Hi Altrav,

I'm obsessed with justice for Indigenous people, which in turn involves complete equality in every way. No more and no less.

So no, I can't, for the life of me, understand, after nearly sixty years of involvement, why there need to be yet more voices as well as the organisations, media, parliamentary representation, peak bodies, land councils, national councils, which all have voices already. So why aren't they using them ? Don't they have all the rights to express their opinions like anybody else ?

Mind you, over those years, I've observed so many rorts and scams and, frankly, stupidities, that I respond to every brilliant new idea with scepticism, rather than enthusiasm, much to my regrets: I would far rather believe without reflection, and accept without any qualification, just to go along with whatever cock-eyed idea is being floated.

Maybe it comes with old age, that every brilliant idea is pushing against a tide (or more likely part of the tide) of bullsh!t and idiocies, especially if it proposes no clear pathway to mend the difficulties in bringing about genuine family and community effectiveness, and diminishing violence and abuse in communities, as if they don't really matter. They do. They're the touchstone of Indigenous liberation, the alpha and omega, but about which the elites haven't got a clue or more likely don't really give a toss. So many of the 'leaders' are the enemy of Indigenous people generally.

Cheers,

Joe

Keith Windschuttle has published a very relevant paper now in Quadrant:

ttps://quadrant.org.au/opinion/bennelong-papers/2019/07/theres-more-to-the-voice-than-gleeson-says/

I would echo his reflections, and his suspicions that there will never be an end to demands on the Australian people, including the Indigenous people.

The story of the frog and the scorpion constantly comes to mind.

Joe

Joe,

You're obsessed all right - but not with justice for
the Indigenous people.

Here you go quoting the extremist Keith Windschuttle
again who imagines conspiracy where there is none.
Coming from the hard left and having switched to the
hard right when it was opportune to do so, Windschuttle's
paranoid style is understandable. He's had to earn his
stripes since swapping sides and,
like all apostates, his ideological
arguments are more extreme
than his more
established counterparts.

His writings reflect his attempt's to whip up irrational
fear. His objections are out of touch. As are yours

ALTRAV,

To keep you up to date - Anne Twomey who's a professor
of Constitutional Law at the University of Sydney
explains why an Indigenous Voice would not be a third
chamber of parliament. She tells us that:

At Uluru in 2017, Indigenous Australians made clear that
the kind of constitutional recognition they wanted was
a living and continuing recognition rather than mere
words on a page of a little-read document.

They called for recognition through an ongoing voice to
Parliament about the laws and policies that affect them.

In rejecting this proposal, one claim by the government
was that this would be discriminatory and contrary to
principles of equality because it would give one racial
groups a means of influencing Parliament that is not
open to others.

But it must be remembered that it is already the case that
Indigenous Australians form the only racial groups about
which special laws are already made.

This is because they are the only racial groups that
lived in Australia prior to European settlement and
accordingly have continuing legal rights, such as
native title rights. Their continuing cultural heritage
is also entitled to special legal protection and
sustenance as part of Australia's national heritage.

If they are the only racial groups subject to special laws,
then it seems reasonable and fair that they should at
the very least have a voice that can influence the body
that makes those laws.

If established, the body representing Indigenous voices
would have its views tabled in the Parliament, so that
Parliament could be better informed when it makes laws.

It would not be the only body to inform Parliament.
There are numerous other bodies that already fulfil this
function, representing other points of view. They include
the Productivity Commission, the Australian Law Reform
Commission, the Australian Human Rights Commission, and
the Auditor-General.

They all make reports directly to Parliament which are
tabled so that our law makers can be better informed when
they enact laws.

cont'd ...

Nearly a hundred years now, (in 1924), the notion of a Black State Movement was proposed in Adelaide by a retired accountant named Genders: the idea was for an 'inviolate' 'full-blood' State somewhere in the far north, where all 'full-bloods' in Australia would be collected and administered by a few missionaries and bureaucrats. 'Inviolate' meant that nobody else would be allowed in. The Movement recruited David Unaipon the bloke on the $ 50 note, a 'full-blood' himself, from Wellington here in SA, to go around the missions and settlements - at least in SA - to recruit people to go up there. Not a single person was interested: they said, why should we leave our own country to go and live on other people's country ? So the notion had died by about 1930.

And now it's being revised - only this time, instead of being a conservative - right-wing - concept (and a precursor to South Africa's Apartheid ideology), it is now somehow a 'progressive' - 'left'-wing - idea. Meanwhile, of course, the great majority of Indigenous people in Australia are living in towns and cities - perhaps an actual majority now live in metropolitan areas - and the proportion of Indigenous people who are of the full descent is probably no more than 20 % of the total. As well, of course, people are living their lives where they want to, and how they want to.

Sometimes, one suspects that either (or both) Indigenous leaders are not serious about making thought-bubble demands, there is a smell of the 'nyah-nyah' politics of spite and threat, AND/OR they are too clueless to think anything through. Perhaps, instead of those study tours to Canada and the US, some of them need to live in South Africa for a while.

There are more people describing themselves as Indigenous and living in the Sydney area than

[TBC]

[continued]

in all of the NT and WA combined. And more in the Brisbane area too. Most of the South Australian Indigenous population live in the Adelaide Census area. Most Tasmanian Indigenous people would live in Hobart and Launceston. Most Victorian Indigenous people live in the cities of Melbourne, Warrnambool, Ballarat and Horsham.

So where would a separate State be ? Who would pick up sticks and go there ? Or is the thought-bubble meant to encompass hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny clan 'nations' out on country ? Given that the thousands of Indigenous organisations can't seem to run a two-seated 'necessity', how does anybody intend to administer hundreds of mini-states ? From where - Uluru ?

Well, it probably seemed like a good idea at the time ....