Colin, help me out here. Why do black nations and even black communities within white majority nations have very disproportionately higher rates of AIDS infection than whites and Asians? Is it because the AIDS virus is racist? Or is because the AIDS virus an oppressor?

Can you think of any other explanation? If you can, you might answer all of the other questions you have been asking.

Here's the answer. Stop treating Aborigines as Aborigines. There. It's easy. Just treat everyone as citizens with both obligations and privileges. Remove every law, benefit, organisation funded by the governments that has any specification for Aborigines. Issue everyone benefits available to those eligible only because of their citizenship - not their racial identity.

In fact if all the government programs were stopped and the same amount of cash issued directly to the intended recipients, they would be able to budge to their hearts content and we who pay the taxes would be able to see the stupidity of treating this group as a distinct identity with special needs.

And whatever we do we should never allow the proposed change to our constitution to go ahead and enshrine a separation of citizens based on one race versus all the rest. We already recognise that Aborigines occupied this land before British settlement. Why put it in the constitution? Why not a section recognising that the sun rises in the east and had done prior to settlement. It would have the same meaning. Zip!

So true Captain Col, it really is time people like Mr. Tatz grew up & faced the facts as they truly are.

Quite a few years back Palm Island ran out of water. We tax paying citizens were paying for a barge to run 24 hours a day to supply the poor people with water from Townsville. Water usage per head was more than triple that of Townsville.

One of the staff noticed most showers did not have a shower head. People showered under a 35 liter a minute open pipe.

We produced a solid brass water saving shower head. They are excellent shower, I still use mine today.

The department ordered $120,000 worth of these showers to try to reduce water usage. We supplied the first half of the order, then got a request to supply a person to fit them. The plumbing staff were too busy, & the aboriginals would not do it themselves.

Our man returned from fitting them, & refused to go again. He couldn't handle the filth. When he asked why they didn't clean up, he was told him they weren't paid to do that.

We then got a request to cancel the rest of the order. The Palm Island people had discovered the showers were heavy brass. The whole $60,000 worth had been pinched for fishing sinkers, & everyone was back showering under the open pipes again.

Mr. Tatz, I think it is fairly obvious "who's the problem", & it sure isn't the tax payer.

Spot on Hasbeen.

Then there is the sorry tale of aboriginal education in the NT. According to one news report, two thirds of the education budget in the NT goes to aboriginal education, who make up one third of the population. The reason for this is that it costs a lot more to educate aboriginal kids in remote areas.

But there is a big problem, the aboriginal kids living in isolation with everything provided by the government see no reason to go to school, so they don't. Some schools have only 10% of kids bothering to turn up on any day.

What is the bureaucratic solution? More taxpayer money and fairyland thinking. What the NT has is two school curriculums, one very easy one for aboriginal kids and one for everybody else. No wonder the socialist teacher's unions don't want national examinations which would disprove their social theories on human equality.

Then the idea came around to feed the aboriginal kids at school since their parents don't worry about that too much. The reason why aboriginal kids did so badly (so the theory went) is because they are hungry. Feed them and everything will change. But that didn't work. Then there was the proposal to pay aboriginal parents to make their kids go to school, but that didn't work very well either. Next came threats to dock welfare payments from aboriginal parents who could not care less if their kids went to school or not. Not much success there either.

Lastly comes the latest bit of fairy land thinking that squads of aboriginal people, presumably kitted out with government supplied cars and petrol dockets, are going to be paid "truancy officers" and they are going to go around aboriginal settlements picking up the kids and making them go to school.

Look, we as a enlightened people I feel do have a responsibility to look after aboriginal people because they self evidently don't have the brains to look after themselves. But what sticks in my craw is articles like this one that seek to blame white people for aboriginal dysfunction.

Hey Colin Tatz, since you live in an ivory tower that is so high that you can't see the land for the clouds, here is a letter from "The Australian" newspaper that might give you a clue to answering your own questions.

Aboriginal literacy declining

Letter to the Editor

The Australian March 16 2010

When I worked at Kununurra about five years ago, it was common to see a group of young men from Wadeye being escorted by an older man in the town centre. The young men needed the old man because the young men could not speak sufficient English to make themselves understood, and could not write well enough to withdraw money from their bank account. The old man, schooled in a mission school, could do both quite well.

The culture of aversion to school at Wadeye is years old. How come we have another generation being schooled in the same dysfunctional manner?

Chris Squelch, Mount Isa, Queensland.

The really sad part is that Colin Tatz's opinions probably represent the official line at most of our Unis. And worse, are often the ONLY version that students get to hear.