Meg1

It is refreshing to hear someone who knows what they are talking about. Most of the self loathing whites sit in pretty Suburbs never having encountered the theft, anti social behaviour and the total lack of respect for oneself and others that take place in many aboriginal households. My experience with many aboriginals is that the ones who want to break free from decadent lifestyles are shunned by other family members. Until the aboriginal industry stops blaming others conditions will never improve. Millions upon millions of dollars have been handed over with only despair to show for it.

rainer - it's not bitterness - look again, it's weariness.

nothing changes - the article is yet another in a long line of "gosh why is it so awful for these people" then look for external reasons - and never finding them because the reasons for their state are not external, they are internal.

Until we stop tolerating their indifference to improving themselves, they will not change. It's just too easy to lay back, blame the world, get another handout, house, whatever, at taxpayer expense, blame "whitey" and the aboriginal industry all nod in unison saying of course it's not your fault - it's society not giving you a chance to develop and express yourselves in the way of dream time or whatever confabulated nonsense takes the current fancy of apologists.

If this isn't true, then why is it the accepted truth of the Australian community. If it was Global Warming, then a consensus is happily accepted, but when it comes to this sad little industry you don't like the consensus.

Give us some return for our years and years of funding and putting up with this whole sad state of affairs and we might have some hope, but please no more lecturing us on what we have to do .. tell it to them.

This dilemma could be the worlds most difficult problem , last 3 posts.

I believe I am one of the few anti racists in Australia . Maybe the world .
My kids think I have lost the plot , because tears well up in my eyes when I hear Bob Dylan , Slim Dusty and when Obarma won the Presidency and of course Judith Durham .

I know also how Lucky I am , I drew the skin color I did , for Aussies are the quality racists of the world .

I firmly believe Political Correctness now embraced by nearly all Aussies is the cause of this attitude , it's hidden , out of mind , it's like "cu**" even if your a heathen you wouldn't say it in the vast majority of places .
The Aboriginals themselves grow these attitudes , they definitely need to tidy up their act , an old saying "The Environment Breeds the Brute"
and of course now having bred the brute the "Environment" now doesn't want to like the result so pretends it's not there .......political correctness ?
One person who contributed most to this miasma was Whitlam . Station properties in the outback employed Aboriginal people as stockmen and laborers one station I know about had a couple of families plus rellies probably about 25 people , provided for all was housing , food , grog ,water , not a seasonal arrangement all year permanent , the only stipulation was 3 men were to be available whenever required .
Whitlam decided all the stockmen had to be paid white mans wages , so that meant 10 Stockmen had to be paid , what happened is history .
He would have done the Aboriginals a great service if he had stuck to flitting all around the world as he loved to do . The poor Aboriginals had to move into town where alcohol became an enduring problem and a never ending problem for the taxpayer .

Leigh seems to me to be the kind of non-Indigenous Australian for whom the rest of us had to apologise.

After wading through his extraordinarily hateful diatribe above, one can only infer that Leigh is not only one of those 'white' Australians who doesn't actually know any Aboriginal people. but does so by preference.

Why do you hate Aborigines, Leigh?

What a sad lot of posts. Where is compassion and where is the helping hand for the downtrodden? Not much in evidence here. Just selfishness and denial. Sad!

Interesting article. I think I am quite lucky to work with indigenous people on a daily basis, as part of a very ethnically diverse school population. About 25% of our students are ATSI students and the others are primarily white from a variety of British and European backgrounds.

One thing I have noticed is that the kids segregate themselves. I went into a classroom the other day and it was divided down the middle: white on one side, black on the other. While all students were learning the same things, there was absolutely no interaction between the two groups - it was as if the two classes had been accidentally timetabled in the same room.

Why the self-imposed isolation? I think the kids just had too little in common. The indigenous kids were not speaking English amongst themselves, and the white kids certainly had no idea what they were saying. Each group had simply gravitated towards like-minded people and formed social groups along those lines.

Interestingly, despite the overwhelming white majority, in our school culture calling someone "white" is used as an insult. I have heard many students say "I'm not working with him because he's white" or "I'm not doing what you white people say", but the reverse is not true. This is mentioned not as condemnation of black people, but as an indicator that the division still runs quite deep.

The athletic kids are a bit different - the students have something beyond race to draw them together and it is heartening to see that, by the end of Year 12, footy players or netballers or touch players or members of any teams are drawn together on and off the field because of this common interest rather than because of race. I think we could move well ahead of our current situation if this community spirit could extend further.