Kathy Marks: Australia marches backwards on its Aborigine rights

Ten years ago yesterday, the High Court in Australia handed down a long-awaited judgement with momentous implications. Ruling in a case brought by a fisherman called Eddie Mabo, it rejected the doctrine of terra nullius – the idea that the continent was empty and owned by no one when the British arrived in 1788.

The decision was not only a legal milestone, recognising indigenous land rights for the first time, but a moral turning-point in the history of the nation. Aborigines were no longer exiles in their own country, and white Australians – it seemed – were finally willing to confront and redress the injustices of the past. The Prime Minister, Paul Keating, a man of courage, enshrined the Mabo judgement in statute law, telling Parliament: "The foundation of discrimination and prejudice has been kicked away."

But a decade on, the mood is different. Reconciliation is off the agenda, the optimism has evaporated and race relations are as polarised as ever. Thanks to John Howard, Keating's successor, the Mabo legacy has been a tale of lost opportunities and crushed aspirations.

One of Howard's first acts on assuming power in 1996 was to slash the budget of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, the country's main indigenous organisation. The following year, he watered down land rights by amending Keating's legislation. He has yet to respond meaningfully to recommendations made in 2000 by a statutory committee that spent 10 years mapping a route towards reconciliation.

Howard, who still idealises the white suburban Australia of his youth, has scant interest in these matters. He pays lip service to racial harmony, but has as little empathy with Aborigines as he does with the asylum-seekers who risk their lives to reach Australia in leaky boats. He regards reconciliation as a preoccupation of the intellectual élite, and reassessment of the past as an attack on wholesome Australian values. He downgraded Aboriginal Affairs to a part-time Cabinet post, giving the portfolio – in what seemed like a bad joke – to his hardline Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock.

Perhaps the greatest source of bitterness and despair felt by Australians marking the anniversary is Howard's refusal to apologise on behalf of the nation to Aborigines, and particularly to the "stolen generations" of children removed from their families by white authorities between 1900 and 1970.

It was only when an official report called Bringing Them Home was published in 1997 that the full extent of this supposedly benevolent practice became known. Kim Beazley, the Opposition leader, wept when the report was tabled in Parliament. Howard's response was layered with ambivalence. Later he claimed that the term "stolen generations" was an exaggeration, given the number of cases involved (about 25,000).

Why does the word "sorry" stick in his throat? Howard gives two reasons. Firstly, he does not believe in "cross-generational guilt". Secondly, he might open the floodgates to compensation claims – a consideration that has not prevented other nations from apologising for past misdeeds: Germany to the Jews, Britain to Irish victims of the potato famine, the United States to Japanese-Americans interned during the Second World War.

The real reason, one suspects, is that he does not feel especially sorry. In his view, the treatment of Aborigines – which included rape, massacre and kidnap – amounted to nothing worse than "a blemished chapter". Howard refrained from condemning Pauline Hanson, the far-right firebrand, when she made her first anti-immigration, anti-Aborigine speech. He rails against the "black armband" view of history and is irritated by soul-searching about Australia's past and its place in the world.

Howard says he is concerned instead with "practical reconciliation" – measures to improve conditions in indigenous communities blighted by alcohol abuse, domestic violence, chronic health problems and unemployment. No one could deny the urgency of that goal, but nor can the value of symbolism be dismissed. Recognition of a legitimate sense of grievance about past wrongs is vital to the restoration of Aboriginal dignity.

On this issue, Howard is out of step with substantial numbers of voters. Two years ago, 250,000 Sydneysiders walked across the Harbour Bridge in a potent gesture of support for reconciliation. The sentiment was subsequently echoed in cities around Australia, where a total of one million people took part in reconciliation walks. The Prime Minister declined to participate and dissuaded senior ministers from joining in.

The momentum of those heady months has been lost, but the clamour for reconciliation continues. It is apparent, though, that it will take a bigger man than Howard to satisfy it – someone of the stature of Sir William Deane who, as one of the judges in the Mabo case, spoke of "our national legacy of unutterable shame".

Sir William later became Governor-General, a position that he used to campaign on behalf of disadvantaged Aborigines. Recently, he repeated his belief that until Australia achieved reconciliation, it would remain diminished as a nation. It is to Howard's detriment that he has been unwilling to usher in the new dawn that Australians yearned for 10 years ago.