Offered Without Comment

From Defamer.com.au

"Defamer Australia was fortunate to attend the massed gathering at Melbourne's Federation Square this morning, where around 8000 people watched Prime Minister Kevin Rudd deliver a moving, intelligent, compassionate and, yes, long overdue apology to the members of the Stolen Generation and for the damage and hurt that it caused Australia's Indigenous people.

Unfortunately for just about everyone there, we also watched opposition leader Brendan Nelson deliver his "apology", which was about as sincere as Jonah saying "Sorry, ranga!" and went a little something like this (and we're paraphrasing, so no quoting us in your school projects): "My mum said I had to apologise to you, but you lot should take a long, hard look at yourselves and get your hand off the bottle and the petrol can, after all, our grandfathers died in the war for you, or something, and no one wants to be born in a remote Indigenous community, anyway, so we did the right thing - it's not our fault you're having a cry about it now."

As one increasingly incensed young professional type next to us shouted, "You're demeaning the whole f--king country with your words."

And while we were moved to tears by Kevin's speech and by the faces of the members of the Stolen Generation who attended Parliament as distinguished guests, we were equally moved - in a slightly different way - when Melbourne decided en masse to tell Brendan what we thought of his speech ... "


" ... Yes, Melbourne turned their backs on Nelson (not before one memorable skater dude in front of us stood for a good two minutes with double flipped birds aimed at the screen), a fact that was duly noted by the ABC's Tony Jones the moment he returned to the telecast following the adjournment.

The Age has footage of the moment here, and we were proud of both parts of Melbourne's reaction to this wonderful day - proud to be a part of saying "sorry", and proud to tell Brendan Nelson he is, in fact, a dickhead."