Hear, hear, and well said John.
Rhrosty.

Right on! Let's face it: Australia Day is used as an excuse for a piss up by the masses, an excuse for idiots to beat the drum on everything they hate about Australians, and for the 'authorities' to award meaningless gongs to dreary people most of us have never heard of - such is their worth! The farce should be cancelled until people grow up.

Thirty billion gets spent each year on Indigenous welfare. Tell me about disadvantage.

Yes, there is one that you won't hear about from 'leaders': Indigenous graduates seeking mainstream employment. The great majority of the forty thousand Indigenous graduates have been studying in mainstream fields - very few ever, and almost none now , enrolled in Indigenous Studies or in an Indigenous-oriented course - including the vast majority of current Indigenous academics at universities, and 'leaders'. Yet they are quite happy to wink at the denial of mainstream employment to Indigenous graduates.

Twenty-odd years ago, I recall that it was looked on as sort of treasonous for Indigenous people to enrol in mainstream courses - which the great majority did anyway, including the children of the 'leaders'. I more or less got sacked for suggesting that the unwritten requirement to push Indigenous applicants into Indigenous-focussed courses was a path that led to Apartheid.

So I'm very happy to have been proved right: that disastrous strategy was abandoned early last decade, and Indigenous enrolment and graduation numbers - in mainstream courses - have boomed ever since: commencements go up each year by about 7-8 %. Wonderful ! Up yours, hotshots !

But Indigenous graduates are still being forced to find their inner 'Indigenous' and confine their employment prospects to the segregated domain, for life. That's 'leaders' for you. But don't worry, they're doing okay.

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Joe,
Just thought I'd let you know that I forwarded your website address to some people who were making a lot of silly comments on Facebook on the 26th, a few of them actually looked at it and made positive comments.
My argument with them was about accentuating the positives in race relations rather than dwelling on the negatives, about the difference between shame and guilt and so forth.

Yep maybe there are some good things in the British heritage to celebrate and sonme ugly things in the Indigenous culture to eliminate. Won't ever hear it on the national broadcasters. Thats your abc.

Joe (Loudmouth),
www.firstsources.info

There is an enormous amount of quality information to be had from even a short visit to your site and I regularly return to it. Thank you.

I am sure there would be a lot more use made of it by the public and researchers, especially young international academics, if some talented web designer could volunteer to lend a hand to enhancing the presentation for the Web.