‘When you apologise, you don’t do it again,’ actor tells program as she criticises Turnbull and other PMs for failure on Closing the Gap targets

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

When you apologise for something, you don’t do that thing again.

On Monday night’s episode of Q&A the Indigenous actor Shareena Clanton used that simple point to powerful effect.

Arguing forcibly for Indigenous recognition in Australia’s constitution and parliament during an appearance on the ABC panel show, Clanton demonstrated that a decade after Kevin Rudd’s apology to the stolen generations the wounds between white and black Australia are still far from healed.

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Clanton told the audience that a damning review of the Closing the Gap strategy released last week showed the response by successive governments to Indigenous issues “not good enough”.

The review found that a decade after it was introduced, the initiative had “effectively abandoned” its long-term goals in favour of short-term political demands.

Three of the seven Closing the Gap reporting targets are on track and, of the remaining four targets, three – to halve the gaps in employment, reading and numeracy, and in school attendance for Indigenous students – are due to expire in 2018.

Clanton hit out at the rejection by the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and his government of the Uluru statement in favour of a symbolic model of constitutional recognition.

“When do Indigenous people get social, cultural and economic empowerment and voice in parliament?,” she said.

“We’re asking to deconstruct the system that exists. We’re asking to be invited to the table. I don’t know how you bridge the gap in terms of Aboriginal people who are still struggling to have a voice.”

ABC News (@abcnews) In case you missed actor Shareena Clanton's impassioned statement on Indigenous representation on tonight's @QandA ...https://t.co/Ux2JUlZSdd

Visibly angry, she interrupted a response from the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg – who repeated the government’s claim that embedding an Indigenous voice to parliament in the constitution would create a “third chamber” – saying she was “tired of non-Indigenous peoples making commentaries about Indigenous Australia”.

“We are the sovereign owners of this country,” she said. “We have never ceded sovereignty. I’m tired of asking for our humanity.”

Clanton was responding to a questioner who accused the prime minister of having “dismissed” the Uluru statement and “snubbing” a breakfast commemorating the anniversary of the apology last week. Turnbull left shortly after the breakfast began.

“Is this the sign of a leader who sincerely wants to close the gap on Indigenous disadvantage or holding his colonial foothold on the throat of the oppressed Indigenous population, which has been the case for 230 years,” the audience member asked.



Labor has said it would pursue legislating some form of Indigenous advisory in the parliament but the government has rejected it, with Turnbull saying last year it was neither “desirable or capable of winning acceptance at referendum”.

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Frydenberg told the program the idea was rejected because “Australians have equal rights”.

“Equal rights to vote, equal rights to sit in the parliament and equal rights to serve,” he said. “The issues you raise about Closing the Gap are legitimate. We have to do better. There is no shortage of goodwill, and there has been huge amounts of money spent.”

But Clanton argued that real gains in Indigenous outcomes were “coming from Indigenous people”.

“In terms of Closing the Gap [and] this healing they want to create, there is no healing going on,” she said. “When you apologise, you don’t do it again.

“This thing is, with the stolen generation, we still have children being removed from their homes without consultation from their parent or guardian, and going straight into the system.”