Dear Plantagenet,

Mate you are going to have to give realistic examples of why and how you think the "Statement of the Heart/Voice" Constitutional changes would pit:

- Australian against Australian
- White Australians against "indigenous Australians"
- State against State
- Politicians/Parties against Politicians/Parties within all 3 levels (Local, State and Federal) of Government
- States against the centre-left ACT
AND
- 2 or 3 States against the Federal Government?

Because right now these read as patently ridiculous.

Mr. Opinion,

Do you think that the "anthem bit" has created a better image of AdMan? I don't. The man gets more obnoxious daily, and he won't impress the professional aboriginal activists, who are hardly likely to get excited by the change of one word in a horrible song that few know the words of anyway. It may as well be sung in whatever Aboriginal language it was sung in at a sporting event recently, and all the bedwetters gushed about it.

Anthems are meant for the likes of Americans and other highly emotional people, and drunks.

SteeleRedux

I've provided argument and links.

You've provided nothing.

BP,

The SMH article highlights the brainwashing of children and the irreconcilable differences and hatreds between black/pretend black and white. It is about the crap attitudes of a nasty minority who would still be living in the Stone Age if it was not for Great Britain. Or, worse, the continent could have been settled by more unenlightened Europeans with more brutal solutions than the immensely costly, totally unappreciated ones Australian governments have had thrown back in their faces for almost 250 years.

When I read such garbage, I wish that the British settlers had sailed on by. The original inhabitants would still have been had deal with who ever else came along, but we wouldn't have had to put up with them.

Dear Canem Malum,

Thank You for taking the time and effort to
reproduce the English translation of the Lithuanian
National Anthem here on the forum

It put a lump in my throat. I was greatly moved.

Lithuania has now regained its Independence. Hopefully
forever. But you're right - Putin is still keeping a
watchful eye on the Baltic Nations. Which is scary.

I am proud of my ancestry - as we all should be.
Here's a poem that I think you might enjoy:

"I come from a tribe of nature worshippers, pantheists,
believers in fairies, forest sprites, and wood nymphs.
Who heard devils in their windmills. Dapper gentlemen of
the night who named the god of thunder, who praised and
glorified bread, dark rye waving waist-high out of the
earth and held it sacred, wasting not a crumb. Who
spent afternoons mushrooming in forests of pine, fir, and
birch, who transferred Jesus from his wooden cross,
transformed him into a wood-carved, worrying peasant, raised
him on a wooden pole above the crossroads where he sat with
infinite patience in rain and snow, wooden legs apart, wooden
elbows on wooden knees, wooden chin on wooden knees, wooden
chin in wooden hand, worrying and sorrowing for the world...

These people who named their sons and daughters after amber,
rue, fir tree, dawn, storm. And the only people I know who
have a diminutive form for God Himself ... "Dievulis"
"God my little buddy".

Any wonder I catch myself speaking to trees, flowers, bushes,
these eucalyptus so far from Eastern Europe or that I bend
down to the earth, gather pebbles, acorns, leaves, boles,
bring them home, enshrine them on mantelpieces or above
porcelain fixtures in corners, any wonder I grow nervous in
rooms and must step outside and touch a tree or sink my
toes in the dirt, or watch the birds fly by".

Al Zolynas an American LIthuanian, wrote the poem. We're
kindred spirits as my ancestry is from the same tribe.

Dear Plantagenet,

You provided a couple of Wikipedia links with dubious relevance. The arguments you have supposedly supplied are really little more than unsubstantiated claims. For them to form the basis of any decent argument they would need substantial strengthening which I was giving you the opportunity to do so but it seems you are loathed to take.

Perhaps we can try a different tack.

Can you please tell me for all its problems how ATSIC pit:

Australian against Australian
- White Australians against "indigenous Australians"
- State against State
- Politicians/Parties against Politicians/Parties within all 3 levels (Local, State and Federal) of Government
- States against the centre-left ACT
AND
- 2 or 3 States against the Federal Government?

Essential the Voice calls for a representative body to be placed within the Constitution to ensure that unlike Atsic it couldn't be disbanded by a conniving pair like Howard and Latham. If the world didn't fall down around our ears during ATSIC's time why would it suddenly do so now?