Yeah Col's right again.

Anyone interested in googling "the origins of Terra Nullius' will discover that Australia was NOT claimed under this doctrine. In fact the use of the term Terra Nullius is a recent phenomeonon and just another case of an activist court "discovering" something new in established law.

Whether Europeans owe their supremacy to being "white" is difficult to say. In some ways you might argue this; Arabs (who are white) were first cab off the rank; then displaced by Portuguese and Spanish who were still whiter, then Dutch/French/British much whiter and last of all the Teuton Aryan Germans, almost the top of the Nordic tree.

More to the point (though I can't explain why it happened in Europe specifically) is that these nationalities became much more world-savvy than the rest. You can imagine the disadvantage the average Aborigine, sitting on his local 20 acres with only the rainbow serpent to guide him, would've been at when facing a bunch of blokes armed with the latest weapons who could sail 20,000 ks using a simple brass sextant as THEIR guide. We could waste all day arguing about moral supremacy; problem is that morality changes constantly while the history of scientific + technological advance does not.

Anyway. That was then and this is now. Irene Watson has made her way and would prefer her fellow Aborigines went back to 1770. This is understandable. As it would immediately give the westernised Aboriginal academic a great deal of power,she knows that any successful attempt at keeping Aborigines in the "Indigenous Pond" makes her, de facto, a big fish. It's not surprising nor shocking, but the way of the world......push enough of your "own" people into the hole; stand atop their shoulders and shout "hey. Look at me. I'm a big wheel" Show's how well assimilated Irene really is. Cheers.

www.crikey.com.au 29/08/07.

Aboriginal assets to be seized, then rented back for profit

In moves seemingly impossible to reconcile with the protection of Aboriginal children on remote towns and communities in the Northern Territory, a document has come into the hands of Crikey that presages a federal government takeover of millions of dollars worth of assets owned by Aboriginal organisations.

. . . Mal Brough is taking from the poor to establish a government-controlled property trust, from which he will then rent back to the dispossessed.

Organisational assets above the value of $400,000 are to be compulsorily acquired by Indigenous Business Australia (IBA) and transferred to a new entity, the Indigenous Economic Development Trust (IEDT), and then rented back at commercial rates to the same organisations from which the asset has been taken from.

In some cases this will make those organisations commercially unviable, leading to financial collapse and loss of Aboriginal jobs. Every reason for Aboriginal organisations for acquiring property as part of engaging with capitalism has been thrown out in favour of a centrally controlled government bureaucracy.

This is not about Aboriginal land in places like Arnhem Land: assets will be compulsorily stripped from Aboriginal organisations owning land and property up and down the Stuart Highway—Darwin, Katherine, Tennant Creek and Alice Springs—no matter how well run, no matter what the level of services provided, no matter what those assets are being used for.

The early targets appear to be urban-based Community Development Employment Programs (CDEP). In a letter to these CDEP projects in towns and cities up the Stuart Highway, IBA’s "national manager business funding", Kim McIlveen is keen to introduce "new products and services that your CDEP organisation might qualify for".

One of these "new products" is "establishing an Indigenous Economic Development Trust, through which assets will be leased to Aboriginal businesses".
. . .

The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR), in at least one instance, will be "resuming" an asset from an Aboriginal business which is being offered back for commercial rental to the very Aboriginal business from which it was compulsorily taken

crikey continued

Potentially, property and other commercial assets that are earning an income, and employing Aboriginal people, will be summarily resumed by a federal bureaucracy. At least one CDEP seems destined to relinquish the property it purchased, then lease it back from the IEDT.

And the amount of this Stuart Highway robbery could run into many millions of dollars if this principle is extended. In Darwin assets owned by Larrakia Nation and its business arm, along with the Aboriginal Development Foundation and Danila Dilba Health Service, face compulsory asset removal.

In Katherine the Jawoyn Association faces property losses as well as potential loss of assets in the tourist industry in the millions. Tennant Creek’s Julalikari Council owns low cost housing valued at more than $2 million as well as other properties.

In Alice Springs properties potentially being seized are owned by the Institute for Aboriginal Development, Tangentyere Council, Arrernte Council and Health Congress. Assets in all of these towns owned by the Northern and Central land councils could also face resumption by the feds.

John Howard visited the Aboriginal town of Ntaria (Hermannsburg) Tuesday this week.

"We have a simple aim," he told the locals, "and that is whilst respecting a special place of Indigenous people in the history and the life of this country, their future can only be as part of the mainstream of the Australian community.

"But unless they can get a share of the bounty of this great and prosperous country, their future will be bleak.

Billie ,

I hope you're wrong, and just when Indigenous people are starting to get[at their own pace] a handle on on "the Mainstream ".

Nine weeks after the Great Intervention ,Howard arrives and has told Aboriginal People "Their future Is Bleak" if they continue with their Aboriginal ways .This is social and cultural ignorance at it's dismal greatest. What can this stupid comment possibly achieve?

I reject this this view as wrong and a remnant of the worst of White Australia'stypical 19th and 20th Century Colonising thinking.

Indigenous People are smart and versatile.

They know it is possible for them to incorporate relatively painlessly, the best of their culture with the best of ours....but ONLY if THEY want to.

Ok Billie. Enough is really enough. I ran a govt department in Tennant Ck and know plenty about Julalikari. I was there when they (julalikari) were caught red-handed ripping off hundreds of alcoholic town-camp dwellers by placing them on bogus CDEP programes and then pocketing the dough, while the 'participants" wandered round in a drunken, metho-haze. I saw them handing out padded contracts to builders then pocketing the difference. I saw communities outside Tennant being mercilessly exploited by corrupt CDEP co-ordinators and, then, whistleblowers thrown to the wolves. Blokes like you (and Crikey) have absolutely NO idea what goes on. Taxi drivers selling cartons of beer for a hundred bucks on Dry Thursdays,these taxis belonging to julalikari Council Members relatives. Julalikari hotshots at the Memo club boasting about how much they were making from Travel allowances to go here, there and everywhere Wake up mate; this is LABOR country. Nothing; nothing at all, is on the level. The ALP or Crikey or Fairfax or the ABC; Labor stooges throwing misinformation as far as they can, and gullibles like you running with it. For example....

Tonight on ABC's PM programme (while driving home) I heard "If the reception JWH received in Darwin is any indication, he's in big trouble" followed by a raucous jeering bloke. Then another as he left a shopping centre."Get your hands off our territory you rodent". Pretty negative. alright. When we saw the same report on channel 9, there was ONE raucous idiot and ONE more outside, and hundreds cheering him, shaking his hand; even a young skateboard type HUGGING him. Get real man; forget these crikey "Lord Haw Haw" fools. Wait to SEE what happens, and try to stop becoming any more gullible than you already are. or are you being deliberately "gullible"?

Desdener said –
"Back in the 1420s, the expeditionary fleets of China’s Ming Dynasty reached Australian shores. For centuries, the Chinese sailed across vast seas and settled down in what they called “Southern Land” or today’s Australia. They brought Chinese culture to this land and lived harmoniously with the local people, contributing their proud share to Australia’s economy, society, and its thriving pluralistic culture." - Chinese President Hu Jintao, during his address the Australian federal parliament in 2003

the stuff you are quoting is actually fiction. It was written by a dodgey author who has no facts to back up his stories. Off the top of my head I think the book was called “how the Chinese discovered the world” I think in his second book he said that a Chinese fleet sailed up the Thames and gave the king of England a pair of underpants as a gift. None of it is true.