To Howard on Reconciliation

Howard’s speech at the Sydney Institute, promising a Reconciliation referendum within eighteen months if he is returned, is set in a key we haven’t heard from him before: reflective contrition. The speech is full of admissions and concessions, and borders in places on the poetic. Even though he certainly didn’t write the speech (snaps to the wordsmith), he delivered an impressive performance. He sounds sincere, but the rhetoric of sincerity is as old as language itself, and in the shadow of an election seems pitifully transparent. After more than a decade of silence and retrogression on indigenous issues, his promise of action seems decidedly hollow, particularly when accompanied by the persistent refusal to apologise, and the condition that conciliatory moves must be acceptable to “traditional Australia.” Even if that term were not itself an insulting elision, surely the tradition he’s referring to is precisely what needs to be overcome if indigenous wellbeing is to be a priority. Much as I’d like to believe its apparent conversion narrative, this speech is simply the crocodile tears of a desparate politician trying to snare votes from the marginalised.