It is very telling that illiteracy is now widespread among young aboriginals - older aboriginals, often educated in mission schools, were (and are) both literate and numerate.

I agree about the stolen wages. Aboriginals worked for a pittance and often never received even that small amount.

Nobody with a heart could look at the state of aboriginals today and feel nothing. Throwing money obviously does not work.

I toured remote outback Australia for 2 years during the 1970s - its amazing how little things have changed for aboriginals since that time.

Talking about illiteracy - if you are referring to Aboriginal people in Australia than the capital 'A' is required otherwise you are referring to indigenous people world-wide. The 'clash of cultures' didn't just happen 200 years ago and i really don't know where to begin with the rest of you.

It is funny though that all these people talking about Indigenous people taking responsibility, are completely unable to acknowledge their responsibility. Until white people own up to the damage done by successive generations of government policy (that in many ways and places still continues) we won't be able to move forward - I try to be politically correct but these ignorant, reductive and incessant cause-and-effect comments really push my limits

ATTENTION White people..

We do owe them something for gods sake. You all have had a typical white answer said from your high horses.

We stole their land, identity, raped them, murdered and mamed them, put them in communes when they are nomads, stole their children, slaved them out, culled the population and destroyed everything.

If we are not accountable, who is? Yes you and i might not have done it with our own hands, but we as a nation did.

It is only fair that every piece of registered Australian property pay a peppercorn rent to the traditional owners. If we all paid $10 per year to to the native peoples for each piece of individual real estate in our rates we could abolish the assistance schemes, we could stop the bleeding of funds and have a strucured support base for these peoples indefinately.

That way everybody wins, the indigenous people can stop 'complaining', the blame game and guilt is over and we can all get on with our lives.

If anyone who owns real estate cannot afford $10 per year, take a good look at yourselves. i dont mind this if it means these people are not being gifted money, they are recieving what they are entitled to and they can set up structures to govern these funds. Despite what the statistics say, their is a movement of native peoples who are now highly educated, motivated and have the capacity to govern this.

Lets give them what they deserve, a traditional owners levy, and lets be done with it. Case Closed.

Why don't we pay each person who has declared their Aboriginality in some official way in the last three years - on some government form etc - $50,000 tax free each year for the rest of their lives - payable in a lump sum symbollically on 26 January. This $50,000 would take the place of all other welfare with the exception of free health treatment with no gap payment and no limit, and free education.

However, once the $50,000 was spent there would be no more for that year, but as everyone else of Aboriginal background in the community was receiving money no one could claim that they needed more money to spend on someone else.

Make this tax free, whilst also able to work and pay no income or other tax. GST would be harder to deal with, but still possible.

Have the amount indexed according to inflation.

Perhaps children could receive a lesser amount: $20,000 per year for the first five years, $30,000 until they turned 10 and $40,000 until they turned 15 and then the full amount.

The Redfern bag snatchers could be recognised for the injustices that they are trying to wrong, after all, they are simply trying to collect the rent from whites.

Would that help deal with people's guilt perhaps? Or maybe what is required is the full consideration that Australia is occupied illegally, leading to no more immigration and all of those people with dual citizenship being required to go to their other state of citizenship, whilst preventing all other non Aboriginal people from further breeding and encouraging Aboriginal people to have huge families to repopulate the land?

The word 'aboriginal' is a common noun and therefore does not warrant a capital A. The word refers to the indigines of any country, and the Australian indigines are small-a aborigines just like the rest. The people in question can be referred to as indigenous Australians or aboriginal Australians by all but the irredeemable politically correct, the lazy, or the illiterate.

What about those Romans. My ancestors are from Bath, England. Landowners dispossessed by Caesar.Until I receive recompense from the Italian Government no Italian can ever be truly rested.