This article was as intersting as watching paint dry, it said nothing which sums up Indigenous affairs a lot of talk and no action by any parties concerned.

I believe the Governments biggest mistake is to continue to portray the indigenous people as victims. People seeing themselves as victims never rise above the 'you owe me' mentality. The earth worshipers love to exploit this for their own gain. When drinking and sit down money is given out of some sense of guilt their are no winners. The only person who has had any political courage of late is Mal Brough. He was tossed out. Hand Indigenous affairs over to Noel Pearson and the people might make some gain. Continue in the same vain and we will get the same results.

Graham your line is far too soft on this Northern Territory intervention which is a criminal act in the making in every sense of the word. Think about how many billions of dollars are at stake in this dispute and the high loss of life if the government can steal the dole money and other pension benefits (won by workers) then serve them up at slave labor rates; along with the grab for land on behalf of the mining and pastoral interests. It is not forgotten too that the same rightwing politics still prevail and initiatives that saw the aboriginals working a seven day week for a bag of flour, tea, and tobacco for Lord Vestey.

The Northern Territory intervention is not about any “defense of the sacred children” rather, it is employing the "big lie" as the ‘political cover’, a veil to institute and continue the most backward vindictive relations. Two hundred years of genocide and oppression have not disappeared, but reappear in different tongue and guise. This is a prototype, a tester for welfare cutting measures that extend far beyond indigenous people. A suitable lie will be dug up for use against working people who have lost their jobs and the disabled too.
Fifty-two “business managers” have been appointed to oversee 72 communities, each receiving a salary of around $160,000. There is no shortage of money when it comes to 'thuggery in aid of reaction' whilst starving aboriginals of essential and indispensable medical, dental services, and decent schools. Central also to the NT crackdown has been the mobilization of the police, backed by the military, to enforce a series of measures to control, monitor and incarcerate Aboriginal people. So far, 25 townships and camps have been subjected to the “quarantining” of 50 percent of all welfare payments—including aged and disabled pensions, sole parent benefits and unemployment payments—affecting more than 6,500 recipients.
Rudd was known to workers as Dr.Death for attacking hospitals and health benefits in Queensland. Rudd laughingly refers to this offensive as part of his “brutopia”.

It does seem to me that the intervention is very much of the doing something is better than doing nothing variety.

Are the problems the Government see as needing fixing the same as the people in the communities ? We may never know.

What part will indigenous people be asked to play in their own futures ? Or will they have to sit passively waiting for direction from an array of highly paid white experts ?

I wonder if government got out of the way would it allow (or force) indigenous people to deal with their own problems ?

One problem with being a minister, as distinct from being a journalist, is that you have to do something. Suppose you were minister, Graham: what would you do, once you got out of your arm-chair and came down from your mountain ?

And the disaster has been, surely, that the government took its hands off the wheel for thirty five years and handed everything over to a vast range of Indigenous organisations which rapidly became nothing more than patronage machines for channeling money to families.

So, what to do ? Apart from snipe from the sidelines, that is ?

And then there are those who never go public with their opinions and simply skulk around here giving out gratuitous advice - whether you want it or not.

Moreover, its amazing to me to see that over the last 10 years thousands and thousands of mostly white Australians have become expert in Indigenous policy, law, morality, employment, colonial history, philosophy, geography, epidemiology, health, the list goes on and on.

Like the Cabbie that picked me up the other day, he went on and on and on about what he’d do and what was wrong with Aboriginal people. He should have paid me for listening to his unsolicited rave.

They know what wrong and how to fix it, just ask em!

With all this knowledge and know-how you would think these problems would have been fixed years ago.

There is not admitting that they know what they don’t know.

Bloody amazing!