I have visited some of the Aboriginal communities in North Queensland.
I have also spent some time in Tonga. There I lived in a hut made from woven coconut leaves. I was told that it cost $10 to build about twenty years ago. It was pretty rainy during the six weeks that I spent in that hut, and I get aches and pains in wet weather, but I didn't in that hut. The wind blew through the leaves and it kept the hut dry and cool. It was a really nice place to live. There was a separate block for showers and toilets and another one for cooking and eating.
To me it seems ridiculous to spend $400,000 of taxpayers money to build a horrible ticky-tacky house in the middle of nowhere. Then to demand more money to maintain the ticky-tacky. And to demand that a doctor and other professionals come and live with you in the middle of nowhere and look after you.
I think we should finance a group of Aboriginal people to travel around the Pacific looking at different ways of building houses. Then, if a Aboriginal people want to follow a more traditional lifestyle, I think we should accept that choice and not try to provide a city lifestyle in the middle of the bush.
I would really like to see decent breakfasts and lunches provided for all children at schools. In Aboriginal communities the fruit and vegetables available are often limited in range and poor in quality.
Then again, I once travelled to Normanton with an Indonesian teacher and he asked me in a puzzled way, "Don't Australians like mangoes?" because he could not understand why so many mangoes were lying on the ground, rotting. Indonesians would have turned them into jam and sold them to raise money.
We need to encourage people to demonstrate a little of that sort of independence and creativity.

Dealing with the mob. I thought that we had been doing that for the past 40 years, and it seems to have worked OK in some areas, but sadly it has had absolutely no effect in others. Perhaps we should send Rainier and some of his mates out to see what they can do to start the wheels turning again. How about it Rainier? Come back in six months time and let us know how you have got on.

Dr Jocelynne A. Scutt I read your article with great interest, and as like myself you too are in Melbourne, but we seem to be worlds apart, so to say.
If you are a barrister, which I am not I am a “CONSTITUTIONALIST” then why on earth is your argument so floored?

Surely, they ought to have taught lawyers that they need to present a case upon proper legal foundations?

By the time, if you would bother to do so, read every page on my blog http://au.360.yahoo.com/profile-ijpxwMQ4dbXm0BMADq1lv8AYHknTV_QH you may just discover that you could present your argument in a far better manner on constitutional grounds.
Why seek to rely upon emotional issues, many generally do disregard when you can base the argument upon proper legal foundations?

Whatever the Federal Government may desire to do and whatever may or may not have worked for 40 years or so really isn’t relevant if it isn’t within the constitutional framework! That is my point!
Why not, as a barrister, take the matter to a court on constitutional grounds and you may just achieve what you seek to achieve and stop the rot rather then to await if you can get enough people waking up from their trance that seems to be that the Federal Government is above the law?

And, if you happen to log onto my website http://www.schorel-hlavka.com you might discover that as Author of books in the INSPECTOR-RIKATI® series I have published many books about certain constitutional and other legal issues and they are at times used in evidence in the Courts also!

For the record, on 19-7-2006, after a 5-year protracted litigation, I defeated the federal government lawyers on all constitutional issues raised UNCHALLENGED! Including as to how European Human Rights Provisions apply in the Commonwealth of Australia. See my blog.