I must take issue with you Foxy! The Olympics are the most corrupt disgusting thing on the planet. The organisation is rampant with bribes and theft. For these scum to strut around and expect nations to keep paying them bribes makes me sick. The IOC is quartered in Switzerland because only the Swiss are so venal and immoral that they would protect money over people. Don't cite the Swiss siding with the FBI when they went the equally obnoxious Soccer organisation because the Swiss only did that to keep an eye on the feds.
I believe we should exclude Switzerland and any organisation that HQ's there. They are beyond redemption!

Yes Josephus,

Your post of 1 June 2020 5:22:00 PM is replete with "they want[s]". They want this, they want that.

How is that reconciliation?

Its really a list of demands or ambit claims which the self-described virtuous have acceded to. Its a million miles from reconciliation if reconciliation were really about compromise.

"They want" a bunch of stuff that its impossible for a sovereign state to give, especially when its clear that having given it, more ambit claims will follow.

This is what I've been ever so gently trying to get Foxy et al to understand. This is a blatant and unending power/money grab which the 'woke' try oh-so very hard not to see lest they be labelled 'racist'.

When Australia had a vibrant, ever expanding economy, we were barely able to keep a lid on these silly notions by throw good money after bad. But the next decade or three are going to be very trying for this nation and we won't have money to throw around to keep the carpetbaggers at bay. These next decades are going to be financially tough and at some point the adults in the room are going to have to tell those throwing tantrums that they can't have what they want. That'll be interesting.

Dear Foxy,

At that particular community, in a sense the people gutted themselves: the men had built up the economic base from about 1961, but the new nine-person Aboriginal-only council had a rule that nobody could sit on it if they were employed by it. A certain logic, but some fatal flaws: i.e. the people running the place knew bugger-all how to make it work; and the men, the workers, had no power to make any positive changes.

Eight thousand acres, of which (until 1977) two thousand was under wheat; another two thousand was used for pasturing two thousand sheep. But nobody wanted to plow any more (a humungous tractor arrived, free from the DAA, on the day that Whitlam was sacked). Dogs got into the sheep so they got rid of the sheep (1979). That left three hundred acres, 80 under grapes (a red-wine glut in 1979 meant that, of course, they had to be ripped out), lucerne (went sour to had to be ploughed up), stone-fruit (got salt-smp, so had to be ripped out).

Brilliant idea: replace all that horticulture with almonds. So everything ripped out, replaced with almonds, financed by a million-dollar loan (which - surprise - turned into a grant) from the ADC. 7,700 acres available but those almonds had to be planted where the other crops had been. They couldn't be kept going, to finance future initiatives - such as almonds.

I don't want to think about the four-million-dollar yabby farm.

Fast-forward: CDEP there was rorted into the millions: DEEWR came in and took the pump. Almonds all died. 300 acres of dead trees. The population dispersed across the SA Riverland, now one family there. Land standing empty, becoming weed-infested.

So what was that about reconciliation again ? After all that fighting for land rights ?

Once bitten, twice shy, they say. But in Indigenous affairs, it's one bitten, twice bitten, thrice bitten, four-times bitten - but sooner or later, Foxy - shy.

Still, pistachios, pecans, avocadoes, olives, dates, hmmmm ......

Joe

Dear Joe,

Lets focus on the positive - because as we should know
and as research has found - Aboriginal people
were for a long time not allowed to join mainstream
economic activities they were generally poorer and
only a select few were able to get any formal business
experience before the early 2000s.

Therefore many Aboriginal businesses have only formed
after that time and their stories are seldom told.
Their biggest challenge is educating local markets
that Aboriginal businesses can add significant value
to the economic landscape.

Now to get to the bottom line - Aboriginal people are
succeeding in all sorts of things and they are trying to
put their stories out there. They are working to initiate
stories and ideas and being leaders in the way they do
business.

However Aboriginal businesses operating on land purchased by
Aboriginal land corporations sometimes face other
challenges. Once land is purchased by the corporation and
divested to another business it cannot be sold - making it
difficult to get a loan from the banks.

Unlike non-Aboriginal farmers who often have been in
business for generations, Aboriginal farmers acquire land
after many years of separation from the land and have to
learn the skills from scratch.

A challenge unique to Aboriginal business is their
Aboriginality. The media has been successful in equating
Aboriginality with failure in many Australian minds.

While Australians have no problem acknowledging individual
successes - like that of sports legend Cathy Freeman
(although there was initial controversy of her carrying
two flags - but another win succeeded in her acceptance) -
they struggle attributing it to their Aboriginality.

But when Australians come to consider the perceived
failings of an Aboriginal person - they almost always
attribute it to their Aboriginality.

Can't win.

Dear Joe,

Although this link is over 4 years old - it's
worth a read. It's by Prof. Marcia Langton:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/26/indigenous-australia-is-open-for-business-but-we-need-investment-to-realise-our-potential

Dearest Foxy,

Sorry, I had to laugh at your comments, a bit bitterly.

But you're partly right, that there are many people - not so much in country areas or on 'communities' - who are doing their best and succeeding: fifty thousand university graduates for a start. We forget that the Indigenous population is overwhelmingly urban these days.

That raises the embarrassing issue, that many of us on the left back in the sixties and seventies thought - quite reasonably - that when people out in settlements could gain control of their land (they already had quite a bit of it), they would forge ahead and build economic self-determination as well as formal administrative self-determination.

No, they didn't. Plenty of opportunities, but maybe everybody missed the point - that people had no great desire to live out in the sticks, except that you were with other Aboriginal people, were provided with housing etc., and got left alone.

People make choices. They have done for a very long time. More money, as Langton demands, won't make a scrap of difference. I certainly wouldn't put another dollar or ounce of effort in projects which weren't going to ever work.

As for reconciliation, thinking about it, and after nearly sixty years of knocking around Indigenous affairs, I really don't know what it means these days. People have opportunity, they either seize it or not, it's up to them.

Love,

Joe