Howard’s latest election pledge
Now John Howard has seen the error of his ways over the last 11 years and within the first hundred days of a new government he wants to take the first steps towards acknowledging the Aboriginal people in the preamble to the constitution. The reactions have been mixed and varied from all Aboriginal leadership around Australia. Rudd of course has done a ‘Rudd" and said we support it and just want to see the detail. The question remains though, why now? Some suggest it as the work of a desperate who is trying to get re-elected; but would this deliver him much in an election? I think not. Maybe, My Johnny Howard has, in fact, been getting more and more uncomfortable with his own position. He states that he doesn’t like the concepts of ‘guilt’ and ’shame’ and yet he does acknowledge the impact of Australia’s history on the original inhabitants of this land. It has been likened to a Damascus rd experience, such is the about face Mr Howard has made. One can only wait and see what he actually means and hopes to deliver.
For all the talk of Kevin Rudd as the leader with a future vision, it is Howard, yesterday’s man apparently, who has actually been bold enough to speak publicly on how in the next few years we might move toward a reconciliation of the divide between Australia’s conquered and conquering peoples. You can be cynical about Howard’s motives, and point to the possibility that if one thing has stood between the black and white Australia and reconciliation for the past decade it has been him … but the point is that he’s come out and put a strand of flesh to the nervous bones of our future. He’s said something concrete and contestable. Something controversial, something real.
