Stephen bro, you set the net and caught some biguns. Don't know what you intend doing to them. Perhaps good crab pot bait?
Cheers.

I met a white Australian overseas - an apparently intellgent businesswoman - who said her country had the only successful genocide. She seemed proud.
In England after the Enclosures Act forced the majority off the land, 85 per cent of the people in some villages were poor. What could people do but take or 'steal' to fulfil their needs?
Unfortunately this English system was re-employed in the Australian settlement which had a system of anhilation prior to assimilation. So killing off men, women and children or harnessing them to reservations was initially preferable to the system in which you had to deny your self.
When indigenous Australians took what they needed - and even when they didn't - babies were shot or bashed to death, women were tortured and killed. This outperformed what indigenous people did to those who took their food and land and what the English establishment had done to its poor.
Unsurprisingly, some of the happiest immigrants and Australian representatives today are white South Africans who left their country post apartheid.
Self responsibility or determination can only stem from having certain assets like adequate land, food or money. Great holidays can only come from having adequate or more than adequate resources. Indigenous people are not fairly represented in that category or any other.
It is scary to reconsider a history which casts us non-indigenous Australians as hard survivors and brave heroes. To do other than consider the toll on the indigenous people is to spiritually kill them again.
When we fail to acknowledge such a legacy and assess the consequence we are hurting a part of ourselves. If we wish for a fair and just and virtuous society for all - and do we? - we could surely demonstrate for hearings and restorations (which do not take private land) like those taking place by the Governments in Canada and New Zealand. That might lead our Government to truly become post-Colonial.

There are some shocking facts emerging from details about indigenous communities now.
Communities that have been left to live their own brand of culture have failed dreadfully to the detriment of the women and children.
It is obvious that a blind eye has been turned in that direction, the loud screams of the "stolen generation" have ensured that the weak and defenceless have been deserted and shamefully so.
It is time that Aboriginal communities are brought into modern Australia and that all in the community are treated equally and fairly. The cancer that is rotting those communities must be drastically cut out-regardless of whose cultural feelings are hurt.

Abusing women and children are not part of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander culture.

In no way could anyone condone the issues that are making news currently.

In my own area I and others are actively trying to break the silence, but it is the past policies that lead so many Indigenous people to distrust the wider community and therefore the problems festers.

Fear that is justified when the judicial system all too often fails the victims.

When non-Indigenous workers in the process can get off on the hearing the details from the accused (heavy stuff but it does happen)thereby condoning it in some sicko fashion. What is there for the victim/s and their family to trust in?

This fear can be very real as there are so many people waiting to point the finger at Indigenous people.

Just a look at the posts that pop up on topic about Indigenous issues on OLO demonstrates this.

HOw about people working alongside Indigenous people, as equals although with different cultures and norms, instead of relishing in sinking the boot in and painting everyone with the one stereotyping.

I suggest that peadophiles and child abusers should be held accountable, based on their actions not their colour.

This is not a black problem with black causes, it is everyone's problem with multiple causes and to address it, everyone has to commit to fixing it.

Pathetic comments denigrating people on the basis of their race and culture and percieved stereotypes, adds little to the debate and less to encouraging people to speak out.

It merely reinforces a them and us fear.

As long as Aboriginals can go on blaming everyone but themselves for the vile things they do, the women and children will go on being violated and abused.
This is not another Black versus White, this is about communities where fear prevails because no one is protecting the defenceless because of the old worn out "racist" and a culture that belongs to another age has been declared untouchable.
ALL women and ALL children have a right to be safe and no man, black or white, has the right to hurt them.
There are no excuses,the guilty are guilty because they have and they alone have caused this terrible problem. It must be made right.

Mickijo, So tell me,.. besides having lots of opinions about Aboriginal people and communities ..what have you ever done to support these views? Or does walking-the-talk only apply to Aboriginal people in your interesting little world of opinion making?