Australia Really, Really Sorry About That Whole 'Devastating Aborigine Civilization' Thing

Oct. 27 2008, Published 7:07 a.m. ET

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Nearly 22 years after Midnight Oil's impassioned call for the just treatment of Australia's Aborigines (Remember? "The time has come/To say fair's fair/To pay the rent/To pay our share" ... No? Ask your dad, it totally kicked ass), the government of Prison Island has decided that the time has in fact come to do something for their country's original inhabitants: Kevin Rudd, new Head Prisoner of the dank continent at the bottom of the world, has "scheduled for a Parliament vote Wednesday that was welcomed as a powerful gesture of reconciliation between the descendants of Australia's original inhabitants and those of the white settlers who now rule." While the gesture doesn't involve anything as useful as, say, money, it does include a sincere apology for all the bad things successive Australian governments have done to the Aborigines, plus a free coupon for an order of Bloomin' Onion at the Outback Steakhouse for every citizen who can prove that they've been discriminated against (coupon good Mondays before 5 p.m. only). A grateful Aborigine people is expected to accept the apology and then slink back unnoticed to their terrible slums where they can once again be ignored because everything's okay now. G'day! AP