"United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination"

HAH !

What a joke.

A report in the papers this morning said : "The UN is rife with nepotism and corruption"

and then there is the "International Whaling Commission"

There are fears that it will be over-run by 'pro-whaling' interests... duh.. and the UN is not subject continually to such things ?

So, before referring to the UN charter on this or that.... its better to REJECT the UN and dis-associate ourselves and national interest from it.

THEN.. we might be able to think clearly about the real crux of such issues as per the topic. We don't need the UN, we don't need LABOR we don't need THE COALITION..NOR do we need the Gay Greens or the Debacle Democrats, we need some serious anthropological analysis of the cultural/legal conflicts which look at all sides and come up with a reasonable conclusion.

When the 'whites' could only speak about 'rule of law' after this incident, I hung my head in bewilderment.

In this country ,particularly with regard to multi culture, we must have ONE law and that is Australian law that applies to all who live in this country.
We cannot make exceptions for tribal law because we have an enormous mix of tribes, cultures.It is vital that everyone knows the law, that they must obey the law with no exemptions otherwise we will end up with anarchy and worse.
Our laws have evolved and they are good. Anyone who does not want to live by Australian law should be shown the way out immediately.

James McConvill: “Sometimes you have to help those who cannot help themselves.”

This was the paternalistic attitude of the Queensland Government in 1865. The Industrial and Reformatory Schools Act was established specifically for children under fifteen who were neglected or convicted of an offence. A neglected child was defined as any child who wandered about; frequented any public place; slept in the open air; had no home or settled place of abode; dwelt with a reputed thief or drunkard; was supported wholly or in part by charity; or any child born of an aboriginal or half-caste mother.

Now replace ‘an aboriginal or half-cast mother’ with ‘lawyer parents’; such that any child under fifteen and born of a lawyer parent could be arrested and removed from their parents and placed into an industrial or reform school, which serves to process the explicitly despised lawyer characteristics out of the child. Not quite as ineradicable as aboriginality, but consider the long-term psychological impact such a process would have on your children, in a purely hypothetical sense?

Peter Beatties new grog laws will be imposed on Palm Island from next Monday.

The Palm Island community is the only one in Queensland to have the grog laws imposed unilaterally. All the others were in consultation with a local justice group who agreed to and signed off on the restrictions. Some are pretty liberal such as Cherbourg which basically outlines various places on the community where you are not alowed to drink.
However on Palm Island there has been no such agreement. In fact the state has caused mass confusion by setting up a social justice group which has informed the council in drawing up it’s own grog restrictions. But this justice group has not been set up to conform to the grog laws statutory regulations. So the government in it’s wisdom has set up a new justice group, or at least it is trying to, in order to legitimise the un-negotiated impositions which start on Monday. Meanwhile the council, who administers the current grog restrictions has foreshadowed a legal challenge to the new grog laws.
2 grog laws, 2 justice groups and court case on the horizon, and still just petty tokenistic funding for such things as detox and rehab programs, is a fine example of our governments competency in indigenous affairs.
This would not be so ridiculous if there was a substantial diference of approach between the existing council laws and the new police laws. But they are essentially the same, except the police laws have massive penalities compared to the council’s, worse than pot and smack laws, which is an extreme antithesis to the Royal commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody reccomendations which said alcoholism should be dealt with as a health, not criminal issue.

So those of you in the Qld. A.L.P., think of the Palm Islanders as you sip your fine wine because as of Monday they will be criminalised for doing exactly that.

This link includes the Palm Island Council’s grog laws, voted for by a democratically elected shire council and the States new imposed laws
http://www.mcmc.qld.gov.au/community/search/palm_island.php

Grog laws are nothing new, I can remember when I worked in a Kimberly store years ago there was a law called "The Dog Act" and anyone who caused problems with drunkenness or non payment of debts was placed on the 'dog act'
Those named were nearly all white, aboriginals were not permitted alcohol but Islanders and those of mixed race [providing they were not natives under the act]could be named and their names were displayed in public. No person named was allowed to purchase grog. Anyone knowingly supplying grog could be imprisoned.
No one used the word 'racist' it was simply a fact of life.

It seems it's open season on racism against blackfellas, now that non-Indigenous Australia has finally decided that it's time to debate the finer points of the issues of violence and disadvantage in Indigenous communities. Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been trying to raise and address the problems facing Indigenous communities for decades but have we listened to them? Nope. Instead, we've now decided it's time for every self-professed non-Indigenous expert on Indigenous affairs to spout forth their ill-informed and thinly veiled racist proposals on the causes of and best responses to the complex and deep-seated disadvantage and abuse experienced by many Indigenous people. Which in James McConvill's case involves starting with some broad sweeping statements about 'the Aboriginal community' choosing to sit at the bottom of the ladder of civilisation and ending with a most constructive solution - namely to breach the Racial Discrimination Act in order to 'help those who cannot help themselves'.

For someone with a PhD in law, McConvill is demonstrably ignorant in regards to both Australian and international law. The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the federal Racial Discrimination Act and the various state anti-discrimination laws relating to racial discrimination and vilification all allow for 'special measures' that have the objective of supporting the advancement of members of a group affected by historic disadvantage or discrimination to help them have access to the same human rights as the rest of the community. That's the kind of equality, James, which is about what is best for Indigenous communities in terms of the recognition of basic human rights as determined by Indigenous people themselves, not the kind of 'best' you're talking about - which led to governments and missionaries taking Indigenous kids from their families and communities and denying them basic education and opportunities in life, not to mention abusing and traumatising them