Seems you haven’t a great deal of experience with CDEP Paul, otherwise you would have seen the benefits. I was actually the bookkeeper in our community, paying the CDEP wages and the scheme was not forced upon anyone. It had to be a majority community vote, with everyone over 18 having a vote.
Naturally the women and old people wanted the men working. Not only did maintenance and repairs get done around the place, but old people’s lawns got mowed, artefacts got made that could be sold to tourists and the working men had a reason to get out of bed in the mornings. The place was a lot happier after CDEP started.
As for your comment about half caste children being removed, well, there has only ever been one proven case of an aboriginal child being removed without welfare concerns for their safety. There is no record anywhere of any aboriginal child being removed from a home that was safe and caring. Hell, my part aboriginal husband and his many siblings grew up across the road from the police station in the Kimberley and not once was there any threat of removal. Nor of any of his more than one hundred first cousins except for one, the daughter of a single alcoholic mother, living on a reserve.
It’s about time facts replaced all the emotional rhetoric.

I think Paul1405 is simply losing it. Don't blame his parents though, I think he picked up an insipid accelerant when he joined the ALP/Greens .
He is the most unconstructive poster & he is constantly derailing our debates for the sake of derailing. He has no interest in anything productive or positive. In a word he's a waste of time, space & oxygen !

Paul, you seem to have a problem with part aboriginal people “ assimilating”. Are you honestly saying you would have preferred to have left these kids living in squalor, young girls forced into marriage with old men, or forced into prostitution, as was often the case? Life expectancy of 40. Lives managed by sorcery, and brutal cultural rules. Subject to diseases that had no traditional treatment?
And why? These kids were more white than black, why should they be denied access to their white heritage? What is so superior about aboriginal culture that ever aboriginal person with white blood should only be allowed to live by black cultural rules?

Big Nanna, your tag team with Joe, seems to be failing, or is it simply a comprehension problem on your part. You said; "Seems you haven’t a great deal of experience with CDEP Paul". Then you go on blasting away about the benefits of the CDEP scheme. I never attacked the CDEP program as a failure, in fact I only made reference to the later CDP scheme. It was your tag team partner Joe saying;
I was familiar with, the local community organisers of their programs (CDEP) decided what counted as 'work': the usual was:

* . looking after one's home;

* . mowing one's lawn;

* a bit of nominal community service.

Some people were on CDEP - training for employment - for more than twenty years. and he went on about how quickly he was trained in factory jobs, having a go at the long termers on CDEP.

So have your shot at Joe, not me, all I said was a quote from John Patterson, who said the “CDP experiment should be abandoned and replaced with a positive Aboriginal-led model that ensures a better future for our people”.

Indy, you said you had spent time in "Black Communities", now I understand where, it was in South Africa and you were inside your armoured truck at the time!

inside your armoured truck at the time!
Paul1405,
Sounds like you have an armoured truck doing wheelies in your head !

Hi Paul,

Strange tag team, that can agree to disagree on a fundamental issue like CDEP/CDP. It may have worked (or may be working) elsewhere but not positively down this way.

But I know only about SA, even though I was raised in NSW and didn't visit any other state or territory until I was fifteen.

No, I don't know much about WA, except a couple of visits, and what I've read and typed and put on my web-site:

www.firstsources.info

Specifically, Neville's book:

http://www.firstsources.info/uploads/3/4/5/4/34544232/australias_coloured_minority.pdf

There's a couple of thousand pages of transcript on that WA page, nothing much really.

Still, with your vast knowledge of Redfern, and therefore all of Indigenous Australia, past, present and future, you could eat that for breakfast :)

Joe