Confabulation In Australia

Improved Essays
Australia has not been able to successfully reconcile Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in the last 30 years as a result of the attempts at practical reconciliation, such as the closing the gap program not allowing actual reconciliation since even if Aboriginals want to change their lifestyle, they are unable to do so because of the unwillingness of Australians to depart from racist ideologies and remember the need for reconciliation, preventing them from accessing jobs. The racist ideologies are echoed in the policy-maker’s decisions to enable a cycle of Aboriginal poverty to occur by not tackling the root of the problem which is the conscious and subconscious discrimination that occurs. In order to have a true understanding of the …show more content…
One such politician is Liberal politician, Sophie Mirabella who was among six other Liberal politicians who boycotted the apology for the stolen generation citing that she thought the right thing was done even though a large amount of evidence suggested otherwise. A reason for them to deny the wrongs can be explained if they were to believe that confabulation has created belief. Confabulation by William Hirstein, a philosopher of world renown states that confabulations can affect not just neurological patients, but perfectly healthy individuals. Confabulation is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as the fabrication of imaginary experiences as compensation for loss of memory. Hirstein is corroborated by Paula Hamilton, a professor from the University of Technology in Sydney who, in summary states that the terms good and bad are extremely subjective terms. The good and bad in Australia’s past is heavily reliant on the perspective of the person looking at it. The Liberal politicians may remember the past as a different experience to what the Aboriginal’s themselves may have thought they had experienced. In order for actual reconciliation to take place, it cannot be forced through attempts at …show more content…
Gary Johns is an ex-Labor minister of parliament who over time, has swung from the left wing to a centre-right wing supporter and in his bias but factual essay: The Northern Territory Intervention in Aboriginal Affairs: Wicked Problem or Wicked Policy? he argues that the recent struggle to save the aborigine has really been a struggle to save the white man 's conception of the aborigine. The white man’s conception of the Aborigine is one that severely limits them in what they can achieve in the workforce and what contributions they can make to society. Johns is supported by Boyd Hunter, a professor at the Australian National University who states that “there appeared to be considerable discrimination operating for both Indigenous males and females and discrimination applied more to finding employment than in depressing the level of wages received.” He continues to state that for males in full-time work in metropolitan areas, potential discrimination explained about 60% of the employment differential between Indigenous and non-Indigenous persons. In the current year, such discrimination provides Australians with the clear root of the problem, conscious and subconscious

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