Dear mhaze,

Is human development more important than being free? The development was of their masters - those who took their land - those who forced them to be maids and stockmen - those who pushed an alien religion on them - those who introduced syphilis and smallpox to them. Who was developing? The benefits of development were the rewards of their masters for their enslavement. They couldn't even keep their own myths. The nonsense of the Rainbow Serpent was replaced by the nonsense of a 3-in-1 god, a virgin having babies and life after death. Instead of introducing them to reason the occupiers replaced their primitive fantasies with other primitive fantasies, massacred them and took the fruits of the labour of the survivors.

The White Mans Burden;

"The task, believed by white colonisers to be incumbent upon them, of imposing Western civilisation on the inhabitants of European colonies."

This much discredited 19th century philosophy is not dead and buried as one might have expected in the 21st century, but rather is alive and well here on this little old forum of OLO. A hearty band of the 'Usual Suspects' have resurrected it to denigrate pre-colonial Aboriginal society. In fact they know all about what happened millennia before the arrival of the European, to put it into colloquial terms; "Aboriginals were on the bones of their arse" according to them, and for 60,000 years were staring at extinction with every turn, and it was for 60,000 years no less, what lucky, lucky, bastards!

If Australia is going to take its place as a progressive (oh! how the old fellas hate that word) in the modern 21st century world, then lets hope the people of Australia deliver a resounding 'YES' vote when the Referendum on 'The Voice' is decided later this year.

David,

You claimed that "The British did not build Australia's infrastructure from nothing." You have yet to back up that claim. Society is not infrastructure, Chimpanzees have societies as do wild dogs. And humpies are not infrastructure either. I think that you are in need of a dictionary.

Paul,

Neither do you have any idea of what Aboriginals did 1000 years ago

david f,

I know that many who base their information on this are informed by so-called native advocates, but much of what you claim is really a Disneyfied whitewashing (deliberate pun!) of the real nature of aboriginal 'society', if that's the word you want to inappropriately use.

These people weren't free. They lived in a highly structured grouping where only elderly males had any real power, with all others effectively serfs of the small leadership group. To compare great things to small, you might think of the male elders as the aristocracy in a feudal society.

For a start, women had no power and no freedom. They were chattel belonging to their male elders, who could be beaten, raped and sold as needed. Equally, children had no freedom and lived at the mercy of the leadership with young women being especially endangered. (In the early days of the Port Jackson settlement it was reported how an aboriginal man was found to have euthanised his young daughter because the mother had died and there was no-one to carry the children as they 'nomaded'.

I think you are confusing Australian conditions with the American experience. There is now ample evidence that diseases such as smallpox came here not from Europeans but from Indonesia and China who had been visiting the northern Australia for centuries to trade all sorts of goods including aboriginal women who were prized in the Chinese courts. (Did I mention (free) aboriginal women could be sold - almost like they were slaves!?)

Aboriginal apologists might lament the loss of what is laughingly called aboriginal civilisation, but the fact is no one wants to return to that civilisation. Everything these days is about closing the gap with European culture - ie becoming more European and less stone age.

Dear mhaze,

The Aborigines didn't have a civilisation. They were primitive hunter gatherers. I am aware of what they were. They abused their women, and I don't romanticize them. However, it still wasn't right to declare the lands they were living 'Terra Nullius', massacre them and force an alien, nonsense religion on them with virgins having babies, a 3 in 1 god and dead people living on. At the time the English settled Australia English women couldn't vote, and married women couldn't hold property in their own name. English women weren't free. At the time Australia was settled English were making fortunes from the slave trade. Great strides have been made in civilising the English since then. The Aborigines were a primitive, hunter-gatherer stone age people when the English came. However, stone age people should be treated with consideration as should any other people, and the English behaved in a criminal manner toward them.

It was how the world worked back then.
And it still is to a large extent.
Bullying and brute force.
Look around you.

But let us stick to facts.
The early settlers came and found a largely unoccupied land.
So of course they decided to stay.
In retrospect, the methods they used to establish themselves might seem harsh.
.
However, I am sure they didn't plan to go out and kill every non-white they found.
The 'non-whites' quite rightly didn't want them to stay.
So they waged a kind of war on the 'whites'.
The 'whites' responded.

But none of us were there.
This includes the present day descendants of the 'non-whites'.
Nobody alive today was here 65,000, or even 200, years ago.
To say so is a 'sleight of hand' technique, using words to convey an inaccurate 'truth'.

The bottom line is that we cannot change the past.
No one alive today is responsible for anything which happened a long time ago.
We are here together today, and we are all just Australians.
We should all comply with laws, and try to make life better for others.

Those who are trying to split Australia along 'racist' lines are disgraceful.
They are executing a kind of SCAM on the Australian Public.
Their 'sleight of hand' technique is aided by a government wearing blinkers.
IT IS TIME TO TALK ABOUT DEMOCRACY, AND WHAT IT REALLY MEANS.