Australia to make reparations for 'stolen generation'

Good on Australia, joining New Zealand as a nation owning up to the violence and damage done to Native people by invading White Europeans. Most nations in the Americas need to honest up and admit to the violence and damages done to Native peoples and other non-whites throughout the continent. White-washing history just makes those doing so look petty and dishonest.

Good on the US Supreme Court for this decision; Supreme Court Rules That About Half Of Oklahoma Is Native American Land.https://www.npr.org/2020/07/09/889562040/supreme-court-rules-that-about-half-of-oklahoma-is-indian-land

Woody Guthrie's 'this land is your land' is well-intended. But should have said' 'this land was violently taken from Native peoples.

No individual is paying. No one is asking any children to pay for the mistakes of their fathers with this. The Australian government is the entity that did this, and the entity that is redressing this. That is the responsibility of a government. Good on the Aussie government for trying to rectify their own mistakes of the past. This is the path forward to reconciliation.

...and where do you think "the government" gets the money for this? Just go to the Money Tree and do a quick harvest? Of course not. "The government" gets the money from the people, the vast majority of whom had NOTHING to do with the incidents in question.

And no one is asking the people paying taxes to pay it. They are paying taxes, with which the government spends money as decided by the officials elected by the people. You do realize that's how democracy works, right?

People at the next election will have the right to vote against those who enacted this if they dislike it. But the fact is the government has both the right and the responsibility to fix past wrongs, in order to move forward as a society. As any good psychiatrist will tell you, not dealing with issues never fixes them. That works on a cultural level too.

Don't like it? Don't vote for these politicians. Oh, and whine about it on the internet too.

@Attila

Part of ‘reconciliation’ is compensation for the evil deeds one commits. It starts with recognition, then apologizing, then compensation, then punishment of wrong-doers, and THEN, after all that, is reconciliation.

And here’s the other funny thing. Even after the ‘bribe’ as you so flippantly describe it, the people who were harmed are not required to forgive.

When you commit a wrong, you are obliged to apologize and try to make things right. The people who wronged are under no obligation to accept your apology nor to forget what you did to them.

Going to be an expensive year for the Australian government.

It was an expensive generation for Indigenous Australians who lost loved ones

Don't do the crime if ya don't want to pay for your crime

If you think this payment will end the thing, you are sorely mistaken. The grievance industry will not be shut down simply by a one time bribe. Too many jobs at stake on both sides, government and protestor. No, there is more money to be made in perpetual victimhood than in reconciliation.

I see. And who specifically "wronged" someone else? The concept of collective guilt is abhorrent and brings back memories of terrible events in the past. By all means track down the wrong-doers, try them, and put them in prison if found guilty.

But to hold an entire nation responsible for the acts of a few miscreants, for acts that happened 50 years or more in the past, is ridiculous.

Why should children be made to pay for the sins of their parents? Why should new immigrants to Australia pay for 'crimes' that happened before they even entered the country? This is nothing but feel-good folly, a way for politicians to pretend to care about an issue while throwing buckets of other peoples' money around. If the government truly felt sorrowful, they would all resign, as would the entire parliament. But that will never happen.

...and where do you think "the government" gets the money for this? Just go to the Money Tree and do a quick harvest? Of course not. "The government" gets the money from the people, the vast majority of whom had NOTHING to do with the incidents in question.

Individual victims are being given money that is taken from people who did nothing to them. It makes no difference that the government is the conduit for the money. Governments don't HAVE any money, other than that which is confiscated from individual citizens. That is the reality. And it is morally indefensible.

Again, find the guilty, put them on trial, and punish them. But don't tell a family of immigrants from Lebanon that arrived in the 1980s that they are somehow responsible for things that happened before they arrived in the country. And that they have to pay for them.

If you think the Australian people are truly behind this, how about trying the following...

instead of the government paying for this scheme out of general tax revenue, set up a Go Fund Me or similar account to the benefit of the hurting indigenous folks. People could then decide on their own how guilty they feel and how much they want to voluntarily donate in compensation. This fund could then be distributed to the victims. Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? Who knows, it may even raise more money than the government wants to spend on this...

Kentaro... what country would that be, I wonder...... probably EVERY country on Earth? Not to mention every tribe or clan. Nobody has a monopoly on inhumanity, my friend.