Forty-odd years ago, I lived with my family in a community up on the Murray. Some years later, I did my Honours research on community development there, and tacked on an income study. I was appalled to discover that the median family income was equal to the Australian median. But the place looked poverty-stricken ! I went over and over the figures, but there they were.

I would like to challenge Michael to pick a 'community' at random and do a thorough income study of it, and also an effort study of the same place, if it were possible. I suspect he may find a mismatch.

Ten-odd years ago (hope springs eternal), my wife and I went back to her community on Lake Alexandrina to try to get projects started, any projects, tree-planting, working in the dairy, on the farm, anything. No go. At a later council meeting, the chairman congratulated everybody on maintaining the CDEP numbers at 52 (almost all adults on the place), and that not a single job had been created in the previous twelve months.

A few years later, when their CDEP program had to close, scurrilous rumour had it that the CDEP members paid themselves out a million dollars in leave entitlements, long-service leave, sick leave pay, etc., and set the debt against the farm. DEEWR, as the debtor of last resort, got saddled with the debt, so they stripped the place of all equipment, tractors, the dairy, silos, etc. Fair enough. Now everybody there is happily unemployable.

In spite of everything, would I do all of that again ?

No.

Joe

We are "comforted by the financial support of the government and our fellow Australians"

What about the billions of dollars for support and comfort taxpayers have forked out to aborigines? What about most Australians who actually work for their money?

Are we to give more to a small group of Australians (massive costs for infrastructure and in situ support services in remote areas) just because they claim a "spiritual link" to the land?

Most aborigines have successfully moved into towns and cities to WORK and live without too much problem.

Have China and Korea spent as much money on their people as Australians have on aboriginal people? Korea wants to get rid of their starving and homeless. How dare Michael Costello compare Australia with these countries!

"Work(ing) out a way how to best spend taxpayers' dollars in general" is no way at all. Enough is enough. If, after 200 plus years, certain Australians haven't left the Stone Age - tough! If they want to continue to live an isolated, dysfunctional life, let them.

I don't see the book being a best seller.

Maybe the indigenous people also have a little "unprocessed trauma" such as Annabel McGoldrick spoke about in her article in relation to the Palestinians and Israeli's a couple days back.

- If anyone in this country has a right to be racist then its them.

Or maybe they're just lazy or don't want to be a part of the society we created on their island.

Who knows...

I actually wanted to respond to the headline for this article about human rights in China, there's more to the story going on there and I think everyone should be made aware of how things play out in the real world.

There definitely are human rights issues going on in China, but the pro-democracy and human rights organisations aren't what they seem.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-03/washingtons-fifth-columns-inside-russia-and-china

Indigenous leaders have roundly ignored my attempts as a 'white fella' to get justice for one of their own children as it just appears to be "in the too hard basket" to even raise a protest to the govt, the media, Indigenous bodies and organisations, plus Indigenous politicians on both sides of the political fence.

I would dearly like to be able to identify just one of the many 'respected Indigenous leaders in Australia who I have written to, including the Indigenous NT Chief Minister, have got off their rear ends to take up the fight for a young female Indigenous child effectively unlawfully discriminated against but apathy appears still to be the order of the day! Details will follow this post:

Dear Kirstie
The under described imbroglio details a travesty of justice against an Indigenous family in Ngkurr and Katherine, Northern Territory.
I hope and pray that you and your colleagues of the First Peoples' Congress will do what you can to rectify the sad and unlawful travesty.
I ask that you email me to advise me what, if anything, you intend to do?
For over 3 years I have been trying to get the NT Govt and now the Federal Govt via the Attorney-General's Dept to right a wrong committed against an Indigenous family when a young child was removed from their Dept of Children & Families-approved care and placed by myself, under orders, as a child protection officer in the care of a non-Indigenous woman who self-styled herself as a "traditional grandmother" to the child. In Court this was shown by affidavits to be arrant nonsense but the Magistrate decided to ignore the Act and ordered that the child should be transferred from the capable care of her aunt to a non-family person.
I eventually resigned in disgust at the lack of ANYONE wanting to get involved in this sad travesty of justice.
I hope that you will do what you can to bring this saga to a satisfactory conclusion by raising it with whomever you know that can put pressure on the recalcitrant bureaucracies that essentially want the matter to "be swept under the carpet".
12 Feb 2015 (5 months ago)
to senator.peris,
From:Peter J. Johnson, Director <citizensinitiatedaction@fastmail.fm>To:senator.peris@aph.gov.au, senator.peris@aph.gov.auCc:editor@koorimail.com, Chief.minister@nt.gov.au
Senator N. Peris
Senator for the Northern Territory

Dear Senator

The current NT Chief Minister and his predecessors plus relevant
Ministers plus all NT Indigenous parliamentarians also have not bothered to meaningfully address nor correct this disgraceful injustice.

I hope that you, as Indigenous citizens, may share my outrage?

. . . .and ACTUALLY do something?

Hmmmm, you don't say exactly why the child was removed.

By traditional, do you mean this Grandmother lives as they did before the arrival of the white man?

Why was the child living with the Grandmother in the first place?

Did the Magistrate decide to give the child a chance to live & grow up in the 21st. Century?