Joe>> The image of Indonesian kids, all clean and beautifully dressed, streaming out of rat-hole slums in Djakarta, almost had me in tears, it really did. I've seen similar pictures of Tanzanian kids like that, keen, clean, so enthusiastic, and you imagine the work their mothers have gone through to get them ready and how much they invest in those beautiful kids.

And then you know that Aboriginal kids even in remote settlements have so much available and waste it. What a travesty.

Poverty ? Rubbish.<<

This racist dribble is what I find repugnant Joe. Your observation that Asian and African kids are keen, clean, so enthusiastic, and our own native kids are sheit according to your knowledgeable inference, who voted you arbitrator.

If you want to do some crying Joe, cry over aboriginal child mortality rates or the fact that first Aussies die 17 years earlier than the rest of us.
http://www.aihw.gov.au/indigenous-life-expectancy/

“Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples born in the period 1996-2001 are estimated to have a life expectancy at birth of 59.4 years for males, and 64.8 years for females. This is approximately 16-17 years less than the overall Australian population born over the same period.”

http://www.healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/health-facts/overviews/mortality

Aboriginal children aged 1-4 have TWICE the death rate of the same age group in the rest of the population.

TBC

Joe we are part nature and we are part nurture and the Aboriginal kids have been short changed on both accounts when it comes to “fitting in” and “toeing the line. They are not psychologically equipped for it. The Australian aboriginals had the keenest eyesight of all humans, they needed it for hunting, nature gave it to them through evolution, but it did not equip them for cold water immersion into our Caucasian culture.

Not third world indeed sport. Your mate Frank Pledge can make all the comparisons he likes to the “third world” he has experienced because the comparison is not even near valid. If he was comparing our brothers and sisters with another 100 odd years out of the Stone Age culture and found a difference, then he could make some assumptions…as it is he is full of himself, another self proclaimed arbitrator.

Thank you, Son of Gloin,

You have to break down those figures - you always have to, in all fields of Aboriginal affairs - city versus remote, working- versus welfare-oriented. If you did, you would find that in the cities, especially amongst the majority of Indigenous people who are working, life expectancy is not much worse than it is for non-Indigenous people. Five or ten years, maybe.

BUT in more remote settlements, the gap in life expectancy is far, far higher - maybe up to forty years.

Forty years.

40 years. Not 15. Yes, people are dying very often in their late thirties and early forties, usually from the grog, ganja or violence.

I think that every bloke I worked with up in the 'community' has gone now, and most of the women too. I had one good friend who died, mainly from the grog, in his twenties. Others in their thirties. My wife's best friend on the 'mission' topped herself at 33. A couple of my work-mates drowned in the Murray, as well as a couple of kids. One other kid ODd on petrol in a tent. Another friend of my son's was burnt to death trapped in a car after an accident. At least one other 20-year-old died in a car accident.

All of this in a 'community' of barely 120 people. I reckon I must have gone to a hundred funerals there. I helped to dig some of the graves too, some for people I really loved and respected. I remember one week when three people died, I think in early 1974, including the Chairperson, a wonderful old bloke, really dedicated. Christ, I'm already fifteen years than he was then. Life's not fair, is it ?

So yeah, I'm sort of aware of the difference in life expectancy. But thanks for reminding me.

Have a good night.

Joe

SOG! nice of you bloke .
To give such unchallenged evidene some know bugger all about the subject.
Not having a go at you bloke, you do the best with what little you have.
And its nice to see you being happy,and wrong in every post.
Loudmouth the word will send the pidgins in the air, but Socialism ,and we have it in part, must take new paths.
I came from not the squalor but you can bet on it the poverty these folk,sorry in bigger numbers than you think, live in.
My mum and dad however knew of better times.
They force fed us [so happy they did] to get a job and plan our lives around it, give a fair days work for a fair days pay.
Buy a block of land build a home.
If it costs more, but is controlled and made to be productive, every race in our country should be given work never Never the dole.
That should stall those looking at race as the problem.
WE CREATED the sit down money driver of both poverty and we in not demanding better, are as bad as any in the case of the ruined houses.
240 ks away from Sydney conditions are as bad as any place.
I unlike SOG demand better

I, like others, am waiting to hear how to tackle the problem. Again I ask, what has not been tried.

Like Belly, I to grew up in very low income family and one of 8 kids, but that is no reason for squalor. Mum had us all clean and tidy with warm and safe beds to sleep in. We were also taught about right and wrong and to respect others. So why is it aboriginals want to live in squalor.

We desperately need answers and to try to get some self respect into the communities. The high death rates reflect the squalor, neglect and abuse.

I think it's what you get when you are straddling two cultures, and yet not buying into either of them with any real commitment

When your own culture is unravelling, when there is no overarching system in which to plot your course, when communities are rendered slack-jawed inebriates in a haze of alcohol-induced stupor....hopelessness

There are of course children in Asia and South America who are forced to scavenge on rubbish tips for their survival - these on the outskirts of urban centres. In Mumbai, there's a square mile of slums, hosting a million people called Dharavi. The people there have formed tight-knit communities and most of Mumbai's recycling is done from the adjoining rubbish tip. I'm supposing these people manage because they have quite an impressive community and they have a purpose.....their culture sustains them, they've adapted to their situation, even in a situation most of us couldn't imagine.

I'm also surmising that they wouldn't have a hope in hell if their communities were awash in grog.