"how what you might vote 'Yes' for, will improve the lives of Aboriginal people, women and kids especially, in remote settlements?"

I want to see a focus on practical reconciliation, which means for instance that indigenous children can expect and always experience the full protection of Australian law and the full enjoyment of a broad, useful education with English, maths and civics that other children have as of by right.

Practical reconciliation with goals that are measurable with numbers and regularly reported on and publicly. Examples being in health, (lower) incidence of crime in their postcode, school attendance and employment in real jobs (not the fudged variety in the public service).

It is especially in semi-skilled and skilled occupations where the gap is most evident. There a special effort must be made to train indigenous women, where the gap is even more significant.

If indigenous want to be included in real jobs, not just 'indigenous' jobs, that is where the effort is most required NOT tertiary degrees that have NO future except as clerks in the federal public service and Quangos.

Government needs to concentrate more resources where cooperation and success are likely and demonstrated, not continue to throw more money and resources to adults (and a horde of parasitic advocates, consultants and lawyers) who consistently prove they have no intention of acting honorably.

I want to witness an abrupt turn away from the symbolic reconciliation that achieves nothing, has a stake in increasing distrust, discontent and problems, inevitably drags indigenous down as eternal victims (of their own making!) and sees millions of taxpayers dollars siphoned off by the victim industry - and I would definitely count the Human Rights Commission as part of that.

Even with the best will in the world it is simply not possible to provide all services and all opportunities in remote localities.

I believe that the 'reconciliation' word will always be a distraction and prone to symbolism (and fraud and wastage).

OTB,

Those 174 remote 'communities' in WA contain, officially at least and perhaps far fewer, only 1300 people. An average of seven each. A house, at the end of a fifty-mile road, constantly maintained, a house with a bore, solar panels, perhaps a telephone box. And mostly likely uninhabited, perhaps for years. Perhaps a spot audit should be taken of remote outstations, just tov see if anybody is actually there.

Dear Foxy,

You mention incarceration. Perhaps you could have mentioned offences. People do commit them, you know. What programs are being put in place to divert young Aboriginal people from committing offences ? i.e. something practical ? I'm very worried that young people in outer suburbs and rural towns are actually turning away from training, education and any sort of participation in society, and at a time when employment is becoming harder to find.

Indigenous enrolments may be going up at universities but, I suspect, in a very skewed way - that the children of urban working Aboriginal people are flocking to university, while the children of welfare-culture families are dropping out more than ever. Perhaps someone in schools could refute or confirm this. If so, then the Aboriginal population is splitting into at least three -

* remote-area people, cashed-up but illiterate, and with little or no English, totally alienated socially from the rest of Australia;

* rural and outer-suburban people, turning more and more to welfare, and away from employment and participation in the rest of society, and becoming more and more alienated, like in a parallel world;

* working people, usually urban, usually metropolitan, providing their children with role models and incentives to take their place in a common society. Unless these people are employed in Aboriginal organisations, it is unlikely that they receive anything much of the thirty billion dollar Indigenous affairs budget, they're doing it on their own, and fair enough.

It's difficult to see how anything symbolic, words in a preamble or a treaty (with whom?) would make any difference. Closing the gap ? I'd like to see that.

Joe

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

Of course people do commit offences. However Jack Charles
(Uncle Jack) spoke of various programmes that would help
towards solving these problems. Programmes that were run
by people with lived experience and programmes that were
Aboriginal controlled. However 500 of these have been
de-funded (slashed) from the black budget
by the current Abbott government. Uncle Jack emphasied that
keeping funding for housing and drug and alcohol services
was important. As well as life experience was also important
for policy making and dealing with the crippling problem
of Aboriginal incarceration. He later said, responding to a
question on the over representation of Aboriginal youth in
juvenile detention.

Dearest Foxy,

Well, there have been perhaps hundreds of such programs over the years. If I was Abbott, I would demand that every program funded out of that thirty billions show their KPIs from the two most recent periods, what improvement have those programs made, and if none, then immediately scrap their funding.

Of course, if somewhere, someone could somehow find a program which was actually working, getting measurable results, then I would promote those programs as models, fund them generously, and praise them to the skies.

Yes, that might lead to mass Indigenous (and white) bureaucratic unemployment, but on the fruit-picking circuit, there is almost always something going on, in the Riverina, on the Adelaide and Ord Rivers, around Mareeba. Some honest work might work wonders with those bureaucrats. Just as long as they are kept away from Indigenous people.

Love,

Joe

Joe (Loudmouth),

I agree with your above posts.

I had some photos of houses in a remote location with an expensive solar + diesel generation plant. The houses were recent build at the time and could have been the subjects of home-owner pride in a city suburb housing development, but more strongly built. It was like a ghost town, except that ghost towns don't usually have domestic trash left about.

There needs to be independent comprehensive audits of indigenous policy and implementation. The Australian National Audit Office has performed a number of audits over the years, limited of course by the briefs it was given, and well done, if too politically sensitive and even conciliatory within those limited briefs. All were tabled in the federal Parliament.

After decades of ANAO reports and recommendations and its simple, practical guides for improvement, it is time that the exasperated public saw some results for the $billions of taxpayers' funds allocated to indigenous improvement.

G'day RUNNER if true, and I have no reason to doubt you, tell the coppers ! How old is your niece may I ask ? What are the brief circumstances associated with the assault & rob, and what time of the day did it occur ? I can only hope your niece is OK, and didn't suffer any ill effects from this awful event ?

I couldn't care less, what the ethnicity of the offenders are, or any mitigating circumstances that might prevail ? Too many street offences happen in this city, and remain unreported, and therefore never finalised. Particularly those occasioned against women and girls. It's only a matter of time when some other poor sucker decides to resist such an assault, and ends up being seriously injured for their trouble ?

Still RUNNER it's up to you my friend, and I do acknowledge you have a strong Christian faith, which has no bearing of course, other than it may well effect your decision to report the incident at all, unless of course you've already done so ?

These alleged young female (black) offenders, must be stopped from pursuing similar crimes, otherwise their future looks to be very bleak indeed ? Black women don't do very well in gaol at all.