Shadow Minister,

Simple things amuse simple minds!

Hi Joe,

Fortunately there are some aboriginal people in remote communities that do make a reasonable life for themselves and their families.
Most disappointing to say "quite possibly, there are NO solutions to the problems in remote settlements" but then you do offer a path to solving the problem, or at least minimising it; "if people don't get down on their own problems, then nobody else can do it for them. Nobody." True.

With education there is a catch 22, mostly educated people understand the value of education, chicken and the egg. There are other immediate problems, employment, health, housing. The long term viability of communities also needs to be addressed.

Paul,

Most disappointing indeed. That's how it goes.

I always thought, in my naivete, that self-determination meant that people at last have the power to make their own decisions. But one could re-phrase that to:

'that S-D meant that people had the responsibility to make their own decisions, to celebrate any successful outcomes and to remedy any problems that arise from faulty decision-making.'

With hindsight, one could suggest that one essential component of that Coombesian approach would be the skills required to plan and implement - and remedy - mistakes and aberrations in a timely manner. But the mistakes, even in my limited experience, have been incredibly costly in terms of human costs. They seem to usually trend in a definite direction - to divest communities of successful projects, to wind down employment opportunities, to squander funding on an enormous scale. I recall a golf course built at one settlement in about 1982 - nobody ever used it; it was built about fifty feet along the road from an existing gateway, so a new gate and roadway had to be made. Still nobody used it. But it was all on free money, so who cares ?

I look forward to every Indigenous organisation being audited, and its aims matched up against its outcomes, and if there were no positive outcomes, then their funding being cut immediately. Christ, what a total bastard I am.

Joe

Paul,

You mentioned the closed circle of chicken and egg. Yes indeed, and it works in reverse - the total lack of education and/or work in the lives of one's parents or ancestors makes it incredibly difficult for any young person to grasp the need for work, and 'therefore' the need for some level of education - any level, even just bare literacy.

I'm told that young people in remote settlements have worse English skills than their grandparents. They may need to take grand-dad into town to interpret in order to buy a new second-hand car. One late dear friend, a former missionary at in SA's north-west, lamented once that young people there seemed to have much less Pitjantjatjara language than their parents, and very poor English, and almost no literacy. And certainly not much numeracy except for gambling purposes.

So in a way, there are two chicken-and-egg situations - one in remote and often rural locations, where people are going nowhere; and one, totally differently-oriented, in the cities where Indigenous working people have been living for three or four generations now, and longer, geared to city life and responding to its demands.

Cheers,

Joe

Foxy,

Considering that you amuse me, that makes you the simple thing.

I watched SBS last night when Tony Robinson visited the Daintree and was welcomed by an aboriginal guide. The guide claimed the Daintree during Cooks time had 3,000 to 4,000 aboriginals living there but were massacred by settlers, so only about 300 escaped and remained till today.

It appears aboriginals make up history as it goes as in the 2016 Census, there were 129 people in Daintree. Of these 55.7% were male and 44.3% were female. Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people made up 7.0% of the population. The median age of people in Daintree (State Suburbs) was 52 years.

It is my belief that settlers never inhabited the Daintree area. The claim might be true of the Brisbane River and tributaries.