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The Forum > Article Comments > More talk, no action in indigenous affairs > Comments

More talk, no action in indigenous affairs : Comments

By Andrew Laming, published 30/6/2011

Labor is applying a recycling policy to indigenous affairs - the reports and even their titles, remain the same.

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I agree with Andrew that Labor has made a bad situation worse with its “rights” based ideology. But disagree with Andrew that “enforcing the rules which exist in the rest of the country” will work either.

Well meaning Labor ideologues are utterly convinced that all human races and ethnicities must be equal in every way, and therefore everyone on planet earth must have equal rights. Rather perversely, by some application of Doublethink, these same people demand that indigenous people should have different rights than everybody else. That sure looks like racism to me. But these people seem to think entirely in moral absolutes and are unable to discern the contradictions in their own orthodoxy. Hence they can support the UN’s new “Indigenous Rights”, which differ from other "Human Rights", without clashing mental gears.

One right of equality which the left wingers utterly demanded was the right of aborigines to drink alcohol like white people. When it was pointed out that the consequences for aboriginal people would be catastrophic, the lefties were nonplussed. Every race must be equal, and nothing less than that was acceptable. This stupid policy created much of the ghastly problem which we see now today. Unable to admit that they were wrong all along because something was fundamentally wrong with their sacred ideology, we see the left wingers wasting squillions of sorely needed taxpayer dollars with all sorts of expensive programs to alleviate the damage they created.

Past administrations simply took it for granted that aboriginal people were not very intelligent, and that the white administrations had a responsibility to look after them. These administrations enforced race based rules which were designed to protect aborigines and to give the aboriginal kids a chance. From my perspective, I think that this paternalistic and racist approach was far more successful in alleviating aboriginal dysfunction.

But the Humanitarians think that they are the keepers of the gate for all that is good and holy, that they are the intelligent ones, and for them to admit hat they were ever wrong would be a particularly unpalatable piece of crow to eat
Posted by LEGO, Thursday, 30 June 2011 8:45:55 AM
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The Commonwealth government continues its' previous disgraceful approach to policy, continue disgrace making bad situations worse, restrict people in these situations from improving.

Responsibility rests upon current and previous Commonwealth MPs.

Australian's overwhelming vote on their 1967 Constitutional amendment confirmed their intent that their constitution restrict government to policy based upon equality of rights and opportunities for ALL Australians - policy without racial identification.

Governments continued pass legislation, to govern, using their own definitions and principles of racism.

Governments constantly re-defined the rights and responsibilities of Australians to suit their racial identification.

The Commonwealth Attorney-General told Parliament the racial test does NOT exist, nor will one be implemented in Australia.

The Commonwealth Attorney-General needs explain how and why they qualify rights and responsibilities by this non-existent test !

The Commonwealth applies the Himmler principle: tell lies long enough and loud enough and many will come to accept it.

Real issue is why do so many Australians - despite their wide cultural backgrounds, continue to permit Australian MPs application of racial rights policy ?

Forcing the Commonwealth to cease their racial testing of Australians does NOT stop them helping needy Australians
Posted by polpak, Thursday, 30 June 2011 7:23:17 PM
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“The entire cohort of Aboriginal youth can now refuse interviews, training and job offers with impunity” says the Hon Andrew Laming, Federal Member for Bowman, implying that when he ‘the Honorable Liberal’ will topple the ‘Honorable Labor’ one, now in charge of the Aboriginal Affairs portfolio, he will substitute impunity with punishment.

It is the language of all politicians. ‘If you don’t do as I say, off to jail, if you are lucky.

It has gone on for two hundred and thirty years in this country, and yet, these blacks refuse to adapt to our civilization.

Since those ships poured us, the white, on their shore, we have insisted (with bullets) that the Aborigine, the black, have to learn our ways.

Isn’t it a bit as saying that if the Aboriginal had gone to England, the English would have had to learn the Aboriginal ways?

But here we are; we’ll never know how the world would have shaped if the latter event had happened but the little that we know is clear and simple: Politicians are vindictive animals.
Posted by skeptic, Thursday, 30 June 2011 7:45:31 PM
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Oh for god's sake, are you people serious? Putting aside Andrew's natural bias (he's proudly LNP for f%$k's sake) can't you see the point being made? The lifestyle of some people who identify as "indigenous" and who live away from Australian work/lifestyle hubs (like cities) is something that would be unacceptable to most people. Be honest. Is this not true? Assuming you are capable of seeing that it is, what to do? A possible answer - DON'T encourage people to remain in geographic outposts unless there is something that can economically or strategically (e.g. defence) support that decision. And please don't subsidise (due to feelings of colonial guilt alone) anyone who wishes to stay in a remote outpost. I don't see how subsiding lifestyle decisions is the lot of government.
Posted by bitey, Thursday, 30 June 2011 9:28:38 PM
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Sorry, bitey -- that's far too sensible. No, let's continue to hurl taxpayers' money at the Indigenous people to live -- if you can call it 'living' -- in remote squalor, and the white support staff who 'service' them.
Posted by Jon J, Friday, 1 July 2011 7:26:41 AM
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I certainly don't agree with LEGO on this one, but Skeptic's comments are just plain silly. Who is being threatened with jail for not working ? If someone doesn't want to work, then they don't get paid: no problem. If they commit offences in order to avoid both working and being broke, then like anybody else, they are either fined or incarcerated. No problem. Do the crime, do the time.

As for your comment that Aboriginal people have refused to adapt, one only has to look at early history almost everywhere to understand how quickly people actually did adapt. Along the Murray, the first parties of overlanders bringing cattle and sheep from Sydney to SA asked local people to track lost animals - which they did, from the first day. Along the south coast of SA, the whaling industry (which wanted the bone, skin and oil from whales) and the local Aboriginal people (who wanted the meat) came to a very rapid symbiotic agreement which sucked populations towards the whaling sites in great numbers. Wherever a frontier town was set up, it very quickly attracted people from way out beyond the 'frontier', almost everywhere.

Refusing to adapt to 'our' civilization ? Don't get too far up yourself, Skeptic: there are now more than twenty six thousand Indigenous university graduates (one in every nine adults) and close to half of all young Aboriginal kids can expect to go to uni at some time in their lives from now on - actually since about 2006. Fifty thousand by 2020, one in six or seven adults.

'Your' civilization ? Aboriginal people were crewing ships to New Zealand at least since 1814, they helped to build the first railway line in Australia (1852), helped to build the transnational telegraph, were probably on hand when the first plane flew in Australia, the first car was driven in Australia. The winner of the first open educational contest in Australia (1816) was an Aboriginal girl, Maria Locke, from Blacktown. Read and learn, mate.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 1 July 2011 9:55:10 AM
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