Banjo Paterson, "They (Aborigines) burned the bush to renew and reinvigorate grasslands for hunting purposes"

That is a myth, the dreaming of politically correct multicultural apologists.

They burned the bush to harvest part-cooked animals that through injury and shock were much easier to locate and catch.

It was and is environmental vandalism and cruelty affecting thousands of hectares and a myriad of wildlife, destroying rainforests and encouraging rapid takeover by eucalyptus.

Dear Ttbn,

Living in the stone age has both advantages and disadvantages.

Naturally, the hardships of living in the stone age seem excruciating for those accustomed to the comforts of the 21st century, but so are the hardships of modern living excruciating for those accustomed to the advantages of the stone age while the hardships of the stone age are experienced by those as "life", rather than "languishing".

Those who live in the stone age do not need money, jobs or education - but they need to be left alone.

The privilege of being allowed to live in the stone age (or in any other age for that matter), should be extended to everyone who so wants, not only to people of aboriginal descent.

Yes, Yuyutsu, we can all go bush and live off the land if we choose to.

But should other people pay us to do it?

The current situation with settlements is not the traditional way of aboriginal living. The people of the past were nomads, hunting and fishing to survive. The modern way is nothing like that. They can still hunt and fish. But they generally stay in the one place where they have proper, European housing and modern facilities - even if limited. They have access to a store, and to the grog, in some cases. They have become lazy: nothing like the people they claim to be emulating.

If they wanted to live as their ancestors did thousands of years ago, good luck to them. But not on scarce, and getting scarcer according to the government, welfare resources

Dear Ttbn,

To answer your question, we need to get to the root of what welfare payments are for, what they represent and what (if any) legitimises them.

As I see it, welfare payments are legitimate because they are a form of compensation given by civilisation over the loss of our freedom to roam about wherever we like, doing there as we like, including the burning practices just described by OnTheBeach. Having denied our ability to [legally] live directly off the land without using money, this compensation is provided in, sadly, the only remaining means of survival - money.

There are those who like civilisation and benefit from it and from what its money can buy more than others, but doing so they destroyed the "habitat" of others, probably irreversibly, hence they should pay.

Unless we understand the rationale of welfare to be a valid form of compensation, I find nothing else to morally justify taking money from some and giving it to others.

One immediate consequence is that we should all receive equal welfare payments as we are all similarly deprived of this freedom to roam, regardless whether or not we work or earn: in practical terms this amounts to a negative-income-tax, which I advocated several times in this forum.

As civilisation has taken the best, most fertile lands where water is available, only a few would be able to live in stone-age style, while the rest need to be compensated financially.

Now to your question:

Certainly, one may not have the cake and eat it too, yet if those few who do take up stone-age living are still to be somewhat limited by civilisation, for example by not being allowed to burn the forest for harvesting cooked animals, then to that extent they would still be eligible to some compensation: not in the form of money, which would be useless to them, but perhaps in the form of some stone pillar, which if they sit and pray long enough in front of, automatically produces portions of cooked food...

Yuyutsu, "As I see it, welfare payments are legitimate because they are a form of compensation given by civilisation over the loss of our freedom to roam about wherever we like, doing there as we like.."

Whar freedom to do whatever they liked? Just taking one element of that, Aborigines lived in small clans who would and did kill small children for accidentally straying into another clan's land.

Prove that Aborigines have lost those freedoms. Because it is apparent that they were in fact liberated by settlement and could then "go wherever they like, doing as they like..", where previously they would have copped blunt percussive force resulting in death. Some downsides but very well recompensed with upsides.

They were liberated and awarded the benefits of the developed world.

Dear OnTheBeach,

Based on what you describe, you can probably substantiate that aborigines in the past also had justified claims against wrongs done by other tribes.

Even if they were saved at the time by the white people (thank you very much), this does not justify new wrongs by the modern tribes.
(for example, if you save a boy from a paedophile, it doesn't mean that now you are entitled to make him work in your factory)

Further, I constantly emphasise that I'm discussing universal freedoms, which should be equally extended to white people as well (should they wish to live this way), not only to those of aboriginal ancestry.

<<They were liberated and awarded the benefits of the developed world.>>

Alcohol for example?
Having to get up at 7, awakened by a merciless clock and drive tiredly in bumper to bumper traffic to some dull work?

It is a problematic statement: what you consider a benefit may not be such for others.