The heat is on Kevin Rudd. On the second anniversary of the apology to Indigenous Australians, we look instinctively to the Prime Minister to tell us what he's done to improve the lives of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders over the past two years.
Doing his duty in Parliament on Thursday, he conceded that progress has been slow. Opposition leader Tony Abbott then criticised the Prime Minister for his focus on process rather than results. Tom Calma, who chairs the Close the Gap Steering Committee, said the government has no comprehensive plan to improve indigenous health.
The rest of us are relieved that we have Kevin Rudd to blame.
Rudd did put himself in the firing line when on 13 February 2008 he rose to the challenge and delivered on the promise to apologise. But while he may have voiced it, the Prime Minister is not solely responsible for the apology and what flows from it. We handed him the mandate to make it when we elected Labor to government a few months earlier. John Howard's strident refusal to countenance an apology was one of the reasons we tossed him out of government. We own the apology and whatever comes of it.
Thursday's speech was the Prime Minister's second annual report to the nation on what his government has done to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. When making the apology two years ago he promised to give a progress report every year.
It's turned out to be Kevin Rudd's moment of contrition, and we have looked on as spectators. We do need to know if we are getting value for money from the government we elected. That is our right and role as electors. There is much that the Federal Government needs to do in the near future, such as delivering on its pledge to reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act in relation to the Intervention legislation.
However that's not the full story. It could and should also be our moment of contrition, a time for us to take stock of what we have done — locally and personally — to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
To cite an example, somebody tells us that Aboriginal youth have painted graffiti on a wall near where we live. We pass it on to our neighbour that Aboriginal youth have painted the graffiti. We have widened the gap. It may sound