ttbn, after the spectacular failure of your 'Great White Hope' Cory Bernardi, maybe you can hitch your wagon to the Three Stooges George, Matt and Barney.

I don't have much of a problem with this ruling, as it does not apply to everyone with aboriginal blood only those accepted into an aboriginal community as aboriginal. I see it as being accepted as an aboriginal "citizen" parallel to the normal citizenship.

However, I do see the risk of this being abused.

SM,

There are no forms of parallel citizenship in Australia. There used to be a perverted form of that concept in South Africa :) It was called 'Apartheid'.

So now another criminal has claimed the right, as someone of Indigenous ancestry, not to be deported. He claims to have Tasmanian ancestry but nobody in Tasmania seems to agree. Perhaps Minister Wyatt will vouch for him too. Or some organisation will quickly sign him in.

Family trees, genealogies, registers: they do seem to be becoming more necessary by the week.

Joe

LM,

The dual level of citizenship has been in place for decades with native title, it just hasn't been addressed as such before. If the 3rd house of parliament gets established, the process will be complete.

In Aus everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others.

Henry Ergas has a brilliant and incisive article in today's Australian:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/foolish-alien-ruling-turns-indigenous-gap-into-a-chasm/news-story/293df11db0a3f0be6139421deec3715b

He always writes with clear logic and an enormous fund of broad expertise across many fields.

In this article, he is concerned about the creation of different classes of Australians and aliens who can claim rights as Australians. It seems to me that the majority Justices assumed many facets that had to be demonstrated, for example that - almost by (racist?) definition - all people of Aboriginal ancestry thereby have deep attachment to the land, etc. - which surely has to be proven or demonstrated rather than merely assumed ?

Most Aboriginal people I know, particularly young people, never really give 'their lands' a second thought and may have never taken the trouble to ever visit it, except perhaps for the one or two hours required for some funeral, for which many never even get out of their cars.

How can anybody champion the rights of other people in some putative group to have more rights than themselves ? I'm always fully in support of the fullest possible equality, equal rights, equal opportunities, for all Australians including Indigenous Australians. But no more than that - nobody should have more rights than anybody else. That's enough of a task.

Joe