Rainer

With all due respects if people like you are trying to prevent child abuse in the aboriginal communities then you have failed. It is time to face up to what is not working and allow people like Noel Pearson who is not on either side of politics (as far as I know) to be heard

I just saw Howard on Lateline talking about this. The man's such a consummate liar that I can almost understand why those people who are predisposed to believe him do so. What I don't understand is how otherwise intelligent people suddenly become credulously glassy-eyed when he blows his dog-whistle? Is our latent Australian racism that pervasive?

As WA Premier Alan Carpenter said, does anybody seriously believe that this rabbit-out-of-the-hat "national emergency" is anything more than a pre-election stunt?

Just how stupid is the Australian electorate?

CJ morgan,all pollies by definition have to be consumate liars,since the public will never have perfect knowledge of the forces that determine their destiny.Our humanity mostly reacts to immediate stimulus of self gratification and the pollies play to our lowest common denominator.

Kevin Rudd is the student who is apeing John Howard's style.Kevin knows that honesty alienates 50% of your voters,and the yearning for power makes liars of them all.

It is not only the Aboriginal community who are in decay,our western culture needs to do some soul searching.

Our Govts lie to us on a daily basis,and we just accept this poor behaviour as the norm.

To me, the interesting thing about this whole debate is that it isn't likely to be a vote-changer.

If Howard wants to come across as a decisive and compassionate leader he has probably picked a bad subject.

Decades of neglect and abuse have hardened the hearts of many non-indigeonous Australians toward aborigines and it's a bit late for everyone to start shedding crocodile tears about their "newly-discovered" plight.

Are those who refused to say "sorry" (when it mattered) the same voters Howard is trying to win over now?

FrankGol and C J MOrgan,
Your comments show that both of you do not care one iota about the welfare of the kids. Your sole purpose is to get political gain from the issue. I point out that this situation was brought about by the socialist and passive welfare policies of Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke and Keating. This new report shows the abuse to be far more widespread than previously thought and action must be taken now. Would you condone Howard and Rudd agreeing to set it aside until after the election?

Rainier. Your criticisms may be political as well, but also because it does not agee with your agenda of self determination. Unless far more aboriginals get better educated they are not capable of running their own affairs. ATSIC showed that. Someone, claiming to be aboriginal, commented that aboriginals do not have any inherrit sense about what is best, more so than any other persons. Fair comment.

Rainier, you critisize everyones ideas but put forward none of your own thoughts. Hey, Noel Pearson is not afraid to put forward his opinions, how about you?

By the way, my suggestion is, knowing that there are some aboriginal communities that do function well, look to these and take a leaf from their book. Try to emulate what they do.

Banjo, (Runner and the usual OLO luddites)

How is invasive examination of children not political? If this isn’t political you shouldn’t have any problem with Howard’s government ordering the same for your children if they suspect you were a paedophile.

Why has Howard also embedded clauses about removing permits to lands and other land ownership conditions not political and related to the welfare of our children?

Read the bloody report Banjo: despite the fact that the findings specifically state that non- Aboriginal men, that is, white men, are a significant proportion of the offenders, who are black-marketeering in petrol and alcohol to gain access to Aboriginal children, Howard insists on demonising 60 communities. (It’s about the land stupid!)

For the record - Noel Pearson got paid half a million dollars to write policy for Howard, what else can we expect from him but the usual emotive and pathologising of his own people – he’s a one man confessional show telling everyone (whitefellas) what they want to hear, i.e., providing big dollops of absolution.
Addicted to power and elected by powerful white Australians to be our ‘leader’ – he aint no such thing. He’s been peddling his crap for years now – to the detriment of the voices of grassroots community leaders doing it hard on the ground, imploring governments to fund important programs to help them.

They spent money listening to Noel theorise his bad sociology instead. (lawyers think they know everything)

Finally, if you are feeling so virtuous about the abuse of children why you don’t write to John Howard and ask him to do a police /army raid of the Catholic Church because it has been known to harbour paedophiles. Make sure you invite all the others here who have (overnight) suddenly found themselves falling in love with the whole idea of being experts on the ‘welfare’ of Aboriginal people. If they are Catholic they might not want to join in, but you could give them a try!