Kevin Rudd — Say sorry to me!

N.B. Smith brings a different viewpoint to the controversy over the apology to the “stolen generation” and asks why the government does not extend the same courtesy to people of all races in Australia.

As people are aware the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, made a big apology to members of the Aboriginal so-called “Stolen Generation”.

My grandfather (my father’s father) was born in 1902 to a mother and father who were not married.

At that time to be born outside of wedlock was very much looked down upon by society. Mothers were put under pressure from family members and friends to adopt or foster their children out.

Others had their children taken away from them by the government. The exact number will never be known. Some estimates put this figure at over 150,000.

My grandfather was one of those children. He was fostered out at the age of two – imagine the heartbreak for a little two year old boy when he was taken away from his mother.

He was too young to know what was going on. Being in a foster home had a great effect on him.

Thanks to the great investigative work of my sister, we were able to find out who my great-grandparents were and what my surname should have been.

We found out that my great-grandfather’s family came out from Ireland in order to escape poverty, whilst my great-grandmother migrated here in 1888 (many Lutherans fled from religious persecution in Germany in the 1800s, whether she was one of those, I will never know).

My family, including my father, never knew what had happened to my grandfather until 2008, which means that so much of our heritage is unrecoverable.

Kevin Rudd, will you now say sorry to me for the pain that past generations caused to my family, and for the loss caused to my heritage?

Will you say sorry to all of those Australians who were taken away from their unwedded mothers (just after having given birth in hospital) by the minions of Australian officialdom?

Will you say sorry to the “White Stolen Generation”? However, I don’t think you will apologise – because our skin is white.