I'm coming in late to this thread, but just to get back to the original topic of victimhood and neoliberalism ...

Neoliberals are just as adept at playing the victim.

Only they like to see themselves as victims of big government, high taxes, central banks, gun control lobbies, the welfare state, feminists, terrorists, asylum seekers and faraway regimes that want to nuke them for no reason other than 'not liking freedom'.

Neoliberals (who are just the latest version of an age-old system that benefits the ‘strong’ minority at the expense of the ‘weak’ majority) fancy themselves as energetic, get-up-and-go ‘doers’ continually victimised by the slothful, the stupid and the parasitic.

You gotta feel sorry for these Darwinian overachievers and silver-spooners, at whose feet the unworthy masses do not genuflect fast enough or often enough.

Joe

I haven't checked your links re Indigenous tertiary education. However, from experience, I've found that these statistics do not distinguish between 'assimilated' indigenous people whose gene pool is more European than Aboriginal, and Aboriginal people who are still immersed in their tribal cultural and genetic traditions.

By way of example, I have a niece and nephew who are one-eighth Maori and another nephew who is one-sixteenth Maori. Because they always tick the box regarding indigenous ancestry, their situation is always absorbed into the statistical 'indigenous' database.

Like most articles that idealise equality, it's never made clear what this equal society will look like, or even how it will be achieved. In fact, no where in history can anyone point to this equal society - we see plenty of death where it's been tried, but no actual example of it.

Equality will never exist because it doesn't take into account the different talents and levels of determination of individuals.

Killarney,

Indigenous people would find your comment quite racist and ignorant. But I suppose anything will do to deny Indigenous achievement, and its implications, in order to maintain a vain belief in perpetual Indigenous victimhood.

So how would you propose differentiating people in the racist way that you infer ? A colour card ? Should intending students have to provide a family tree, to eliminate those with non-Indigenous parentage ? Ban inter-marriage ?

Amazing: it used to the far right who were opposed to inter-marriage, and strove to keep Indigenous people out of Australian society. Today, the overwhelming majority of Indigenous people live in urban areas, indeed metropolitan areas - would you want to declare such people no longer Indigenous ? After all, they don't hunt or fish or gather food - is that your definition of 'Indigenous' ? i.e. people who are to be forever outside of, and/or powerless in, Australian society ?

Didn't work back then, and it won't work now.

So the Left has taken over the mantle of racists ? Interesting times.

Aristocrat: “Equality will never exist because it doesn't take into account the different talents and levels of determination of individuals.”

Well spotted Ari. The one percent complains that the plebs want equality of talent, IQ, height, litres of Bollinger, etc, etc. Really? Try imagining equality of treatment under the law of the land; try imagining equality of access to good education, healthcare, and legal protection; try imagining equality of opportunity for every child to maximise their potential. You’re correct that no one has achieved it, not that it isn’t possible, but because the born-to-rule prefer that you didn’t. Fools? Or knaves? There’s a reason the one percent is known affectionately as the kleptocracy.

Kleptocracy: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1zx56p_inside-job-full-movie-hd_shortfilms
Universal Declaration of Human Rights: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

Killarny: Even setting aside the issue you rightly point out, Joe’s figures are based on ignoring the fact that people under 20 attend university. He doesn’t include this younger group in his calculations; hence his results look better than the ABS census figures.

IMBO,

Indigenous students commence study at universities, like anybody else, at all ages: my daughter started at 16. But in order to make any sort of assessment, one has to compare commencements against some arbitrary age-cohort, 20-year-olds, 17-year-olds, 25-year-olds, whatever. Of course it's a rough estimate, but it's the ball-park figure that counts, not the fiddly, 'exact' proportion of actual commencements against the full range of actual age-groups.

And the ball-park figure for Indigenous commencements, at under-graduate level, is around 33-37 %. More precisely, and again estimating, a proportion of those commencers are transferring from one degree to another, or coming back to study, or commencing a second degree. Maybe 5 % of the total are in this category. So between 28 % and 32 %, give or take, of a chosen group, say the 20-year-olds, are hypothetically commencing university study for the first time. Say a round figure of 40 %. Two thirds women, one third men. So about 40 % of Indigenous women commence university study each year now, and about 20 % of all Indigenous men. Roughly. Do you want the actual figures ?

I hope this is useful.

Joe

Didn't think it would be long before Loudmouth stated playing games in lieu of substance.

Who's "IMBO", Loudmouth?

....

And regarding:

"Poirot,

Thanks for sticking close to topic...."

Yes, we all know Loudmouth lurvs to call for "back to topic" - that is unless he's flouting it himself such as here:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16753&page=1

Where, on the subject of global warming, he reacted to another poster and waxed lyrical and totally off topic on indigenous issues for pages.

I hope this has been helpful.