Thank you Jennifer Clarke - this is a clear, reasonable and competent account of the problems surrounding the limk between the land title issue and Indigneous children's safety.

I am at a loss to understand why the Government (and with the support of New Labor) is moving in this way. It seems opportunistic and cynical. All media requests for an explanation have seen Government spokesmen from Howard down obfuscate and unltimately duck the question.

Can anyone else out there provide an explanation?

Thank you Jennifer Clarke - this is a clear, reasonable and competent account of the problems surrounding the limk between the land title issue and Indigeneous children's safety.

I am at a loss to understand why the Government (and with the support of New Labor) is moving in this way. It seems opportunistic and cynical. All media requests for an explanation have seen Government spokesmen from Howard down obfuscate and unltimately duck the question.

Can anyone else out there provide an explanation?

We cannot really blame most Aboriginal Elders drowning their sorrows in booze after gaining voting and drinking rights back in the late 1960s, when they are still only represented in Parliament by a Whitey, whom they call the white man.

Furthermore, the more they become educated enough to understand our politics, the more they most likely wonder that if they are allowed full white-man’s priveleges, why they as the original occupiers of the Southland should not be allowed their own representative or even a small body of representatives in Parliament, as in New Zealand.

It is well to remember that they are the original people, and taking note of the Sermon on the Mount in which we are told by Jesus the Nazarene to put ourselves in the other’s shoes for a time, might give us a much better sense of fair play as our so-called sport-lovers brag so much about.

It is so interesting that so many Aussie veterans are beginning to agree with the above, so different from our youngsters, including the baby-boomers, who seem to have accepted the return of the 19th century corporate colonial culture far more than those who remember the political changes during the Great Depression, and sort of a New Enlightenment felt after victory in WW2.

Certainly part of the New Enlightenment should have been not only giving our Aboriginals the vote, but as well as saying sorry for the harsh superiority of us Whiteys, to give them their own deputational representation in Parliament they deserve.

Best Regards - BB - WA

Since 2005 leaked cabinet documents have brought out the Howard governments intentions to initiate on the aboriginal people a test case for a sweeping assault on the welfare system. This is Howards initial incursion of the so called work choices involving intensive scrutiny and control of the unemployed setting them up for very low paid cheap labour in the mining industries and cattle stations. A clear picture has indicated a precedent for general use against the entire population. Hardly the first time that indigenous people or immigrants have been used to lay the groundwork for previously unthinkable social measures. Two centuries of dispossession, violence and forced family separation, Aboriginal people already suffer some of the worst death rates and levels of ill-health, poor nutrition, substandard housing, illiteracy and imprisonment in the world. Moreover, the large mining companies (who Howard dances to) want unhindered access to the land for exploration and exploitation. Two hundred years of genocide on the aboriginal population are bound up with driving the aboriginals off the land and any future claims. And it is not "whitey" that is the cause but the profit system that turns all relations into profits including labour, land, water and all resources.

Mr Howard has woken up or always known that no work, welfare, alcohol, pornography and drugs adds up to early death and health problems and sexual abuse of women and children. It is a great shame that the author and fellow posters can't see this!

So give em jobs (don't dump those on work programmes onto welfare), restrict access to porn and alcohol, and provide services.

What the hell does land have to do with any of the above?