Sorry, but we need action not words

AUBREY Lynch believes sorry is the word many of his people should hear, but the pragmatic Wangai elder would also like to see them share in the prosperity of their traditional country; the booming goldfields 600km east of Perth.

AUBREY Lynch believes sorry is the word many of his people should hear, but the pragmatic Wangai elder would also like to see them share in the prosperity of their traditional country; the booming goldfields 600km east of Perth.

"Saying sorry doesn't change the way our people are living, the housing, the effects of alcohol," he said.

In the even more remote town of Laverton, 350km north of Mr Lynch's goldfields home of Kalgoorlie, his friend and fellow Aboriginal elder Cedric Wyatt puts it more bluntly: "My personal opinion is that an apology is f..king stupid."

Like Mr Lynch, the 68-year-old veteran legal advocate and former head of the state's Aboriginal Affairs Planning Authority was taken from his mother young and grew up in a mission.

Mr Wyatt said an apology could never make up for what authorities did to his mother, Jean, and believes Kevin Rudd's national apology in parliament on February 13 will do nothing but salve the consciences of city-dwellers, who will "talk about it at their dinner parties".

"There are people dying in remote areas because of poor health, poor education," he said.

"They're living poverty ... we need action, we don't need words.

"It might make Kevin Rudd and all them feel good but that's about all it will do ... I think this has also been driven by some Aboriginal people who live and have always lived in the city, and they're living in comfortable scenarios in the capital cities and have no idea how these people are living in remote parts of Australia."

Mr Wyatt, the father of state Labor MP Ben Wyatt, said anger had become commonplace among Aboriginal people in remote Australia and their communities desperately needed investment.

"Sorry doesn't settle down anger," he said. "Investment in the future of the children of these people living in poverty has got to be the priority."

Leo Abbott, a traditional landowner from Wallace Rockhole, 117km west of Alice Springs, thinks government action to address Aboriginal inequality is more important than an apology to the Stolen Generations.

"My opinion is that what's done is what's done," the 40-year-old Aranda man said.

"We have to move on in the future. It doesn't matter which government is in power; all people should have equal opportunity in health, housing, education and employment, because that's the commitment that governments give when they are elected into the position they are in.

"Without having those four things dealt with, you're always going to have domestic violence, sexual abuse, grog problems."

Mr Abbott had grandmothers who were removed from their families as children. Those women have passed away now but Mr Abbott said they would have gained no satisfaction from an apology while Aboriginal people live with poor health, education and housing standards.

"The big plus was that my grandmothers they finally got to meet their family ... and their kids and grandchildren know where they come from."

Mr Abbott said he believed many remote indigenous people felt that the time for an apology had been and gone, and the focus now should remain squarely on the intervention into remote Aboriginal communities.

"The best time for an apology was when the 2000 Olympics was here. John Howard could have done it when the Queen and everything was here.

"To me it's going to be a half-hearted apology. Is it just going to be words? Is anything else going to come from it?"

Mr Lynch laments the seemingly aimless lives of goldfields Aborigines, including those who drift into Kalgoorlie to drink.

"They come into town from small communities where the services and the infrastructure are pretty poor and they roam around in little groups with nothing to do," Mr Lynch said.

"Meanwhile the mining companies are out there getting all the wealth out of the ground."

Mr Lynch was four years old in 1941 when a policeman took him from his mother on Mt Weld pastoral station in Western Australia's inland north.

Now 70, he said he always hoped a federal government would apologise for the 12 years he spent separated from her while at Mt Margaret Mission.

The apology comes too late for Mr Lynch's mother, Nelly, who died aged 93 last November.

Mr Lynch believes that the apology should be accompanied by compensation.

Mr Lynch - who helped streamline native title in the sprawling Wangai country by establishing a single negotiating group for companies to deal with, the North East Independent Body - blames boredom and alcohol for preventing many young people from benefiting from the boom.

"When I was 18, an Aboriginal gave me some wine and I vomited and I went to sleep and I thought 'If that's what alcohol does to your body, I don't want it'," he said.