Things are looking up down under

I lived in Australia for a good two years. In that short period of time, I got to really love the country and its people. There were two things, however, that deeply troubled me about Australian politics at the time (I am talking about 2000-2002). The first was the treatment of refugees not invited by the UNHCR who tried to reach Australia across the sea. The conservative government of John Howard tried to discourage them, among others, by incarcerating them in large camps in the interior of Australia and by shipping them off to Nauru, a pacific island and independent nations where the local government, for a hefty fee, was willing to incarcerate the refugees there.
The new government of Kevin Rudd has decided to stop shipping refugees to Nauru -- good news.
Equally good news was the decision on the second thing that really pissed me off about Australian politics at the time: the unwillingness of the Howard government to apologize for the stolen generations and the reluctance to recognize land rights. Again Kevin Rudd delivered (well, a bit): he apologized in parliament for the stolen generations. I noticed on the footage that many aboriginals attended and that the so-called tent-embassy in front of the parliament in Canberra has been removed (though that was unrelated).

Things are looking up down under.