SORRY AT LAST

Sorry. We finally have a Prime Minister with the magnanimity and stature to do it, and do it properly.

Why did it need to be done?

Because it reveals once and for all the lie that said that Rudd was me-too Howard lite. Those who could not see that before the election had obviously never had to consider how it might feel to be 'other' and live under the most divisive Prime Minister in living memory.

Because the people who don't think they should apologise for something shameful that happened in the past are the same people who are sure as hell happy to bask in past glories, particularly military, for their own political ends - these are the same people who think that interest rates are more important than saying sorry, and how sorely they have misjudged the public mood on that score.

Because the state-encouraged tearing of children from their mothers on the basis of race and in the name of assimilation is unimaginably vile - it is easy to forget what this is all about. If it happened to me I would hate the perpetrators for the balance of my days.

Because just as words can, and have, the power to hurt and insult and marginalise and wedge (see the previous government's record), they have the power to mend and unite and inspire.

My elderly British immigrant father, no indigenous studies scholar by any means, today proclaimed Rudd's speech to be "the most wonderful speech ever delivered to the Australian parliament - spirited, generous and brilliant". I feel proud that he and I have lived to see this day, so I can but only faintly grasp how significant this day is for members of the Stolen Generation.