Hi Joe, I had a funny feeling that you were going to come after me.

To begin with, the whole idea of the "stolen generations" is a load of crap, and has been judged to be so by the High Court of Australia.

Most aboriginal children taken into government care were half caste for two reasons. Firstly, because Sarah would be surprised to know, that aboriginal people themselves were extremely racist towards "yeller fellers". The female girls were sexually abused, and I read one "letter to the editor" from a former white police officer in remote rural NSW, who claimed that half caste boys in bush camps simply "disappeared." That half caste aboriginal boys were being murdered by full bloods was confirmed in the famous Cubillo/Gunner "stolen generation" case in the NT. It was established that half caste Gunner was taken into car, when the station manager's wife found out that his uncle was digging his grave.

Secondly, it was considered that half caste aboriginal kids were also "half white" and that they were generally smarter than full blooded aboriginal kids. It was considered that there was hope for the half caste kids, but that full blooded kids were never going to have the intelligence to make it in the modern world.

Some full blooded aboriginal kids were taken into care. It would surprise Sarah to know that in aboriginal society, the second born twin was considered a "spirit", and was quickly killed unless taken by the authorities.

I know all about the removal of white kids from single mothers, because it almost happened to me. When I was a kid, the social services would remove black or white kids from any situation where they considered that the children were not being looked after properly. It was a very hard policy, and would be looked on today with astonishment. But governments did not have the money in those days to squander on welfare, and there was an attitude that unmarried single mothers were irresponsible females who were unfit to be mothers anyway.

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My own mother married a US serviceman in WW2, went to the USA to join him, only to find he had shot through. She returned to Australia and lived with my father, who could not marry her because she was already married. She had no idea where the yank was so she could not divorce him. When I was three, my government employed father was killed in an industrial accident, and there was no widow's pension or government worker's comp for her. She used to lock me in a room and go to work in any miserable, low paying job that she could get.

If the authorities had found out, I would have been "stolen" too. She once tried to put me in an orphanage on Pennant Hills Road because she could no longer cope. Boy, did I go berserk over that. I was the best behaved little boy around. I knew my mum was under deep stress already and I knew not to give her any more grief. I live only a mile from that old orphanage today (it is now a housing estate, but the old buildings are still there), and it still gives me the creeps every time I drive past it.

So, what is happening within the Indigenous population ?

On the one hand, we read reports of a rapid rise in the number of indigenous children being taken into care, presumably to a large extent, from the welfare-oriented population.

On the other hand, there has been a doubling of Indigenous degree-level students in the last eight or nine years, presumably, to a large extent, the children of working indigenous people.

So opportunity exists for young Indigenous people to get out of the welfare life. Unfortunately, pathways that used to exist to assist in this have been abolished: there used to be networks of tertiary-level Study Centres operated by many universities. Lower-level study courses, that acted as bridges into degree-level study - particularly for those rural students at Study Centres - have been abandoned.

So it seems that the Indigenous education 'leaders' have cut their own people adrift. Belatedly, some of them are calling for more Indigenous involvement at TAFE level, but I think that ship sailed long, long ago: there has never been much involvement of Indigenous people in genuine, trade-oriented courses - yes, plenty in the BS courses, the endless Certificate Is and IIs, and 'preparation' courses', 'foundation' courses, an endless stream of con-jobs. That's what people wanted, and that's what they got.

Meanwhile, Indigenous university graduate numbers have tripled since 2000, to forty thousand. Why should those people, having put the work in, look back ? Why should they do a damn thing for their frankly lazier relations ? Why should they spend a minute trying to Close the widening Gap ? Good luck to them and their careers. They will make the difference, not their useless elite 'leaders', f@rting around with an endless stream of symbolic gestures, nor the skivers.

Joe

I hope I don't get hauled before the Inquisition like Andrew Bolt, Joe, but anybody who has the merest trace of aboriginal descent can call themselves "indigenous." Recently, a photo of a group of "indigenous" graduates was published in Sydney's "Daily Telegraph" newspaper with all the platitudes od how well "indigenous" kids were progressing. The kids looked white to me, although you could just discern possible aboriginal features in their noses and hair.

Any person who has any trace of aboriginal descent gets a free push through university. He or she get their university fees paid for, and God knows what other benefits. The socialists who infest the public service are desperate to prove that aboriginal people are equal in every way to whites and Asians, and pointing out that there are lots of "indigenous" graduates is one great way to supposedly prove it.

I have heard reports of trade courses for "indigenous" students being dumbed down. My own apprentices tell me that tertiary trade education courses today have every race, creed and culture in them, except indigenous students. They go to special "indigenous only" classes. That they are being treated, examined, and marked differently can be discerned by another news article, this time in 'the Australian" newspaper.

This said that the NSW Education Department refused to give "indigenous" student teachers exemptions from the rigorous examination requirements to gain accreditation as a teacher. Apparently NSW alone refuses to dumb down their teaching courses to get more "indigenous" teachers..

Hi LEGO,

You assert that 'Any person who has any trace of aboriginal descent gets a free push through university. He or she get their university fees paid for, and God knows what other benefits.'

I don't think that is correct, certainly not in my day at universities. ABSTUDY is, or at least was, the same as AUSTUDY, Indigenous students racked up a HECS debt like anybody else. The only concession, apart from the specific student support staff funded from Canberra, were the two trips each year to home and back.

And since, these days, the vast majority of Indigenous students would be urban, most likely from the city they were studying in, those trips wouldn't mean much. People enrol, study, graduate and get out into the work force.

But that's where they may have trouble: As Indigenous graduates, they are very likely to be offered positions in Indigenous organisations, although those openings are probably closing quickly. If they have expertise in fields not amenable to being shoe-horned into Indigenous organisations, they can be walking the streets.

So sorry: no special concessions, and if anything, obstacles to their employment. Not that the 'leaders' would either know or care, I suspect. They still seem to be locked into some distorted notion that Indigenous graduates OUGHT to want to work only in Indigenous organisations, and if not, then bugger them. At some universities, student support is provided only, or mainly, for the handful still enrolling in Indigenous-focussed courses, the rest are looked on as sort of traitors: I recall being told in the early nineties that 'Black students should do Black courses, whites should do white courses'.

Seriously. That was around the time when Apartheid was being overthrown in South Africa. It crossed my mind that if some Indigenous leaders were told about the operations of Apartheid, they would have brightened up and said, 'Hey, that's a good idea. Let's try it here'.

[TBC]

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There is a sort of deep racism in Australia, 'institutional racism', if you like, helped along by the elites, who have done quite well out of their middleman roles: If you're white, you can work anywhere. If you're Black, you really should try to help your peeeople and confine your ambitions to Indigenous organisations, for life, out in the sticks. But the vast majority of Indigenous graduates have been enrolled in mainstream courses, and like any other Australians, are entitled to work wherever they damn-well like. Or at least, ought to be.

'Mass Tertiary Education' is defined as, variously, 15% to 35 % of an age-group enrolling at university. Indigenous people have achieved that. Elites, of course, want control, which you can only exert if the entry groups are small, manageable, manipulable. Frankly, those days were over thirty years ago. But try telling that to the 'leaders' in Indigenous education.

The horses have bolted :)

Cheers,

Joe