Hi Rodney,

I checked my web-site (www.firstsources.info) and couldn't find my paper on the Black State Movement of the 1920s. With about four hundred files on that web-site, I thought I had posted it, but no. Now I'll have to find it on one or other of these damn USBs, and post it.

On the subject of an Indigenous-only state controlling all of Australia: yes, I agree it is a lunatic idea (what do you do with thirty million non-Indigenous people ? Where would it be ? Who decides who is Indigenous enough to stay there, or not Indigenous enough to be expelled ?) but scouring through earlier works by Coombs and Reynolds and the statements of many Indigenous committees, it is certainly a possibility that many people think this way.

Even a few steps short of that, say, an Indigenous State within Australia: let's say it won't be put together for ten years at the earliest: by that time, Australia's population would be around thirty million. Around 85-90 % of the Indigenous population would be living in urban areas. The remote communities will have been ravaged even further, by Ice and a wide range of other scourges, and their populations will be crashing. Yet they are the models around which a separate State is to be built. By whom ? After all, the elites will never leave the cities. And the logic of a focus on non-mainstream skills will leave these desperate areas skill-less.

People have now wasted forty and fifty years of their lives on this futile idiocy, and many others seem set to waste their lives in turn, trying to set up 'regional authorities' as precursors to a State. The dilemma of what to do with the overwhelmingly non-Indigenous majorities in those 'authorities' has been, like so many other inextricable problems in Indigenous affairs, ignored, wished away.

[TBC]

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Meanwhile, 'ordinary' Indigenous people, mainly in the cities of course, will keep going to university in rapidly-increasing numbers. By 2030, there could be close to a hundred graduates, mostly mainstream graduates, in an adult population of less than four hundred thousand. That's what I'm turning my puny efforts towards.

If anyone wants to call that "assimilation", then I'm an unapologetic assimilationist, and always will be. I'll always support equal rights for Indigenous people, and for all other Australians too. But I'm not interested in giving any group superior rights. After all, wouldn't that be discriminatory ?

Thank you, Rodney, for provoking me to think more deeply about Indigenous issues that I had taken for granted.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi again Rodney,

Found it ! 'The Aboriginal state Movement' on the web-site, and on Google at:
http://firstsources.info/uploads/3/2/4/6/3246279/the_aboriginal_state_moveme.doc

For the life of me, I can't find it on the actual web-site. It's mostly in the form of rough notes - my memory of it was a fully-formed, beautifully-crafted, article, but that's memory for you.

Still, it's very revealing - clearly the notion was racist back then (and how could it be less racist now ?), in the same tradition as the Apartheid proposals for south Africa at around the same time.

IF, as you suggest, nobody wants to go as far as the complete take-over of Australia, but only to the level of a separate State, (and apart from the logical move from a state within Australia to an independent State outside of Australia), the question arises again and again: who would move there from the cities ?

Presumably it would be somewhere out in the sticks, on current and imminent native title land, the 60 % of Australia - the driest continent - which is, well, driest: mostly desert. Currently the Indigenous population already living there would be, by far, the least educated and skilled of all Indigenous people in Australia (and possibly the world). The only economic activity would be that initiated by non-Indigenous companies and agencies, paying royalties to Land Councils. As far as I can tell (and I hope I'm wrong), there is not a single vegetable garden on any Aboriginal community across Australia, in spite of running water and ample equipment.

So this new state, if outside of Australia, would have no real economic base, except from the rents and fees and taxes its administration could screw out of companies. If it were just another Australian state, then it could continue to suck on the many bountiful Tits of Canberra - and come under its surveillance.

So, we are supposed to waste our lives farting around for that ? No, call me an assimilationist.

[TBC]

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Dear Joe,

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You wrote :

« I recall that Manne's 'discovery' errors was demolished a long time ago by Windschuttle and others »

Allow me to quote you on that - with my apologies - as it is not the way I normally express myself :

« Perhaps you could provide just a smidgeon of evidence; where ? when ? What material evidence, rather than bar-fly blow-hard rumour and hearsay ? »

Ditto (together with my excuses, once more) … for the following remark you made :

« Given that Windschuttle actually scoured the records, rather than just make a guess like the ABS has done, … »

I should explain that I find this difficult to believe given that probably the most recurrent criticism Mann levels at Windschuttle is that his research is superficial and in many instances, incomplete – backed up by specific examples, of course. You can judge for yourself in Mann’s article in “The Monthly” magazine for which I posted the link on page 45 of this thread.
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You also wrote :

« … it is quite improper to compare expenditure on Indigenous people with GDP »

You indicated in your previous poste: « The thirty billion expended on Indigenous affairs each year is about 6 % of total expenditure »

That may be so, Joe, but that is not the point. The point is that the revenues we earned by exploiting the natural resources of the country we confiscated from its Aboriginal inhabitants amounted to $1330 billion in 2016 for a total expenditure of $30 billion on the people from whom we confiscated it. That represents 2.25% of GDP.

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(Continued …)

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(Continued …)

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So much for our national operating account. As for our national balance sheet, Australia was considered to be worth $13.5 trillion in 2014-15. Given that the economy is growing at an annual rate of 3.1%, the value of Australia today would probably be about $14 trillion :

http://media.ibisworld.com.au/2015/12/04/what-australia-is-worth/

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/01/australias-gdp-growth-rises-by-11-in-march-quarter-taking-annual-rate-to-31

Quite frankly, I don’t think we have anything to complain about, so far as the Aboriginal peoples are concerned. We are making a fortune out of this country.

On the contrary, they have a lot to complain about. No need to draw up an operating account or balance sheet for them. It’s all too evident that they have got the short end of the stick.

I can understand any ill feelings some of them they might have towards us. Can’t you ?

I don’t know about you, Joe, but nature seems to have endowed me with an acute sense of justice, not just for me, personally, but, on a more general level, in determining my world view. Whenever I happen to be witness to an act of injustice, a sentiment of revolt surges up inside me and challenges the sincerity of my moral values. Though the circumstances may not call for immediate action on my part, the act of injustice I happen to witness inevitably influences my future action in some way.

This open letter to my Aboriginal compatriots is a concrete example.
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PS : I just saw your two recent posts and shall come back to you on that tomorrow …

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Dear Joe,

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You wrote :

« The remote communities … are the models around which a separate [Black]State is to be built … »

Yes, it’s a sad story, Joe. Of course, a small group of activists could always occupy some part of Australia and declare secession. That’s not difficult. But, for it to have any chance of survival, it would have to be in some isolated region, probably in the central Australian desert, that nobody really cares a hoot about anyway. To do that, they would have to be hard-nosed ideologues and I don’t think hard-nosed ideologues would last very long completely isolated in the central Australian desert.

Perhaps the future will prove me wrong, but I don't think that anybody in his right mind would want to do that.

If their secession initiative attempted to take root anywhere else in the country, as you rightly point out, the secessionists would be largely outnumbered by the local non-indigenous population. From what I can gather, previous demonstrations in this vein - such as the tent embassy in Melbourne and the ceremonial fires in Redfern, Dandenong, and Framlingham - have not lasted too long.

Also, as I noted in my article :

« Lane (you, Joe) writes that he now sees, not just one, but two gaps, both of which are widening: the first between indigenous and non-indigenous people and the second between well-educated, work-oriented indigenous people and less well-educated, welfare-oriented indigenous people »

I think you will agree that it is not the “well-educated, work-oriented indigenous people” who would be tempted to join any such secessionist movement and I doubt that the “less well-educated, welfare-oriented indigenous, minority group would be terribly enthusiastic either.

I already outlined in my article, the four major issues I think we need to address to put things on the right track and I reproduce them here for your consideration :

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(Continued …)

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