Ah Crouge, little petal; you are a past master at distorting and twisting things around!

You should put that to good use and take up macramé.

CONT'D

They include the Packer family, owners of the Nine national television
network, who are the seventh largest landholders in the country, and Rupert Murdoch, wo controls 70 per cent of the capital city press and owns nine vast properties. The two top private land-holders, Hugh McLachlan and the McDonald family, both have close ties with the
National Party, (previous government's coalition partners).

In essence, Howard's law meant the expropriation from one group of Australians, the indigenous people, of property rights that the High Court had said was theirs, the object being to advantage another group, all of whom happen to be white and wealthy.

Right down to its obfuscating detail, the new law was reminiscent of
those enacted by the apartheid regime in South Africa. It was this
that the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination condemned, with one committee member describing the law as 'a sweeping disinvestment of native title rights.'

The result has been legal attrition, as the new regulations are interpreted differently from state to state, leaving Aborigines in a catch-22 of having to prove their 'continuous connection' with lands of which they have been dispossessed.

In the state of Victoria, the claim of the 4,500 Yorta Yorta people to their traditional homelands was rejected by a judge, who based his decision on the amended law, having heard from a powerful array of white political and corporate interests. The claim reached back to the 1850s when white aithorities typically tried to detribalise and Christianise the |Yorta Yorta, often violently. Families and clans were broken up, as men and women were sent to a lifetime of peonage and children to 'training homes.'

'The Yorta Yorta faced an epic task,' wrote Katrina Alford of LaTrobe University, Melbourne. 'They were required to prove their traditional connection with the lands claimed, on both geographical and genealogical grounds, and to present this evidence in a legally acceptable written form - difficult at the best of times, but almost impossible for native title claimants with an oral tradition.'

Someone has stated that young aboriginal lads were taken and trained as stockmen ect and lasses were trained as housemaids and cooks.Now they are just left on outback communities to drugs, petrol sniffing ,alcohol and rape.
Sure is different. Isn't it?

The whole concept of apologising for the past actions of our ancestors is ludicrous. Is anybody prepared to say sorry to the white children who were also taken from their families? I don't think so! This is clearly reverse racism.
The indigenous population of Australia have been given so much by the Government, perhaps this is from guilt, perhaps it is an attempt to permit them to better themselves. Either way, it hasn't worked and the indigenous population have taken these benefits for granted and squander what they are given. Not all of them of course but certainly the media is quick to portray those that do in a bad light.
When I was in school, I was extremely disillusioned to learn that I did not qualify for Austudy but I was entitled to claim Abstudy due to my Aboriginal heritage and yes, I am caucasian in appearance. I questioned why I could get Abstudy but failed to qualify for Austudy and nobody could answer my question but to say just take whatever the government wants to give you. From that point on I refused to accept anything the government wanted to give me because of my ancestry.
The whole concept of aboriginals being hard done by is a joke and so is the idea of apologising. Funny enough, they can claim discrimination yet they are entitled to so much more than caucasians. This is indeed the lucky country!
Rudd, prepare to open up the cheque book even more, by the time they're finished they'll own Australia again and it's going to cost more than a few beads and some mirrors to buy it off them again(yes, this is sarcasm).

Here's something I found recently. It came out of an old text book...

"It's incredible when you think about it. They reckon those Blacks lived out here for more than 50,000 years before we came along. They had their own languages, their own legal system, art, music - a pretty good life by the sounds of things. Everybody knew where they stood and it all came from the land and something they call the Dreaming.

But then they all started dying out and losing interest in what was going on. They were drinking and fighting, and getting all kinds of diseases. The food didn't agree with them either - white sugar and white flour - they didn't seem happy at all.

They didn't have one person, you know, one boss, who could speak for everybody, so it was very difficult to get decisions out of them. Every time something important came up, everybody would get a say. Crikey!
The conversations went on for weeks. That's no way to run a society!
And then there were the special spiritual things which couldn't be changed. In their system, everybody is a part of the religious beliefs as well. It's very deep and goes back to the Creation and there are special stories about how things came to live and be in different places and every single person can trace his own life through these stories.

You've got no idea. It affects everything: laws, daily activities, family life...and on top of that, they're all related to one another and look after each other if there's trouble.

They reckon that every person is also part of life around the place, like a tree or an animal or a river or whatever. And they reckon that God is alive and in these things as well, so they can't kill these things because it would be like killing themselves and God at the same time.

Crazy, isn't it? How can a country get ahead if the people in it have ridiculous ideas like these? I don't know how they lasted as long as they did.

The Pope is supposed to be the leader and spokesman of the entire Catholic faith.

When he apologised for the history and cover-up of all the sexual molestation in the Church, was he doing it on behalf of all the world's Catholics or not?