Reconciliation Week

It's Reconciliation Week here. Yesterday was Sorry Day. The idea is to try to improve relations between indigenous Australians and the rest of us. It's a way to say sorry for all the wrongs that have been done to the Aborigines since white settlement began - the dispossession, the massacres, the stolen children, the disregard for (and destruction of, in a lot of cases) the spiritual connection between the people and the land, the generally disgraceful treatment of Aboriginal people over the last 200 odd years.
Racism is a real problem in this country. "I'm not racist, but...." is such a common phrase. I heard someone just the other day talking about "the coons" and about how they're not really human. I was appalled, to say the least.
These attitudes are, I think, reinforced by the government. While many members of said body support reconciliation, our esteemed Prime Minister refuses to co-operate with Sorry Day. He has steadfastly refused, for the 11 years he's been in the job, to apologise to the Aboriginal people for the injustices of the past. It's purely a symbolic gesture to acknowledge the past and show a willingness to work towards reconciliaton now and in the future. He won't do it.
I think he takes the view that it wasn't his generation that perpetrated the wrongs so, therefore, he has no responsibility to apologise. This completely ignores the fact that children were still being forcibly removed from their families when he was first part of the government in the 1970s/80s.
He just doesn't get it. It's not a question of "it wasn't us". It's the symbolism of it all.
There's a Federal election coming soon. The polls indicate a change of government. Let's hope they're correct.