Comments and discussion

When you analyse Kevin Rudd’s apology speech, you should also consider those statements that are particularly interesting or controversial.

In his speech, Rudd criticises the previous government – led by Prime Minister John Howard – for ignoring the 1997 Bringing Them Home report on the Stolen Generations and its recommendation that Australia should formally apologise to the indigenous population:

Some of these stories are graphically told in Bringing them home, the report commissioned in 1995 by Prime Minister Keating and received in 1997 by Prime Minister Howard. (…) These stories cry out to be heard; they cry out for an apology. Instead, from the nation's parliament there has been a stony, stubborn and deafening silence for more than a decade (…) (ll. 104-112)

Prime Minister John Howard mainly refused to apologise because, from his perspective, an apology would have meant the admission that the Australian G...