Sorry this article is just wrong.
It is a good idea to increase opportunity and choice but your arguments are niave, childish and downright racist.
Comparing basketballers, rich people buying kidneys and mythical breeding men with the lives and health and grinding poverty of indigenous people is a new low in bastardry.

Your straw man argument of a "free market" in organs is only possible if there are people poor and desperate enough to sell their own organs. People who's lives are so barren and wasted that they could contemplate selling parts of themselves like new age prostitutes. This is not a world I wish for and I wonder how any decent person could?

I think outcomes are important but everyone is different and it is the opportunity to accomplish ones full potential and live a happy and fulfilling life that is the most essential aspect of any society that is to be succesful in the long term. Please stop with the simplistic "poor people get what they deserve" mentality and think about how much better the world could be if all those you see as outcasts and povos were able to fulfill their potential and live lives that give them choices that really do allow people to be their best.

Cameron,
At least the concept of equality is under discussion and action even though the action taken may not always be successful. We may not be reaching equality but are striving for it. Too many people seek ways to divide us and drive inequality.

It is interesting that you should end on such a "positive note", Cam. The report that I quoted, "Shut Out", says in its introduction by Dr Rhonda Galbally AO:
Many people in the community believe disability is someone elses problem. They do not believe disability will touch their lives, and give little thought to the experience of living with disability, or caring for someone with a disability. Without first-hand experience, they hold on to the belief that at least things are better than they used to be. (She might have been talking about you, Cam).
The stories you will find in this report will challenge those beliefs.
For many years people with disabilities found themselves shut in - hidden away in large institutions. Now many people with disabilities find themselves shut out - shut out of building, homes schools, businesses, sports and community groups. They find themselves shut out of our way of life.
As this report sadly illustrates, Australians with disabilities are among our nation's forgotten people. But it is time for their stories to be heard - and acted upon.

I can personally testify that things are in fact worse than they used to be. On the OLO forum, I often post a comment about disability. Congratulations, Cam, because you are the first person in several years who has actually acknowledged my post. While the issues of the indigenous people and the refugees take priority on this forum, the issues of the disabled are not even up for debate, on the agenda or trendy enough for OLO.

I would love to agree with the article, but I think it misses the reality that equal opportunity can only exist if we all start from the same place. How is an indigenous kid from Palm Island or a remote community meant to know that there is something 'better' out there - that a life without violence, hunger, alcoholism and disease exists? They cannot make the choice if they don't know the choice is there. Thus, while they have access to exactly the same services as white people like myself, they cannot utilise these services because they don't know about them and aren't equipped to access them.

As estelles said, disabled people also start from a very different place. Should special education units in schools be shut down? They usually have much smaller class sizes, resulting in greater access to teachers and greater funding per student. This appears to offer unequal opportunity but, in reality, is simply a measure to close the gap between the opportunities available to II and mainstream students.

'Equal opportunity' necessitates unequal distribution of funds, services and resources - in essence, what it requires is equity rather than equality. While I think the notion of 'from each according to his means to each according to his needs' is overly simplistic and removes the incentive for hard work, I'm happy for a considerable portion of my tax dollars to go towards helping people less fortunate than myself, even if those dollars do not benefit me personally.

Otokonoko,

There is a university campus barely thirty miles from Palm Island and, I'm sure, staff from the Indigenous student support program there would have gone out to Palm many times to let kids and parents know about tertiary study. Kids from there would have visited the James Cook Uni campus many times. They might even know some of the twenty four thousand Indigenous uni graduates or one of the fifteen hundred who graduate each year across Australia. I don't think people can use the excuse that 'they didn't know' much longer.

Joe

I am aware that there is a university campus not too far away from Palm. I spend a lot of time there. Strangely, I don't see many Palm Islanders on campus, though. Is this because black people are inherently stupid? Is it because they are too lazy to go to uni? Or is there some sort of barrier preventing them from going?

It's not as if Palm is like Maggie or Straddie or Moreton Island, a nice little holiday destination just off the coast. It is a bed of deprivation, abuse, violence, poverty and (perhaps as the cause of all this) unemployment. There are no jobs on Palm because there is no industry there. There is simply nothing to do. Is it the child's fault that he/she was born into this society? Should the child be disadvantaged by circumstance and doomed to die 20 years earlier than his mainland counterparts? When the child falls into the habits of his parents, because that is what he has been brought up to see as 'normal', is that his fault? Should we just tut tut and him and accept that this has always happened and will always happen, or should we try to give them a boost to elevate that part of our country out of the third world? I don't mean that we should throw blank cheques in their direction, but I do think that it is reasonable to spend more money 'fixing' deprived or troubled areas than we spend on maintaining the successful ones.

Now, it is true that the little kiddies could scrape together enough money and flee to the mainland if they wanted to. Some have done this. What do they do when they get here? How do they motivate themselves to come to school, to get work, to pay the bills? It's a big ask for a teenager, and especially for a teenager who is immediately identifiable as a Palm Islander and therefore judged as unreliable, uneducated and unlikely to stick around.