Well done, Jeremy! Your history PhD will tell you that victory is yours and the battle is over. Now is good time for relaxed and comfortable triumphalism, as we wait for the rest of forever to play out the truly revealed glory of capital wealth, material acquisition, and ever-growing consumption.

While you are basking, I wonder if you can spare a moment for a question about a side-issue -- relatively insignificant within the overall march to splendour. Can you please have another crack at explaining that name, "Centre for Independent Studies"? Radically counter-intuitive (I would have thought) for a decentralised and partisan organisation that tries to shut down due consideration of the policy alternatives.

Tom Clark,
Absolutely!

I’m a little less generous than you.

To claim kudos is one thing but it to be able to prove sole or predominant cause and effect is something else again. Then there are the external factors that influence what happens here.

I was under the miss apprehension that the parliament ran this country and ‘think tanks’ (of any persuasion) are merely one of many sources for opinions.

CIS is a ‘conservative’ based organization that looks at issues from THAT perspective. I would contend that the seeming premise behind this organization is simply to further ‘Conservative’ interests to the exclusion of other potentially better solutions to issues.

Helen’s piece may be ‘cogent’ white man’s reasoning but it isn’t necessarily in the interests of the indigenous people. Yes help is required but this solution smacks of the cure killing the patient all in the name of expedience (efficiency). One can wonder why CIS doesn’t apply the same reasoning to white welfare recipients? More voters perhaps?

As for the educational voucher system who will benefit other than private schools?

Anyway I suspect that the sole purpose of this article is a save face ad in that they no longer have as much influence with ministers. Could this mean that he’s just bolstering his funding support?

The premise of self congratulation on the basis of implemented policy is a bit like congratulating Mussolini for getting the trains to run on time or the polit bureau for improving the USSR economy….At what cost?
Jerry, The proof of the pudding is in the eating not its production.

Examinator,

CIS is NOT a conservative think tank, it is a liberal think tank. There’s a big difference.

You say >> “I would contend that the seeming premise behind this organization is simply to further ‘Conservative’ interests ...”

On what basis would you contend this? I assume you have evidence? Or NOT. Utter rubbish. The premise behind this organization is to “actively support a free enterprise economy and a free society under limited government where individuals can prosper and fully develop their talents.” Simple
http://www.cis.org.au/aboutcis/aboutcis.html

You say >> “Helen’s piece may be ‘cogent’ white man’s reasoning but it isn’t necessarily in the interests of the indigenous people”

WTF? Only indigenous people are allowed to formulate indigenous policy, is that right? Do you understand that is a fundamentally racist statement. Its obverse is that only white people can make policy for white people. Regardless, Helen Hughes is saying the same things that Noel Pearson has been saying regarding Aboriginal policy.

Indigenous policy had, until recently, been the sole preserve of the loony left for near on 30 years. It’s about time we had a new perspective on dealing with this issue, as two generations of leftist policy have made the problem far worse.

You say >> “One can wonder why CIS doesn’t apply the same reasoning to white welfare recipients? More voters perhaps”

Bollocks. The CIS doesn’t care about voters. They aren’t elected and have a very solid reputation for criticizing gov’ts of ALL persuasion when liberal policies are not enacted.

You say >> “The premise of self congratulation on the basis of implemented policy is a bit like congratulating Mussolini for getting the trains to run on time”

This is just naïve hyperbole. The introduction of liberal economic policies across the OECD has led to a higher standard of living for the peoples of those countries.

Tom,

Centre for Independent studies seems as good a name as any other for a liberal think tank. Partisan in what sense? In the sense that they believe in liberal values? How exactly are they trying to SHUT DOWN consideration of other policy alternatives

Hard-thought and hard-fought victories - more than twenty thousand indigenous people have now graduated from universities around the country, and another 1400 are graduating each year. There are nearly ten thousand indigenous people currently studying at universities, overwhelmingly in mainstream and in-campus courses. More than seventy thousand Indigenous people have at some time or other been enrolled in university courses. Yes, these graduations have been hard-fought all right, all blood, sweat and tears: against racists of both Left and Right who would prefer if they all stay out in the sticks, barefoot and ignorant. Well, folks, they are not staying there.

Eighty percent of Indigenous people live in urban environments, around fifty percent in metropolitan areas. The intermarriage rate in the cities is something like eighty percent, ninety percent and higher amongst professional Indigenous people. Yes, Indigenous people are in the cities, and they are here to stay: these cities belong to them as much as they do to you, if not more simply because those cities are on their land, while your land is most likely a half a world away.

Employed Indigenous people have a far better health profile, as well as a much better education profile. They are much more likely to own their own homes than unemployed Indigenous people - and in fact to have a profile much like other Australians'. And that's how they like it. More later.

Joe

In fact, if the 'Gap' between Indigenous and non-Indigenous life expectancy is seventeen years, and if a high proportion of employed, particularly professional, Indigenous people have similar life expectancy to non-Indigenous people, then isn't it very likely that the most depressed Indigenous populations, in outer suburbs and rural and remote areas, are experiencing a 'gap' of much more than 17 years ? From anecdotal and personal knowledge, I would suggest that in some communities, the gap is thirty years, even forty years, in many depressed settlements. Do I mean to say that in some communities, people are dying before they reach forty ? Yes, exactly: and I would not be at all surprised if there are settlements where dying at thirty is not at all uncommon. Thirty. i.e. a gap of up to fifty years. Fifty years.

So that's where policy needs to be directed, and with extreme uergency. What are the causes of such early deaths ? The answer is so simple, the causes are all so avoidable, that it seems to be criminal to ignore them:

* violence, assault, car accidents, accidental deaths of all sorts;

* crap food, a huge consumption of fatty foods, Coca Cola and soft ddrink, white bread, white sugar, fried foods, fast foods (yes, even in remote communities), sweets, potato chips - and almost no fruit, fruit juices, vegetables, grain bread, white meat (except on the coast);

* phenomenal alcohol consumption;

* almost universal smoking by adults;

* very little exercise, effort, movement, exertion - check out the next ABC footage that you see - is anybody moving fast ?

* addiction to all manner of drugs, petrol, Ice, marijuana, kava, as well as grog.

See ? All avoidable.

Joe

Paul.L: << CIS is NOT a conservative think tank, it is a liberal think tank. There’s a big difference. >>

Well I suppose there is, when you're as far to the right of Attila the Hun as Paul seems to be. To a wingut, virtually everybody else is "liberal".

And too much so, goddammit!

CJ,

I glad to see that you're again making a valuable and in depth contribution to the debate. Tell me, do you get exhausted after 50 words? Or are you practising for a cereal box competition, 50 words or less?

By the way, I suggest you invest in a dictionary if you can't tell the difference between a conservative and a liberal. I understand that when your further left than Joe Stalin everybody is to the right of you, and they're all wingnuts. But even to a confirmed memeber of the loony left its a fairly obvious difference.

Keep up the good work, I'll be looking forward to more insightful commentary (sorry I meant spiteful reguritation) from our resident loony-leftist. Don't tire yourself out, though.

Further to what I wrote a couple of days ago, about the 30, 40, 50-year gap:

I'm sure that dieticians can calculate, and probably have calculated, how much each of these factors shortens lives, for Black and for White, and it would not be much of a difference. There is, in that sense, no such thing as Aboriginal health - there is poor health and the factors leading to it are well-known; and there is good health, and the factors leading to it, and to maintaining it, are well-known. We don't need to spend any more money on curing well-known problems, but we need to spend far more on their prevention, and on more active interventionist means to get the message across.

And that also takes policy courage. Hence the value of think tanks, to put a rocket up policy makers. Left and right don't make muchsense any more: in Aboriginal affairs, I would have no hesitation in saying that currently, the worst problems for Aboriginal people have been caused by unintentionally (perhaps) pro-Apartheid policies of the Left. But as a lifelong Leftist, I have to say that I am impressed with much of the work of the CIS, particularly Helen Hughes, who - like her or not - always has something to say that must be listened to, and answered. Thank goodness for people like Professor Hughes, frankly.

Joe

Paul L,
Do you want a discussion or a fight? If the latter No thanks if the former then less of your pseudo parliamentary nonsense and more Objectivity please.

I agree there is a difference between Liberalism and conservatism but perhaps you need to discuss that point with some in the Lib/nats Coalition. They bill the Coalition as “The conservative forces against the Labor forces”. Howard was Conservative not Menzies Liberal in so many ways.
Simplistically Liberals= ‘right’ philosophies not Left.

OK CIS is a Liberal think tank. According to your definition it is an organization closely aligned to/or (pro) business (your definition) therefore what it is NOT is an INDEPENDENT think tank any more than the Labor equivalent.

As for Helen’s piece I did NOT say that only Indigenes could plan for indigenes frankly that reasoning displays the white ‘superiority’ attitude that has been/is the problem.(I’ve explained this previously at length.)

Noel Pearson is an impressive person but some sort of Black oracle?

Your 30 year comment is nonsense and unproductive. Let’s agree that the policies since colonization have been white centric crap and move on.

The take over of the aboriginal communities because of ‘child sex slaves’ was rubbish. Of the 7000+ children tested 4 have resulted in action. Additionally the leakee was a manager from the liberal minister’s own dept.

As for the CIS may not care about votes but the liberals do.

Your last Quote left out the point "…At what cost." (in money and to the people)

Your statement that Liberal policies are shared across the OECD. Talk about bad expression. I'm sure the arrogance this implies was an oversight.

we have different conditions and circumstances the President Of the OECD was recently here and not all that complementary to Liberal policy.

BTW I am not A leftie either as I told you elsewhere I am neither left or right.
I assess isues on their merit not on dogma.

To cross-post from "Put any pension increase into rent assistance?" at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2129&page=0#45143

Did even one caller phone in (to Australia Talks http://www.abc.net.au/rn/australiatalks/stories/2008/2360745.htm) to support the program guest Jeremy Sammut from the Center for 'Independent' Studies?

His statistics that 'proved' that old age pensioner had increased in real terms were shown to be utter nonsense by the near tidal wave of callers with harrowing stories of financial hardship. A good start to helping them would be to remove the tax concessional status of bodies like the C.I.S and put the funds saved towards increasing the pension.