Early on in his prime ministership, John Howard stood in front of Australia’s Indigenous leaders and told them he would not apologise for Australia’s past.

In his opening address to the Australian Reconciliation Convention in 1997, Howard expressed “deep sorrow for those of my fellow Australians who suffered injustices under the practices of past generations towards Indigenous people”.

He was also very personally sorry “for the hurt and trauma many people here today may continue to feel as a consequence of those practices”. But that was as far as it went. Because, as Howard went on to say:

“In facing the realities of the past, however, we must not join those who would portray Australia’s history since 1788 as little more than a disgraceful record of imperialism, exploitation and racism. Such a portrayal is a gross distortion and deliberately neglects the overall story of great Australian achievement that is there in our history to be told, and such an approach will be repudiated by the overwhelming majority of Australians who are proud of what this country has achieved although inevitably acknowledging the blemishes in its past history. Australians of this generation should not be required to accept guilt and blame for past actions and policies over which they had no control.”

The mass slaughter, attempted genocide, state-sanctioned kidnapping of children, imprisonment, stolen land, enslaved labour and dehumanisation of Australia’s First Nations people being described as a “blemish” received the response it........

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