In December 2025, the parliament of Victoria — Australia’s second-most populous state — delivered a formal apology to First Peoples for laws and policies that “took land, removed children, broke families, and tried to erase culture.”

The motion, introduced by Premier Jacinta Allan as a milestone in Victoria’s ongoing treaty process, passed by a vote of 56-27. The opposition coalition voted against it and has pledged to repeal the underlying treaty legislation within 100 days if it wins November’s state election.

The apology was barely out of the premier’s mouth before its credibility was contested.

For Canadians watching from a distance, the parallels are hard to miss. And the pattern is the point: across democracies, the cost of apologizing badly can exceed the cost of staying silent.

In my research on government apologies, the explanation is psychological as much as political. Governments apologize to restore their own trustworthiness, but apologies only succeed when they focus squarely on rehumanizing victims.

That inversion is the apology paradox, and it has practical implications for whether reconciliation is successful.

The canonical case is Willy Brandt’s 1970 Kniefall, when the West German chancellor unexpectedly knelt before the Warsaw Ghetto memorial. The silent gesture is still remembered 55 years on, long after Germany’s formal verbal apologies have faded. It was well-received because Brandt absorbed a political cost without trying........

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