Given Mr Tudgey Babe is Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister he has exposed his political bias in front of Mr Short.

Apart from that this is a serious ongoing issue.

Hi Pete,

I don't think Alan Tudge has ever hidden his links to the PM, or Noel Pearson, or his interest in Indigenous issues. If anything, I don't thik he goes anywhere near far enough in his critique of Indigenous organisations or personnel. Anybody remotely involved knows there is a hell of a lot of dead wood in organisations, feather-bedding jobs, make-work jobs, frankly bullsh!t jobs, people swanning around, 'working at home', etc.

One rather drastic experiment might be: to cut all funding for all organisations, and see what happens. In many cases, I suspect, nothing or even an improvement in the situations they were supposed to be remedying.

A less drastic option might be to demand that all organisations set quantitative targets, say in a year, or two years, or five years, and have their operations thoroughly examined if they don't come anywhere near their first-year targets - and funding completely scrapped if they don't come anywhere near their five-year targets.

The corollary of course is, that any organisations which are actually working, and setting sensible targets and meeting them, should be used as exemplars, and should have their funding gradually expanded.

$ 44,000 per person - or perhaps $ 100,000 per person in remote areas - is a lot of money to play around with, so why the hell shouldn't any government, Labor or Coalition, get results ? Why this racist assumption that, oh well, it's only Blackfellas, so why expect anything to improve ?

Fund programs which make a difference, scrap the rest. Or give the notion of 'Closing the Gap' away altogether.

Joe

Hi Joe

What you write makes a lot of sense and you are also serious - unlike me.

In that regard I fear that Mr Shorteen, as Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition has been slighted on something approaching political grounds!

Parliament, of all colors, sexual predelections and expense accounts, should be above mere politics.

Cheering

Pete

Hi Pete,

I've never voted Liberal in my life and most likely never will, but I'd like to see the day - or week, or month - when Shorten actually spent some time, especially weekends, in Aboriginal communities, urban, rural and remote, North and South, as Abbott has done.

And Mr Tudge has done - years of it - for that matter.

What really p!sses me off in Indigenous affairs is that bullsh!t programs are allowed to keep going, usually because some Big Name is attached to them, while programs that work are knocked on the head. It's no secret that Indigenous Affairs is, to coin a phrase, @rse-up.

Joe

More money does very little to improve health.
Aborigines have to, at some point in time, take responsibility for their own health.
Even today again I read a story in the paper about the rate of sexual abuse ( about 50 * the average) in an aboriginal community in Qld, Yet the article was very short on where the blame lay. If this was a white community the police would be all over that community within days.
People may think money will help the situation, but it will not.
Most improved health does not come from the doctor, it comes from taking care of ones own health, eating well, exercising well, etc etc. Most diseases these days in Australia are what we call lifestyle diseases, and are thus fixed by improving ones lifestyle.

Loudmouth & ozzie appear to know. take notice of what they say.
Any increased funding will not go to where it's needed, it only goes as far as bureau rats' Superannuation contribution.
That's what puzzles me about Premier Newman in Qld is that he claims to work on improving efficiency yet all the incompetent ALP cronies bureaucrats are still in their high chairs, mismanaging like before. Only blue collar workers are being sacrficed in favour of blame-taking contractors at huge expense to the rest of us.
Meanwhile the communities are failing by the minute.