Hi Rodney,

The Queen's likeness is also on all coins. Flora or fauna ?

Yeah, right: compensation. Thirty billion a year may not seem enough, even though the lifelong-welfare-oriented population takes up probably twenty billion of that, or around a hundred thousand dollars per head per year (not bad for a household of ten or twelve people). Good luck to them, but let's not pretend that Indigenous people are in poverty. Lateline on the ABC ran a story last night about how marijuana is rampant in the NT remote 'communities', where a gram goes for $ 100, and many children are on it. At $ 100 a single joint ? Where do kids get $ 100 ? Day after day ?

Traffickers are bringing it in by the kilo, it seems. 1 kilogram = 1000 gm = $ 100,000. Not bad for a day's graft. I guess that's where our tax money is going.

But pretty soon, it will be Ice. When that happens, I think that yes, those remote 'communities' will be on their death spiral.

This has all manner of consequences:

* demographically, it will wipe out populations. Pure and simple. More to the point, the powerful will wipe out the less-powerful, i.e. women and kids, then each other - all bit by bit, not overnight but over perhaps a decade.

* in terms of the 'Sovereignty' movement, its proponents (who most likely will never live anywhere near remote areas) will probably take the next decade to get their act together, to get any move towards 'sovereignty' (i.e. political self-determination but financial dependence on Canberra) and then realise there's effectively nobody out there, in the 60 % of Australia, the remoter bits, that they have pre-occupied themselves with gaining control of. A Pyrrhic victory over the frog that any scorpion would be proud of.

[TBC]

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If only some of those ra-ra radicals had some demography: they would realise (perhaps they do, but don't give a toss) that there are very few areas in Australia where Indigenous people may be in a majority, and 'therefore' can dictate to non-Indigenous people - in other words, much of the country that they might have some sort of sovereignty over would have a non-Indigenous majority - but these can be either ignored, driven out or treated as 'dhimmis', forced to pay a jizra, since they will be forever foreigners. Still, there are twenty four million of them now, and by, say, 2025, there may be many fewer than a hundred thousand Indigenous people living in remote areas, mostly invalid pensioners.

To go back to land use and land tenure, an issue that you raised a long time ago:

I think that Australia was 'invaded' in the sense that British sovereignty took away the right of Indigenous people to exclude others from their land. BUT British law did also recognise Indigenous traditional land use rights, the rights to hunt, fish, gather, etc.

Political sovereignty and land tenure are two conceptually different processes. So the British, and now Australian governments (local, State, Federal, and by extension, all Australians, including Indigenous people) have one, Indigenous people still have much of the other which they always had, if they care to make use of it.

Perhaps it's easier to live on welfare, as they are entitled to as Australians though. Still, is that what you meant by 'compensation', a permanent stream of money to make up for that Denial of the right to exclude ?

Joe

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Dear Joe,

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You note :

« The Queen's likeness is also on all coins. Flora or fauna ? »

That’s very observant of you, Joe, but as an avowed “sort-of-ex-Marxist”, you could not have failed to notice that the monarch never frequents the same side of the coin as the plebs, and – what a dreadful thought – how could she possibly be seen among wild fauna ? Come on now, Joe. You know better than that. Nothing but the heads side of the coin for the Queen - in addition, of course, to a few stately castles and immaculately barbered lawns !
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You mention :

« … marijuana is rampant in the NT remote 'communities', where a gram goes for $ 100, and many children are on it. At $ 100 a single joint ? Where do kids get $ 100 ? Day after day ? Traffickers are bringing it in by the kilo, it seems. 1 kilogram = 1000 gm = $ 100,000. Not bad for a day's graft. I guess that's where our tax money is going.

But pretty soon, it will be Ice. When that happens, I think that yes, those remote 'communities' will be on their death spiral »

According to a 2006 Australian Institute of Criminology report on “Illicit drug use in rural and remote Indigenous communities”, at the national level, the N°1 problem is alcohol, N°2 cannabis, N°3 inhalants and N°4 amphetamines :

http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/321-340/tandi322.html

It is a problem for indigenous people world-wide. They are always on the losing end of their encounter with modern civilisation.

The resort to drugs in Indigenous communities has been linked to feelings of despair from the days of colonisation, the breakdown of their social values and family bonds as well as their inability to recuperate what was once theirs and adapt to modern civilisation and an alien culture that they simply can't understand.

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And you ask :

« Perhaps it's easier to live on welfare, as they are entitled to as Australians though. Still, is that what you meant by 'compensation', a permanent stream of money to make up for that Denial of the right to exclude ? »

Let us say that like many others before me, I have diagnosed a serious socio-economic problem affecting our Aboriginal compatriots. But my personal knowledge and experience of Aboriginal culture are grossly insufficient to allow me to do more than identify the nature of the intervention required: compensation. I must leave it to others, more competent than myself, to prescribe the important efforts which must be deployed in order to redress the situation in a humanly satisfactory manner and as economically as efficiency will allow.

The challenge is awesome and may well take a couple of generations to accomplish. That is why I suggest the setting up of a foundation to provide the necessary finance for a prolonged effort, totally dedicated to this project, with a specialised, independent management team of competent social workers and other talented people as deemed necessary in order to get the job done.

I hope that this clarifies what I mean by “compensation”.

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Hi Rodney,

Re your last point:

" the setting up of a foundation to provide the necessary finance for a prolonged effort, totally dedicated to this project, with a specialised, independent management team of competent social workers and other talented people as deemed necessary in order to get the job done."

Perhaps you don't realise how utterly patronising that sounds, with respect, as well as being so impractical as to be deserving of hollow laughter.

What happens in remote 'communities' is up to the people in remote 'communities', primarily, to resolve. Nobody is going to dictate to them, not your 'management team' or anybody else. And I think, given that, that they are on a death spiral.

We lived for some years in a community here in SA: it is now deserted, with perhaps three families there. And it was one of the most thriving, promising of SA communities. Gone.

So it certainly can happen in more remote areas and, unless people pull themselves together, it will.

As for your frankly facile diagnosis of 'colonialism', ask yourself, even from your apartement in the dix-septieme arrondissement or wherever, where has colonialism had the most effects in Australia ? Where has it the least effects ? End of dumb-dumb hypothesis, I suggest.

Joe

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Dear Joe,

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You wrote :

« What happens in remote 'communities' is up to the people in remote 'communities', primarily, to resolve. Nobody is going to dictate to them, not your 'management team' or anybody else. And I think, given that, that they are on a death spiral »

You sound a bit defeatist there, Joe. I guess it’s understandable, given your intimate knowledge and lifelong experience of the Aboriginal culture through your wife and children.

You may well be right in thinking that “what happens in remote 'communities' is up to the people in remote 'communities', primarily, to resolve”. But the fact that you consider that “they are on a death spiral” is a clear indication that don’t think they are going to make it.

So what do you recommend we do ? Nothing ? Just leave them on what you consider to be a slippery slope to extinction ?

I don’t see that as an option.

Australia has known an exceptionally long period over the past 25 years of uninterrupted economic expansion. This has allowed successive governments to provide substantial financial support for our Aboriginal communities, but it cannot and will not continue indefinitely. Dark clouds are already visible on the horizon as the Chinese economic slowdown deepens and government and household spending grinds to a halt.

Important cuts have already been operated, by anticipation, in the Indigenous Affairs budget and there is probably more to come. Most Indigenous programs were moved to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) two years ago. Commonwealth funding of the National Congress of Australia's First Nations People was withdrawn following the last federal election in July 2016 and the release of the new budget. The minister for Indigenous Affairs, Nigel Scullion, explained that the Congress is not representative and doesn't deserve federal funding. On top of all that, the PM&C has introduced more competitive tendering procedures for outsourcing of Indigenous program servicing, less favourable to Indigenous organisations, particularly smaller Indigenous organisations ...

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