Joe,

I know where you are coming from, but you do speak with authority and common sense - apart from your views on Donald Trump:).

Dear Big Nana,

I forgot to add that I'm not the one doing a great
disservice to the Aboriginal people
by trying to treat them differently
to the rest of the population. The Constitution
has done that. It haws not ensured fairness and equality
for Indigenous Australians.

The Constitution confers upon Parliament a special power
to racially discriminate. The Race Power was inserted
according to the Constitution convention debates to
control and exclude the "inferior" and "coloured"
peoples. It has only been used in relation to Indigenous
Australians.

ttbn,

And your constant barrages directed at me -
they're dignified and classy?

As I told you earlier - go back to your cave
and take your club with you.

As I said to ALTRAV, there is on point in arguing with you, you poor silly fool.

Hi Big Nana,

At my wife's community on the Murray Lakes, the school currently has about ten kids (maybe a lot less) and two or three teachers. The Ed. Dept. is desperate not to close it. There is a little non-Indigenous village about 2 km up the road, which used to serve all the surrounding farming families until its general store closed. All the Black kids used to go to the community school and nearly all the white kids to the neighbouring school. One community bloke ran off with his partner's cousin, (he eventually had four kids by each) so the ex-partner took her kids out of the community school and sent them to the 'white' school, whereupon most of the white kids were withdrawn and taken by school bus to the school in the nearest town 50 km away, whereupon most of the Black kids there did the same. So the 'white' school was closed and the buildings given to the Aboriginal community 2 km away. Teachers' housing was offered to the community cheap but I think nobody wanted to move.

Between 1998 and 2008, the old DEEWR gave perhaps a couple of million dollars' worth of farming equipment (combine, new tractor, two pivot irrigation works) to the community farm. Howard's dairy restructuring scheme meant about half a million dollars to the old community dairy so the manager (my brother-in-law) fought with the council to build a new dairy instead of selling it all up. It opened in 2002 and closed in 2006, a beautiful 25-a-side forward-release wonder (between us we could milk 200 cows in an hour), after he couldn't work there any more.

When Howard stopped the CDEP scheme down this way, the council paid out everybody for their holiday pay, super, accrued sick leave

[TBC]

[continued]

, etc., and set the debt of $ 1 million against the farm's account. DEEWR, as the 'debtor of last resort' for Aboriginal communities, understandably got pissed off and sent in the trucks to take a million dollars' worth of gear; the dairy was stripped down to its concrete block, heart-breaking to see. Tractors gone; silos gone; pivots gone; dairy cows gone. And nobody could give a stuff: in fact, I think most people there were overjoyed that at last there was no threat of work. At one council AGM earlier, the chairperson had congratulated the CDEP co-ordinator on ensuring that the numbers stayed up, for not finding anybody a single job. Unfortunately, he did so with DEEWR staff present.

So 12,000 acres of beautiful country and only a couple of hundred beef cattle, which a bloke in a wheel-chair could look after. So someone should tell me again about land rights and the love of country.

My wife didn't go back ever again except for funerals. Earlier she had tried to set up an off-campus university Study Centre but nobody was interested unless they could get unemployment benefits in addition to study grants. That devastated her. If I was a Christian, maybe I could forgive, but .....

Joe