Rainier,

You obviously didn't get the point of my reference to ' ad hominem'.

do you get this?

concentrate, it takes some deep thinking but I'm sure you can get there...

"As for what we were like before we met you, I no longer care. No periods of time over which my ancestors held sway, no documentation of complex civilizations, is any comfort to me. Even if I really came from people who were living like monkeys in trees, it was better to be that than what happened to me, what I became after I met you."

*Jamaica Kincaid*

Did you get the latest from the Territory and from Brough?

Indigenous representation is now an impossibility.

Well Brough is right! As long as we have hundreds of white amateurs like you providing gratuitously stupid commentary - how are we supposed to be heard?

Rainer,

Aboriginal people are citizens of this country. They are entitled to the protection of the law, just the same as all other citizens or indeed as are all people within this country, citizens or not.

You speak of customary law. Why should citizens be subject to two sets of laws? 1967 gave Aboriginal people the right to be counted as Australians, why do yau and others seek to deny them that right?

An Aboriginal woman of my acquaintance was married as a child under customary law, she wanted nothing to do with her tribal husband but at the age of 14 she was taken by him. She, little more than a chld was raped. Eventually she got away from him and her people, got an education and became a successful businesswoman in Sydney.

There has been time and money enough spent since 1967 to have educated the current generations in living according to the law of the majority of Australians.
Why should Aboriginal women be denied their rights as Australian women?

This is the 21st Century, keep the enobling parts of your culture but discard the parts that hold you back.

Is mise ,
Seemingly never ending white Racism holds Aboriginal People back, nothing else . Some can beat it, many can't.

The vast majority receive it in various degrees from the day they are born.

If you can't see that now , you never will.

The Howard /Brough Intervention laws of the Northern Territory are a set of laws that it is well known, Racially discriminate against a certain unique group of people in the NT.

Surprise, surprise, the people are not white, unlike those that have the power now in Australia and many do not speak English.

In fact they speak and have their very OWN language .

Can you converse in an original Australian Language??