Rwanda, the atrocities in Cambodia, the Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan.
The Middle East. Uh-oh. For all we know, Mohammed and Jesus played together as kids.
But Jesus would have been the cool kid. Well, it’s true.
If we decide to keep up this grovelling, honestly, where does it end?
How far back do you want to go?
Harden up people and let’s just get on with it.
