Maracas1 makes the same type of silly mistake as Ringy, Gossy & Co.

"Aboriginal Communities alone can resolve their problems" asserts maracas1 blythely and simplemindedly.

"They must establish their own agendas for consultation with Jenny Macklin and the Rudd Government and put them on notice for a timetable to execute their agenda. This can only be achieved by resolute, united action through Community to Community consultation."

Then the clincher: "It is time for the Land Councils to show leadership and assist in developing a strategy for a plan of Action."

maracas1 is presumably too innocent and naive to realise that there is a fundamental contradiction within this proposal.

Land councils are statutory bureaucratic entities, with their own political-economic agendas.

They are responsible to both the Parliament and to a group of big men who are the movers and shakers in their region.

Land councils have their own inner logic and necessities for survival, and these don't normally include the provision of effective community leadership and problem solving on behalf of diverse and usually contradictory groups of families who are mostly not traditional owners in the places where they live, and who often have needs which contradict some or many of the interests of the relevant TOs.

the maracas1 solution is precisely what is not about to happen, and if we were to wait for it to happen or force it to happen we would be severely disappointed and the problems would almost certainly be made worst.

We actually need the development of community leadership which is ethical, informed and committed to some notion of the common good.

These are not things that you look for in land council processes these days, as the influential participants in land council business are almost always looking mainly for personal or family material benefits.