Foxy, it is wonderful to hear from like minded people. I applaud and congratulate commentors like, Jayb,Bazz and Hasbeen, just to name three. I have preached for years about the removal and destruction of Political Correctness. It is a disease which if left unchecked will eventually be the cause of our downfall. Foxy, millions of people of my age grew up with these words. They are a double edged sword. If you liked the person it was one of the most endearing terms you could bestow upon an old friend, or a new one. Sure as new migrant it was difficult. The war was too fresh in everyones mind. We understood and the more mature of us just took it on the chin. The problem was in some cases the Skips saw this submission as a sign of weakness and fear, which only helped to fuel the Aussies rants and verbal attacks. Until they decided to get physical. I am sorry to say the altercations I witnessed never ended well for the local boys, and of course this left them angry and embarrassed for having been beaten in their own back yard, so to speak. The anger and emotion in SteeleR's comments are exactly what we experienced because we came out on top. My own father, may he rest in piece, experienced the vitriol at the hands of a couple of work colleagues. Whilst working on preparing and laying new roads in the North of our state in temperatures you could cook an egg on your shovel. Every night the skips would crack open the beer and get pissed.As was the norm they would start picking on my father and the other wogs. The next morning the foreman told my father he was going to knock his lights out and he kept on pushing dad to fight him. Dad kept on refusing, till the foreman took a swing at him. It didn't connect so dad instead of fighting back he flicked him around and held him in some kind of a hold and proceeded to calmly talk him down.

I guess it all depends on what each of us have
experienced. Our language reflects our view
of the world. And it needs to be looked at in
context and how it is used.

Foxy, quite right. Remember the double edged sword. I can call someone a wog bastard as a friend or use the exact same words to offend. My use of abbreviated names is normal for me like saying pollies or govt. Which you will find I have done throughout my posts. If I want to abuse someone it will usually be as a response to their abuse at me. I believe that is a reasonable expectation. If I do not respond in this way it may be seen as a sign of defeat, and so I risk losing cred. If you lose cred on a forum you may as well pack up and go home. Anything you say after that is moot. You may as well not have written anything. I cannot say it enough; Political Correctness is WRONG. I will never subscribe to it and I urge everyone to take stock and start leaning this way. To do otherwise is to lie or mis-represent the truth for the sake of not hurting someones feelings? WTF has feelings got to do with anything? It certainly has NO place in a discussion or debate.

I love how threads meander away from their original topic, you learn so much.

Anyway, BTT: given that Indigenous people have a multitude of voices, in public life [e.g. 'Fxxk Australia ! Burn the fxxking place to the ground !'] and in politics [i.e. with Indigenous members in almost all Parliaments and ministers too], with five thousand Indigenous organisations in every nook and cranny of the country, with journals and newspapers, with major representative organisations like the Indigenous First Peoples' Revolutionary Representative People's Primary Organ of Deliberation or whatever, and the Prime Minister's own Advisory Council, one would think that the noise from all those 'voices' would be pretty deafening.

And that nobody in Australia is such a mug that they can't see that some 'independent' body scrutinising all proposed legislation will not act with sort of de facto veto powers. Ah yes, you're right, there's Foxy, so good-natured, trusting, but she's only one person, a beautiful person but only one nevertheless. There's still another twenty four million or so.

Meanwhile, FAS-affected children keep getting born, women keep getting beat up, children abused and/or neglected, people dying forty and fifty years too young. Given Indigenous self-determination has been around for some time, what remedy do Indigenous 'leaders' have for all of these grievous problems ? Which of those particular problems might be resolved in as little as, say, fifty years, by the setting-up of such a body as the one proposed by Noel Pearson, that can't be resolved even now if people got down to it ?

Of course, with so many voices already, the problem isn't being heard, but who to listen to: if five thousand organisations etc., etc., can't speak in a coherent, vaguely unified, way, what hope is there with some glorified national vehicle which every man/woman and his/her dog would want to clamber onto ?

Why not say 'bugger all that', and get down to resolve the real, burning, issues ?

Joe

Dear Joe,

So what is the answer then? How do we solve all these
massive and complicated problems. We're told time and
time again that all the resources that have been allocated
in the past never reach the places where they are needed.
We can't just ignore things can we?

Joe, the outstanding example of failure in self determination is the lack of progress in health issues despite the existence of government funded aboriginal health services for more than 30 years.
Billions of dollars have been spent training health workers, building clinics, providing health services right around the country, both city and bush.
This service is so full of rorts, nepotism, poorly trained or unqualified workers it's actually dangerous at times.
Nurses in remote clinics will tell you in private of the medical disasters caused by inept decisions made by underqualified health workers. But not publically. Nothing is said publically.
Whilst I lived in the NT I wrote twice to the Minister for Health complaining of non professional behaviour and dangerous practises within the huge aboriginal health service in Darwin but each time I was pushed over to the board of management of the service and they just waffled on, making excuses, as these organisations do.
The most telling clue in the expertise of these clinics is the fact that the middle class indigenous people don't use them, they go to private gps when they or their children are sick.