Part 1.

This forum is a milieu for the mindless. It should be an opportunity to debate and discuss issues and ideas with people from the left and right but instead it is infested with those who don’t engage with the written article but instead see the forum as a jousting arena for the jeers and jibes of the gibbering classes.

There needs to be higher standards. There should be no personal attacks but Lego accuses me of creating a problem and says people like me “scream contempt at those who differ”. That’s not true of me and I shouldn’t have to put up with comments like that. It is Lego who screams contempt at those who differ. He’s had a number of posts deleted because they are offensive. Why not bar him?

Then there’s someone who calls himself Individual who pours scorn on my qualifications. Years of study are discounted by someone who uses the phrase “ignorant academic”. This person’s views of academia don’t interest me at all but such rudeness must surely put other people off posting. Runner takes up the anti-academia argument which hijacks the discussion stating that voices of the academics feed the victim mentality. In Loudmouth’s view “lecturers lecture in quite a dogmatic way, frowning on any independent thought or analysis, or criticism”.

This is total nonsense. The academia bashing suppresses discussion and has absolutely nothing at all to do with the article I wrote. In fact most of the posts don’t engage with the article at all. Most of them are written to jeer at aboriginal people, or at me, or at other posters

Part 2
It is galling and unacceptable to me that the forum is littered with racist stereotypes and put downs of Aboriginal people - “it's our money that was being pissed away by these people.” “They just choose not to move with the times”. And how hateful is this from rehtchub “Why don't Aboriginies do these jobs I will tell you why, because they are to lazy and to well provided for. The fact that they live in squalar, is their choice. We provide the funding, they waste it”.

That’s appalling. It’s bile. It’s racism. Why is it allowed on this forum?

It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic that rehctub claims it's time for Aboriginal people to decide who wants to be Australian and who doesn't. However it drags the forum down and makes it impossible to have an intelligent discussion.

Graham, please do away with pseudonyms. The standard of posts would rise if it wasn’t so easy for the ignorant and arrogant to spew their nonsense all over the forum

but such rudeness must surely put other people off posting.
Amanda J.Midlam,
I don't do it to put others off, I do it do make others see how many academics are pulling the wool over the eyes of people who have no way of finding out for themselves.
I would most certainly NOT make the statements I make but I feel compelled to. When I see communities being so blatantly used as stepping stones for career bureaucrats & academics then I feel it my moral duty to let people know of my experiences.
When you people stop treating the rest of us as ignorant yet it is us ignorant taxpayers who to a very large extent fund your experiments then whatever you write or do or effect you have is my business. Mine & many other lives have been made very difficult by ignorant bureaucrats taking your people's study results as gospel. Leave us alone & we'll leave you alone. Keep interfering in our daily lives & we'll do the same to you. Fair deal ?

do away with pseudonyms.
Amanda J. Midlam,
To you really have such low IQ that you can't foresee what effect this ignorant suggestion would have on people with integrity ?
The persecution would be so severe that no person with integrity could risk expressing their views based on experience. If you're so abject to these views then why not refrain from imposing your idealism on us ?
Do you wish to have your identity revealed if you were in a minority ? You can safely expose your identity because you're fully protected. Those of us with integrity have no such protection.

Thank you Amanda - you describe exactly what deters me from posting comments on OLO articles these days. It seems to have been 'occupied' by the overly jaundiced, who usually have few insights and persist in predictable and boorish behaviour towards authors and posters with whom they disagree. (I should note that 'Loudmouth' is often considerably more reasonable and informative than some of the others. Like him and 'individual', I have lived and worked with remote Aboriginal people for many years. I share their scepticism about some academics, but I know that others are hard-working, intelligent and well-informed about the issues on which they write). I have not always been completely free of these faults myself, but I think the range of people wanting to participate here has narrowed considerably, and I strongly suspect that you have hit on some of the main reasons for this. I say this despite my disagreeing radically with some of the arguments in your article. Briefly, my advice is that you not dismiss entirely what Macklin says, nor take at face value all that a small number of dissident activists claim. For some insights into why I say this, I suggest that you have a look at these documents, which contain some very useful data and analysis, released a couple of months ago:
Community Safety and Wellbeing Research Study: study of opinions of 1300 community members: http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/sa/indigenous/pubs/nter_reports/Pages/community_safety_wellbeing.aspx
Overview document: NT Emergency Response Evaluation Report: http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/sa/indigenous/pubs/nter_reports/Pages/nter_evaluation_rpt_2011.asp
(to be continued)

The first document (the Community Safety and Wellbeing Research Study) illustrates the great variety of Aboriginal opinion in 16 communities where the NTER Intervention was applied, and provides a picture of the complexities of the many issues contributing to and arising from the Intervention.
In your attack on the Gillard government’s new legislation “targeting Indigenous people in order to enable the government to put in place its Stronger Futures policy”, you overlook the fact that the aim is to lay the groundwork for ‘Closing the Gap’, by taking actions that are the responsibility of government in relation to the well-being of its citizens, and enable them to exist in circumstances where they can manage their own lives effectively. This is not “ideological racism, based on the belief that Indigenous people can't sort out problems for themselves and need government control”, but rather it is responsible governance based on the premise that if provided with the right policy settings and program support then people from very dysfunctional communities will be able to sort out more problems for themselves.
As for the issues of “health, housing, education and employment”, these are not covered in the legislation you refer to, but they are receiving a great deal of positive attention under other funding streams and programs. The problem is not so much what the government is doing, but whether they understand how much more investment of funds will be needed to enable the set of projects to succeed and actually meet the full extent of Aboriginal needs in remote areas.