Stephan, you are in the first instance, confusing being black with being indigenous. Even the original Australian inhabitants were migrants. Obama is the son of an African citizen, as far as I am aware, he is is not the descendant of an American slave even.

The so-called indigenous people that you quote are also, most if not all, part white, as are all the leading lights in the Australian "aboriginal" community. As such they are just as entitled to classify themselves as white but I suspect that they choose not to do so for pecuniary reasons.

When we start to see some honesty about their antecedents from those who represent our Aboriginal community, the community at large will start to lose their racial intolerance and your aspirations for future leaders may come to fruition.

David

It will take a couple of generations before an aboriginal has a chance of being PM here.
First the current generation has to decide if they are to have a "traditional" lifestyle, or if they wish to join the modern economy.
You see they cannot get high paid jobs and provide education for their kids if they follow the traditions of their ancestors, and they cannot get educated and join the modern economy without abandoning their family and tribal ties and responsibilities.
("Well to do" aboriginals can have their family descend upon them until little is left. It is very hard to get ahead!)
Given the unjust treatment in the past, and the gross dishonest with which the likes of Howard tries to this day to deny their history, it is not surprising that they have no desire to abandon their culture for the western "multi-culture" that is now Australia.
So it is a very tricky bind: After driving them into the least productive and most inhospitable zones of Australia, we now have to either let them live in misery and squalor. (Not acceptable) Try and "save" some kids from the squalor (stolen gen). They cannot return to what they used to have, because Australia will not go away, but they also cannot just fade away.
The solution is to make them wealthy enough to live safely, then give them incentive to earn more and disincentive to slack off. *Just like the rest of us.*
It is not an aboriginal problem, it is a cultural problem with a historical twist. We need to be able to help people without requiring they become beholden to us, and also without spoiling them. Humans are very easily spoiled, so this is as much an issue as no help. (There are many stories of the "gift" mentality going awry)
I believe the author is right to focus on the basic human needs of housing, water and sewage. Education is harder as our new education model punishes parents for living in poor areas.
I await the rants...

I am sure many Australians would vote for Noel Pearson even in front of our current PM. We want a PM that is not an activist (usually in things for themselves) but one who genuinely is concerned for all Australians. Obama was able to project himself as hardworking, intelligent and caring. That may turn out to be a fallacy but it does show that most don't care what the skin colour of the PM or President is. It is a bit rich however to complain you have not got a black PM when they make up such a tiny proportion of the population. I think you would find that they are over represented in many areas of Government. Just look at how many aboriginals were nominated as Australian of the year. Quite disproportionate I suspect.

VK3AUU, or David, makes interesting point. I don’t care whether or not black people were the first people to occupy the land before it became Australia after white settlement or not; so, let’s say the ancestors of black and part black Australians were the first – they were indigenous.

But, no one living now can be called indigenous; Australians, no matter what their background, are Australian. Black Australians have no more right to special treatment than do I, a third generation Australian, and I have no more right to special treatment than does an immigrant who has been here just long enough to be awarded citizenship.

Continued...

As usual, Stephen Hagan spends most of his time writing about anything but the point until his last page. So let’s get to the part where Hagan repeats his opinion that: “…Australians are the most racist people in the developed world for their treatment of the first Australians and I make this claim comfortable in the knowledge that I am sufficiently supported by incontestable statistical data.”

Note Hagan – himself racist in his attitude to white Australians – doesn’t supply the “incontestable statistical data” that he claims make his own racism “comfortable”. And, even the first black man to put foot on this continent was NOT Australian.

“Sure there are a growing number of non-Indigenous Australians who continue to support Indigenous people in seeking a fair go and equal access to the wealth of the bounty that is reaped from our lands”, Hagan patronizingly says. Yes, there are, more than he thinks! But the black Australians he is whinging about DO NOT WISH TO AVAIL THEMSLEVES OF EQUAL ACCESS. They would rather sit about in remote regions where it is just too damn expensive to supply “running water”, jobs and everything else that most Australians have HAVE TO DO to maintain the standard of living they would be quite happy to see black Australians also enjoying. They have “rights to (their) lands” but they don’t do anything with them; and it is impractical to do anything with them, anyway.

...continued

You cannot have what is available in cities and towns out in the middle of nowhere! And you cannot expect Australia taxpayers to set up another Las Vegas or an Indian gambling joint in the middle of a desert!

Thousands of black Australians have quietly taken their rightful places in the community and the economy; many look black, many look white because of inter-marriage. Not many are Ernie Dingos, and they just fit in with the rest of us.

“If the former president of the Labor Party, Warren Mundine, can’t get a number one Senate ticket in New South Wales or even a safe blue ribbon House of Representative seat, who can?”
A racist comment if ever there was one. Maybe there were better people for the job.
Hagan’s cheering for black President Obama totally overlooks the fact that there are more black people in America than in Australia, and they are not ‘indigenous’. And, many of them voted for Obama JUST BECAUSE HE WAS BLACK – far more, I understand, than those whites who voted against him BECAUSE HE WAS BLACK – both foolish ways to decide how to vote.
The things Hagan wants are simply not the way things are. There have been black Australian politicians, and SA has had a black Governor, which most people seem to think is quite an honour. The might be black politicians in the future in enough of the sort of people wanted by parties offer themselves.

But, Hagan’s race-driven agenda will not succeed, nor should it succeed

'dying 17 years younger than our white counterparts, severely over represented in the criminal justice system...'

So are men compared to women. They've also always been behind in general health and are falling behind in the Education System...

But on topic, I think access to porn and alcohol, which are both legal for most other Australians would be a start. Can you imagine in your wildest dreams the government bringing in the military and banning something that is legal for the rest of the community to any other section of society? Imagine if they banned alcohol for men only? Or banned porn for women only?

It's really divisive and allows the rest of the community to think aboriginals *cant* be responsible members of society.