Mr Ring claims, "These committees have the time and the clout to find out what is really happening and to place it on the public record."

If that were true, there might be some marginal validity in this piece. As it is, the claim is demonstrably untrue. I invite the author to check with the Institute of Public Affairs and several other organisations who clearly demonstrated to the Federal Senate Poverty Inquiry that the figures they kept insisting on were untrue, unfounded and disowned even by their original authors in the ABS.

That particular committee, as with so many, was simply an opportunity for non-government parties to force blatantly anti-government rhetoric into a report that has since sat unread by anyone other than those who like to quote from it for the same reasons it was written - that their agenda needs spurious and distorted research to "back up" their socio-political claims.

There is certainly no more interest on the part of Senators to find out what "is really happening" in Indigenous Affairs than there is on the part of indigenous leaders to tell what "is really happening". When have any of dozens of well-known indigenous leaders come out in public and condemned Aboriginal sexism, violence, baby-rapes or even financial misappropriations and malfeasance?

Write a confessional piece about the millions of dollars of taxpayer money wasted, embezzled or "unaccounted for" in Aboriginal organisations and I'll take you seriously about putting things on the public record. Tell about the extent of indigenous ignorance, idleness, bludging and brutality and I'll applaud. Then we can start talking about more serious answers to those issues than relying on the unrepresentative swill who make up the Senate.

Interesting slant, Kevin, regarding embezzlement, misappropriation of funds and unaccountability, in Indigenous organizations.

I work in an Aboriginal community and I assure you that I have witnessed huge rorting, but not by the local population! The whitefellas who have wormed their ways into positions of power and influence to play the system to their own financial advantage are far more deceitful than the average blackfella! The billions spent and wasted over decades has not lined the blackfellas' pockets very much, I can tell you!

Recent examples? A local whitefella-managed indigenous organization that casually 'loses' 50 vehicles in a year? Kids who cannot read or write 'dog' at aged 13, let alone attend school! Waived as mere 'cultural difference'? Whitefella staff who disappear, leaving a wake of lost indigenous community funds that may total hundreds of thousands of dollars? Whitefella store keepers who tickle the till and keep unreliable records, but a blind eye is turned because 'that is just the way it is out here'!

I have seen brutal, screwed up and cold-blooded whitefella managerial staff, who happily cause heartache and pain using unbridled power over vulnerable human beings, to humiliate, starve and create misery for anybody who challenges their gross misuse of power. I have seen a crazy system where control over decision-making is very much a 'closed shop' and the people kept most in the dark are usually the poor local blackfellas! (Who also just quietly are not so silly and stupid as they sometimes have learnt to appear.)

Sure there are excuses, cover ups and manipulation...thanks to the white people who have abused their positions of trust....and if the indigenous are slothful it might just be that they are too depressed through lack of help and encouragement...or too bloody hungry to care what happens...so then do they die early? Just to spite us all?

Truth about indigenous matters is often hidden but the scandal is that whitefellas are very much to blame for that, as it suits their own agendas, both inside and outside parliament!