The Hard Word
John Howard cannot apologize. No, I take that back, he just won’t. Some people say it’s because he’s a lawyer, but lawyers, like everyone else, understand at least the strategic value of an apology, so that’s not it. I think it’s because John Howard is a worm. Sure, he cites legal implications, even while PM-in-waiting, Peter Costello, makes his nearly-non-apology, but none of that’s going to help poor Cornelia Rau anyway. Already marginal, her experiences in the Baxter detention camp have put her pretty much out of reach, at least for now, until intensive psychiatric care can bring her back from wherever she is, and saying sorry isn’t going to change that. It might have made her family feel a little better, if it had come sincerely and at a much earlier stage, but I wouldn’t be surprised if their anger just grows. And I wouldn’t blame them. I grew up in the midst of NY State’s grand mental health experiment, when the hospitals were being closed down and the patients released into their own care, and I’ve seen the results: the explosion of homelessness isn’t just a result of poverty, and while that may be less evident here, due to the significantly more robust social safety net, but they’re still out there, and suffering the same problems, and many of them here end up in the same places many of them do there: jail or the street. We cared for the mentally ill once and released them from the hell many of our psychiatric hospitals had become, but we didn’t provide much for them afterwards and we’ve been since steadily cutting away at what there was. These are vulnerable people who deserve our compassion, but individuals cannot manage alone. Government can, and therefore must. Just a small part of the money spent on Joint Strike Force fighter planes or Abrams tanks would be enough: to set up halfway houses, monitoring programs, training for mental health workers, hospital programs, support for families taking on the care themselves. We know what needs to be done already, but have been too selfish to do it. The same kind of selfishness that makes the petulant and childish John Howard incapable of being sorry for the harm his government causes.