Hard News: Not such as to engender confidence
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RB, I'm afraid I tend to lean towards brutal cynicism when it comes to the Rodent and election campaigns, which in the context of the issue that they are trying to address is a terrible thing to say.
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remember the kids overboard before the last election? Nothing Howard likes better than whipping up a bit if hysteria.
Yes, things are bad in many of these communities, but the causes are far deeper than this sort of idiotic response can deal with.
Lovely country Australia, just a shame about the poeple who live there.
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they can't go marching in like cowboys. They've got to go marching in with humility, with support, not with arrogance
If people could do things like that then The Iraq war would have been over by now.
So it it because humility is considered synonymous with weakness? The alternative (in both Oz and Iraq) is worse. They never had any intention of fixing the problem.
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http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0706/S00414.htm
Australian Human Rights Commission initial response. Appears pleased something is being done, but why this?
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This is perhaps the most disturbing of all Howard's dog whistles to date.
Is the problem 'child abuse', or is the problem despair through years of second class citizenship and persecution?
If the Federal Government wants to look at solutions to 'the problem' then they need to take a long hard look at their own actions to identify what the problem actually is.
THE problem is that that horrible little Howard views 'the problem' as poor polling with an election round the corner.
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THE problem is that that horrible little Howard views 'the problem' as poor polling with an election round the corner.
And the 'solution' to that problem is to come down hard on brown people in the name of 'helping kids' in order to win support from a racist electorate, without being overtly racist in any way.
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And yet, it seems clear enough that something big had to be done. Whether Howard's government is doing the right something, and with what motivation, remains to be seen.
I agree. Howard deserves critical/sceptical/conditional support at present rather than falling back on all too easy demonisation. These issues do run deep and have been brewing under Labour administrations as well. Both Labour govts of NSW and Queensland have poor records on aboriginal issues.
Rudd has voiced cautious support which is the most constructive thing to do.
Australian Human Rights Commission’s view linked to above is well reasoned, and more Federal money for social infrastructure has to be part of the solution, but I can’t help but think that there’s an element of criticising any action to the point of inaction.
From Noel Pearson’s interview -
…I hear people saying in the commentary, that this abuse has been known about for a long time. People say in defence of, in objection to what the Government is doing. people say, "oh, the Government should have known, we've known about this problem for 20 years." Geez, if we've known about it for that long, why is it not that we've come up with any kind of effective solution to the problem?
There’s a lot of blame to go round for everyone if that’s the objective.
And the 'solution' to that problem is to come down hard on brown people
To channel Allan Duff for a moment, this solution is about comming down on MEN who exploit children.
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Both Labour govts of NSW and Queensland have poor records on aboriginal issues.
That seems to be true, and it is probably also true that failure at state level made federal action necessary. There's another dark irony in NSW Labor's case: its (white) former aboriginal affairs minister is up on child sex charges himself.
But as I said, the handling of it so far - and in particular the compulsory medical exam issue - does not fill me with confidence.
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Well, at least it's consistent with the Australian attitude to the Pacific - send in the boys to sort it out.
Putting a teacher and a police barracks into each community isn't the same as development. How about the really hard task, finding a way to link rural & indigenous people into the world economy?
When Australia figures out a development policy for the outback, then it may earn the right to help in the Pacific.
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Putting a teacher and a police barracks into each community isn't the same as development. How about the really hard task, finding a way to link rural & indigenous people into the world economy?
When Australia figures out a development policy for the outback, then it may earn the right to help in the Pacific.
I completely agree. Is there a reason why economic development seems so weirdly absent from aboriginal policy? It's one thing to make benefits conditional: but how about jobs?
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Of course it's an election ploy. Simple politics 101 for some in that game. Find a disenfranchised minority with problems. Come down hard on them because, of course, they are just a bunch of bludging losers. The solo, usually non-voting, teenage mum is an old favourite but in Australia indigenous people have been pressed into the role as Howard's election prospects are no doubt a "national emergency" to him.
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Is there a reason why economic development seems so weirdly absent from aboriginal policy? It's one thing to make benefits conditional: but how about jobs?
one issue is that economic development is drawn away from aboriginal people.
howard legislated to undermine aboriginal rights to negotiate with mining companies over resources on aboriginal lands (the native title act amendments).
he also legislated to extinguish aboriginal title when it was discovered pastoral leaseholders should be paying their money to aboriginal clans (the wik amendments to the native title act).
there's two rather large income streams that aboriginal people are deliberately excluded from. often in the desert camps there is no work. these places are literally days drive from anywhere, and the only work is in... you guessed it, mining and farming.
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Russell
There is an economic development plan. It's just not been stated. Oh and it's not for the locals peoples but it will be for 'Australia'. Like the foreshore - Nationalising Indigenous property for the benefit of 'all' or to keep those brown brothers down.At least with Iraq the yanks knew they had weapons of mass destruction - They sold them to Iraq and not that many had died - so there must still be some left surely.
This is the invasion of the Sudetenland - a bold faced lie. Another land grab. For the economic wealth held by Australias Indigenous peoples. I can't find a political map of Indigenous Australia but it's massive.
Nothing like a bit of Hygine and the authority of medics to put one at ease when it comes to racial stereotyping from a military perspective (as this surely will be done).
Coming er hailing from a City possessed hysteria is easy and doesn't need facts - hell it's a lot easier with out it.
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Howard deserves critical/sceptical/conditional support at present rather than falling back on all too easy demonisation.
I'd suggest that 'all too easy demonisation' is exactly what Howard is practising against remote aboriginal communities. As for 'coming down on MEN who exploit children', Howard has shown little interest in curbing the activities of whites who sexually exploit aboriginals.
Try visiting a pub in a Western NSW town such as Narrabri, or pretty much anywhere outside the tourist zones of the Territory. Those unprepossessing individuals who occupy their own semi-ostracised end of the bar aren't referred to as gin jockeys because of their drinking habits.
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There's no doubt that the particular form Howard's response has taken is an election stunt - otherwise, why completely ignore the recommendations of the report he is suppposely responding to, and why add in the anti-land-rights elements that have nothing whatsoever to do with child abuse?
Re economic development for Aboriginal communities - Che is right. Aboriginal people in remote areas used to have jobs in the cattle industry, but were sacked en masse when the pastoralists were forced to pay them equal wages. There is a real problem in the remote nature of some of these communities - remote from any form of income- and employment-generating activity other than mining and, to some extent, pastoralism (which is marginal at best). For information on Aboriginal economic development, have a look at the website of the Australian National University's Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research - http://www.anu.edu.au/caepr/
And Michael - "Lovely country Australia, just a shame about the poeple who live there"??? As an ex-Australian, can I point out that Howard does not represent many Australians, including indigenous Australians, and stands a good chance of getting kicked out at the next election. Australians are not all rednecked bigots, and some New Zealanders could do with being less smug and self-satisfied about their supposed superiority over their Australian cousins.
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Australians are not all rednecked bigots, and some New Zealanders could do with being less smug and self-satisfied about their supposed superiority over their Australian cousins.
3+ cheers for that. As James Belich and others have amply demonstrated, this country couldn't have been colonised without the active co-operation of a large proportion of Maori. Whatever concessions Maori have won or retained have been through their own effort, not because they were subjected to a somehow kinder 'n gentler colonising force.
By indulging in feel-good smugness about how comparatively enlightened we imagine ourselves to be we simply help to perpetuate the situation that we're so happy to condemn. -
true there are a lot of good people in oz. but there's also a lot of old-school bigots. and howard is one of them.
another example of economic issues is uluru (ayers rock). there's a place near uluru called yulara that is the main tourist resort within an easy drive.
we struggled to find a single aboriginal person employed there. the place is like a space station. all green english lawns and american malls. you can walk 100m from the edge of the complex and you're in deep desert.
the place is a complete disconnect from the reality of the deep desert. there's no aboriginal people, the locals just don't employ them (that we could see), and there's air conditioning.
completely bizarre.
and a great analogy for aboriginal economic development. the reality just doesn't fit into the new australia. some would say deliberately.
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"Australians are not all rednecked bigots, and some New Zealanders could do with being less smug and self-satisfied about their supposed superiority over their Australian cousins."
Ewan, I agree. I lived there too, and there was a great deal of dismay at their own establishment, and a far greater level of political activism amongst those people than here. But they also have a much bigger hill to climb.
Australia does have much bigger class and race issues than we do. I mean the fact that the Aboriginal population even live in the Northern Territories is indicative of that. Prior to colonization, Victoria was the most populous Aboriginal state, which is hardly surprising when you consider how much more fertile it is than the desert that Aboriginals were pushed onto and currently occupy. Such wholesale oppression didn't happen here, at least not nearly to the same scale.
I have never in my life met such downtrodden and dispirited people. They are not so much beaten as broken. I kept my eye out for Aboriginals the whole time I was there, just out of interest, but I'm sad to say I met very few, they just weren't in Victoria. Those I did meet were almost entirely drunken or stoned bums. Never once in five years did I meet an aboriginal in the corporate world I inhabited. Not even a janitor, shopkeeper or taxi driver. Just nothing but bums, and once I saw a girl who appeared not to be a bum on a train. Considering how many tens of thousands of people I saw on trains, that's a pretty sorry tale.
Compare that to NZ, where, sure, there are imbalances. There are few Maori engineers, for instance. But there are some. And certainly Maori in gainful employment are to be seen everywhere, from the unskilled to the highly skilled. Most people would at least know *some* Maori people personally.
So NZers can be forgiven for being a little smug, but we shouldn't take it so far as to say we don't have any problems here. That would be ridiculous.
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There's an account in James Belich's Making Peoples of Cook's first encounter with Aboriginals off the Australian coast. When the Endeavour appeared among their bark canoes they simply gestured for him to piss off out of their fishing spot. Belich notes that this lack of interest in the marvels of Western superiority is a trait for which Aboriginals 'have never been forgiven.'
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" bum
I think a better description might be "traumatized and depressed person""
Um, no, the people I saw were bums. It's a fairly accurate description for people who sleep on the street and beg for money, then spend it on grog. Perhaps they became bums by being traumatized and depressed. Perhaps they were always bums and they just love it. I don't know.
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I don't see how walking in and out of that to work each day, would resolve sexual abuse anyway.
Work creates wealth, and a sense of purpose, and of a better future. Which creates communities. Who set and enforce norms. By themselves.
Yes, abuse - of all sorts - still exists in rich communities, but there's less of it as long as the community spirit can flourish.
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Never once in five years did I meet an aboriginal in the corporate world I inhabited.
Well, you may well be right Ben, but my own anecdotal experiences were slightly different, having worked in the Australian tourism industry for over a decade, I can vouch for at least that industry sector being reasonably well represented at a corporate, political and business ownership level, (with tourism heads being well aware that indigenous tourism is a massive inbound tourism drawcard, particularly from Europe). Thats only one industry mind, and I'd agree not particularly representative of others.
The Noel Pearson = Allan Duff comparison is not a bad one, Pearson has long been one of the most challenging and articulate champions for trying something different other than the status quo, which as is evident, is just not enabling adequate health, education, life expectation or living standards. I'm certain that Australia could do a lot worse with someone like Noel Pearson more integrally involved with indigenous politics than some of the political leaders of the past, like the odious Geoff Clark for example.
But back to the Rodent - I'm sorry, but even though this issue is burning a hole in the Australian conscience, I just don't trust him. I believe he more than even Tony Blair has reduced public expectation about the level of political honesty and integrity that a democratic process can deliver. And if he was serious about it, why has he waited until now?
Interestingly, while Labour remains comfortably ahead in polling, the most recent poll is showing movement back to the Coalition, so don't expect to see Howard giving up on this wedge just yet.
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Belich notes that this lack of interest in the marvels of Western superiority is a trait for which Aboriginals 'have never been forgiven.'
he's not the only one. a guy called m.f. christie wrote a history of aboriginal - colonist interaction in the 1800s (victoria was colonised from 1835 onwards).
he speaks about missionaries being dismayed at the lack of interest in christianity and indentured labour. aboriginal people just didn't dig it.
consequently the missionaries got harder and harder on the aboriginals who weren't massacred by posses of whites, eventually controlling every single aspect of aboriginal people's lives.
and that includes who they married, where they lived, what they wore, what they ate, how they worked.
ben, that's where your aboriginal people went in victoria. there's still about 40,000 (?) living there, but hardly any in melbourne. you need to go up into the country to find them.
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Ewan & Joe
I agree the colonial settler Govts of Aust & NZ are equally evil in their dealings with indigenous peoples then as they are today.FitzGerald 1862 "He castigated the land confiscation policy as an 'enormous crime', opposed colonisation by military settlers and called for the withdrawal of British troops."
http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/dnzb/default.asp?Find_Quick.asp?PersonEssay=1F9
Mea culpa
A G/G/Dad of mine was a Welsh Mining Engineer who got in a spot of bother in Nth QLD getting speared to death (along with several other gentlemen). The News Paper accounts were quite outraged, but I wonder.ANU normally sets the gold standard.
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The Noel Pearson = Allan Duff comparison is not a bad one
Erm, I'll just correct myself here, having reflected on some of Mr Duff's more controversial statements over the years.
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