NT intervention review: Watch the body count

Enjoying a leisurely post prandial (well, OK, post glass of water and two Panadol – shame that I don’t have any shares in GlaxoSmithKline) read of today’s edition of Crikey, I was electrified by Chris Graham’s latest piece. So I hopped on the blower to Canberra, and soon was talking with the great man himself. Chris kindly gave permission for the piece to be republished on Webdiary, and even more kindly offered to send us the uncut version for publication. Thank you, Chris. I hope that the following biog is not too inappropriate:

Chris Graham, editor of the National Indigenous Times, had an “old school” start to his career in media. He began as a copyboy with The Sydney Morning Herald back in 1988, was part of the team that began the National Indigenous Times in 2002, and has been with that organisation ever since.
Together with Brian Johnstone (also of the National Indigenous Times) and Laura Tingle of the Australian Financial Review, Chris won the 2005 Walkley Award for Coverage of Indigenous Affairs. The Walkley citation reads:
In late October 2004, the National Indigenous Times (NIT) began publishing a series of leaked federal cabinet documents relating to the government's proposed abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) and plans for sweeping changes to welfare delivery to Aboriginal people, including Shared Responsibility Agreements.
Graham and Johnstone engaged Tingle at The Australian Financial Review, who recognised the leaks' importance on two fronts, both in the shift in Indigenous policy and the likely directions of broader welfare policy.
The Times exposed government inaction and failures in Indigenous affairs, while Tingle's stories concentrated on plans for welfare reform. The NIT offices were raided by the Australian Federal Police soon after.

As some Webdiarists know, the situation of indigenous Australians is a subject close to my heart. Having recently returned from two months in a remote Northern Territory community, all I can say is that I endorse every point that Chris makes.

NT intervention review: Watch the body count
by Chris Graham

The news that the much-awaited review into the Northern Territory intervention has been delayed several weeks has stirred up a little concern in Indigenous affairs.

Theories abound that Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin has sent the review group back to the drawing board in an effort to get a more ‘palatable’ review report.

Relax people. We’re not working with the National Indigenous Council here. The review group is not simply going to rubber-stamp the excesses of a racist government. It is an eminent body – I can’t imagine David Ross, Peter Yu, Dr John Taylor, Bill Gray, Dr Mark Wenitong, Marcia Ella-Duncan et al putting their name to some piece of shoddy ‘here’s what you want to here’.

Besides, two weeks isn’t much of a delay, particularly not in the interests of getting something so important right.

Speaking of which, news from inside the intervention is that Indigenous affairs watchers should prepare themselves for some staggering incompetence. Even those already well-versed with government failure after government failure in Indigenous service delivery are going to be shocked. I can smell a Royal Commission on the horizon … and if Jenny Macklin has any sense, she’ll start drawing up its guidelines later this afternoon (I’m available to help, if you need it, Jenny).

In the area of housing, government bureaucrats have expended millions - and I mean MILLIONS - with nothing (and I mean NOTHING) to show for it. Not a single house has yet been built and the growing fear in Canberra is that none will be before 2011. So much for a ‘national emergency’.

The review panel is likely to be highly critical of the housing model chosen by Captain Mal Brough. It’s based – surprise, surprise- on a defence procurement model and has thus ensured that the process is desperately inefficient and ridiculously expensive. The panel is also none-too-pleased at the NT government’s apparent unwillingness to open its books in this area and explain where the money has been going for the past eight years.

Among other things, the review panel will also recommend the reinstatement of the Racial Discrimination Act. No surprises there. And it will dump on the compulsory welfare controls. No surprises there either. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or even an expert review panel) to know that racism generally makes for bad public policy in the 21st century.

In the area of health, the wastage makes the housing debacle look like spare change. Thousands of Aboriginal children have received a basic health check, which is a good thing. Well done, Australia … give yourself a pat on the back for finally meeting one of your basic obligations. Now here’s the bill.

Re-inventing the health wheel, including the creation of an entirely new system for gathering the resulting data, has helped to ensure that a basic health check now costs up to 12 times more than it used to. If Mabo was a lawyer’s picnic, then the intervention was a doctor’s banquet.

I’m not suggesting our medical profession was profiteering from this tragedy, but I am here to tell you that it knew better than to get into bed with the Howard government on this issue, but did so regardless thanks to a little media-driven hysteria that engulfed this issue in the lead-up to the election.

Which raises one other important question: how will this play out in the fourth estate? When the intervention was announced – replete with soldiers and sex abuse – newspapers, radio and even television went wild.

But now that media will have to actually read lengthy review papers, interview ‘people on the ground’ and calculate those number thingies in the spreadsheet whatsamadoodles … well, are they going to find something else to sensationalise?

Will they reveal, for example, that the intervention turned out to be a $1.6 billion election stunt? Will they editorialise for Mal Brough and John Howard to receive the bill? Indeed, will they even notice?

One paper which almost certainly, probably, possibly … alright, maybe, will is The Australian, chief champion of this whole sordid exercise and the outlet with the most invested in it.

Some will point to the fact that although they got it wrong, The Oz, in its defence, is the only mainstream broadsheet to devote any significant space to Indigenous issues. Which is true enough. But of course serial killers are also very motivated … and have you seen the sort of work they produce?

So how does The Australian extract itself from this mess? Well, when you're in the habit – as The Oz is – of referring to yourself as 'The heart of the nation', humility is not necessarily your strong point. Thus, I predict that as long as the Rudd government continues to exempt journalists from the NT land permit legislation, internally The Oz will be satisfied the whole exercise was worthwhile. Externally, it will feign outrage at the intervention review findings … before claiming it was concerned all along that the intervention had problems.

Surely not, I hear you say? Well, the best way to predict someone's future behaviour is to look at their past ... and in the case of The Oz, we have plenty to go on.

Here's editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell in the May 30, 2007 edition of The Oz, claiming, thankfully, that the nation had moved on from the 'symbolic sorry' debate:

"... The winds of change are even sweeping through The Sydney Morning Herald, which has editorialised no fewer than 16 times since January 2000 on the need for a national apology to Aborigines from the Prime Minister. It is gratifying, however, to see that in yesterday's editorial, The Sydney Morning Herald recognised that "apologising - however sincerely - for things for which one cannot possibly be responsible is not only practically useless, (it) trivialises real problems, sanctifying and confirming Aborigines' victimhood," negating their reserves of pride and strength and relegating them to a status of "querulous dependence".

Less than a year later, shortly after the national apology, Mitchell wrote that The Oz had supported an apology to the Stolen Generations for more than a decade. He added:

“… we believe that to achieve reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians it is important to take both practical and symbolic measures.... Yesterday was a day for symbols. A day long overdue."

A hide as thick as a rhinoceros ... but with none of its subtlety and half of its intellect.

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Speak for yourself, white man

Submitted by Eliot Ramsey on October 31, 2008 - 1:14pm.

Michael de Angelos: "You are seeing the Labor government continue as the Liberals did on a pathetic, heartless and cruel campaign to force Aboriginal communities to adopt their Puritan work ethic and deny their own culture.(the white man's culture which we are recently seeing has been such a resounding success)."

White man's culture?

"PEGGY BROWN, OAM, has no doubts about the emergency intervention or having half her income managed. "It's working, no doubt about it," she said.
The traditional owner delivered much the same message to the Indigenous Affairs Minister, Jenny Macklin, when they met for private talks yesterday.
Ruby Williams, another Warlpiri woman, said she told the minister that women wanted the quarantining to stay. "We don't want any change," she said."

Speak for yourself, white man.

Who is speaking for whom?

Submitted by Fiona Reynolds on October 31, 2008 - 2:51pm.

Eliot Ramsey, you might be interested in this account from Bob Gosford at Yuendumu:

Peggy Napaljarri Brown, Jenny Macklin’s best new friend and Valerie Napaljarri Martin sit in the shade outside the ramshackle office of the Yuendumu Mining Company. Next to her sits Harry Jakamarra Nelson.
They all have better things to be doing, like mourning the too-young passing-on of a brave young man, rather than sitting around under a cloud of barely restrained fury, drafting a statement about journalists who have misrepresented them, their words, their good work and their community.
Peggy’s statement is a fine example of anger reduced to words:
Yirdijirli ngajurlu yarranu-tjulu warlkangku kula-karna ngukuurru-nyinami Interventioniki kulana wangkaja Interventioniki lawa. Nyampunalu Jungu jarrija ngapa-kurlanguku kurdu-kurduku mipa. Walkalu wangkaja. Pungku-nyayini Interventioniji nuwu-ka warrkijarimi. Lawa nyina kanti-kantirla nyampurla nganimparla.
My name was used telling lies. I did not agree with the Intervention. I did not say anything about the Intervention at all. I only spoke about the swimming pool for the kids. They are lying. The Intervention is rubbish and isn’t working in any way at all for us.
…
And why are Peggy, Valerie and Harry so wild? Well, of all the members of the mainstream media that made the effort to come out to Yuendumu to cover the opening of the swimming pool, only the local ABC got it right -- that the Yuendumu pool had nothing to do with the Intervention.
Macklin, to her credit, made no connection between the Yuendumu Pool and the Intervention. But then, she didn’t have to. Others did that job for her.
Russell Skelton wrote in The Age under the headline, Intervention is working, Warlpiri women tell Macklin:
Peggy Brown, OAM, has no doubts about the emergency intervention or having half her income managed. ‘It’s working, no doubt about it,’ she said. The traditional owner delivered much the same message to the Indigenous Affairs Minister, Jenny Macklin, when they met for private talks yesterday. Ruby Williams, another Warlpiri woman, said she told the minister that women wanted the quarantining to stay ‘We don’t want any change,’ she said.
Peggy Napaljarri Brown reckons the only true words in that paragraph are that Ruby is a Warlpiri woman and that Ruby may have said those words but may not have understood Skelton’s questions.
Natasha Robinson wrote in The Australian:
The opening of the pool yesterday marked a high point of hope for the whole community, which after initial reluctance has swung its support behind the federal intervention into remote Northern Territory communities. Women in particular in Yuendumu…speak positively of the intervention’s effects. Yuendumu’s women … welcomed Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin warmly yesterday. Ms Macklin … held meetings with senior women, who praised her decision to disregard the recommendation of the intervention’s review board to make welfare quarantining voluntary.
Natasha Robinson doesn’t quote any locals as the source for her story, but if she had spoken to Peggy, Valerie or Harry, or any other strong women and men from Yuendumu she would have heard the same words presented to Jenny Macklin during the “private meeting” on a petition signed by over 230 Yuendumu residents, the front page of which was published in Crikey yesterday:
This is our land. We want the Government to give it back to us. We want the Government to stop blackmailing us. We want houses, but we will not sign any leases over our land, because we want to keep control of our country, our houses, and our property. We say NO to income management. We can look after our own money. We want the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 reinstated now, not in 12 months.
Yuendumu has a lot of things to be proud of. Our community programs, like the Mt Theo program, the bilingual education program, Warlpiri media, the Old People’s program, Warlukurlangu arts centre, childcare, the youth program, should be supported, celebrated, and used as a model for other communities.
And these words from the petition, while directed to Jenny Macklin, Kevin Rudd and the NT Government ring equally true for the mainstream media:
We want you to give us respect and dignity, and stop telling lies about our people.
Peggy, Harry and Valerie want Russell Skelton and Natasha Robinson to come to Yuendumu to apologise to them and the rest of the Yuendumu community, to stop putting words in their mouths and to sit down with them and listen to their true stories about their homelands.
They might be in for a long wait.

My emphasis.

Murky

Submitted by Eliot Ramsey on October 31, 2008 - 3:28pm.

Obviously someone is being sold a pup.

It strikes me as very unlikely that Skelton and Robinson would have sat down together and in a spirit of evil mischief conspired to "put lies" in the mouths of Peggy and Ruby.

Why would they bother? Competing organisations, even?

Either someone is "interpreting" the message to the journalists, or else responses are varying according to who's present watching - and who's not.

I'm not even going to begin to speculate as to why...

Everyone's got an opinion

Submitted by Scott Dunmore on October 31, 2008 - 6:22pm.

I'll guarantee that to this day some people still believe Lindy Chamberlain was guilty.

The fact that they weren't there at the time and couldn't have a clue as to the nature of events, they form an opinion regardless.

All subsequent evidence is discounted as selective reporting, biased or whatever.

I'm surprised no one else has bought in with the program on the ABC last night, The Intervention.

For the benefit of those who didn't see it and without an adequate "flash player" I will recount what I saw.

Now everybody knows that the ABC is a bastion of the far left bleeding hearts and this must be taken into account.

Not in order, I watched a caring, intelligent family man questioning a hapless public servant whose job it was to act as a liaison officer. I watched him, desperately trying to hold on to his dignity in the face of disgusting paternalism and the smear of incestuous paedophilia.

I saw people living in tin shacks while the white woman administrator had the luxury of a purpose built, at what cost, air conditioned bungalow .

I could go on but if anyone is seriously interested download the program.

Given the above rider, it still disgusted me.

Come to think of it, I will go on. The result of the voucher system is that Woolies are scooping the pool; the small stores don't have the technology to process the vouchers and you can imagine what it does to their business.

Nothing shits me.

No conspiracy necessary, Eliot

Submitted by Anthony Nolan on October 31, 2008 - 4:23pm.

It is just business as usual for non-Aboriginal reporters to misrepresent Aboriginal views.

This is what's happening, Paul Walter

Submitted by Michael de Angelos on October 11, 2008 - 4:19am.

You are seeing the Labor government continue as the Liberals did on a pathetic, heartless and cruel campaign to force Aboriginal communities to adopt their Puritan work ethic and deny their own culture (the white man's culture which we are recently seeing has been such a resounding success).

After all, the white man is the ruler of the universe and every aspect of his culture is the correct one – no other is to be tolerated. Not even by a tiny community of a quarter of a million indigenous residents of an island on which they survived for 60,000 years whilst the mob who moved in have devastated the land , the atmosphere and wreaked havoc upon their fellow beings.

It's "my way or the highway". It's ugly and it's evil.

Mistreatment is bipartisan

Submitted by Ernest William ... on October 31, 2008 - 6:29pm.

G'day Michael, please correct me if I'm wrong.

My take on the Howard intervention was that it gave licence to removing the rights of the Kooris in specific areas possibly for uranium exporation or even a world available nuclear dump of a thousand years tenancy.

While I still hold that opinion, I agree with you that the basic take-over is still being continued by the Rudd Labor government.

I believe Jenny Macklin gave their posture a time limit and revealed statistics of children actually benefiting from some of the Howard policies for the treatment of controlling the purpose of incomes.

I am only writing from memory, but my objections to the original proposals still exist.

There are regulations concerning all social benefits in our society and it seems that it is necessary in these isolated communities to do the same with the prevailing problems associated with deregulated living conditions.

I joined the Navy with an indigenous man named "Smokey" Duguid who remained my dear friend for the entire time we served together. Smokey had only one problem - the grog.

My understanding is that some considerable time ago, Koori men argued for the same rights as the white men in being able to drink alcohol. This succeeded in a judgement on equal rights.

Sometime afterwards, six Koori women made application for that judgement to be set aside on the basis that alcohol was not consistent with their culture.

If a culture without alcohol is to maintain that stance, it must police itself.

There is no doubt, Michael, that this is an enormous problem. I believe it is not the skin colour which is the real difficulty in a resolution being found, no more than I agree with segregating areas of our land on a racial basis only.

I believe that a resolution has to be one which will approach the problem with the same attitude as we would treat any immigrant who comes to our country because we are, after all, technically immigrants to the Kooris.

It is illogical and unproductive for an advanced society to expect to return to the survival instincts and culture of our hosts. As we progressed, they were not brought along with us. That is our burden.

Has there ever been any genuine effort to maintain the Koori culture while encouraging the original landowners to accept the values of our society? Sort of look what benefits you can have if you join us and continue to celebrate your culture with the wide range of options that our culture provides.

All people on earth should be proud of their heritage. The Koori nation is no different than many other cultures which have been absorbed by the passage of time - like the Saxons and Normans in England.

The disgusting treatment of the Kooris, especially in Tasmania, is a historic fact and a blemish on our history.

Let's not dwell on the dead yesterdays nor the unborn tomorrows.

I sincerely believe that the "champion team" attitude of the Labor party is more acceptable than the "champion individual player" of the Liberal/Nationals.

Cheers Michael - I look forward to your posts.

Seeing what I see

Submitted by Paul Walter on October 11, 2008 - 12:36pm.

Michael, am glad someone else sees what I see. Unsurprisingly it is yourself. There are plenty thick enough not to understand these ugly, cowardly genocide and misappropriations of others property, as with Iraq. And the Pearson brothers and the other collaborationist ilk are there opportunistically bottom feeding away, cementing their alliances with white "developers" as well.

I have always felt that the PPPs and privatisations by stealth are the urban parallel thing directed against urban populations (eg us) and that like the aborigines who saw Cook's sails enter Botany Bay, that we are on the verge of a similar (rude) awakening to our black brethren and sistern of the last two centuries.

We don’t have true capitalism that creates wealth through technical innovation, Just a lazy ransacking by un-self-reflexive crooks without the wit to then go further than casino capitalism and the irresponsible squander thus, of the rest of the world's chances, into the bargain.

Aristotle railed against it over two thousand years ago and I for one see no qualitative change, and we see soon enough if folk like you and me are correct to be worried, or if the apathetics were right after all, if they ever took the time formulate an opinion, in the first place.

work for the dole and literacy programs

Submitted by Paul Walter on October 7, 2008 - 2:30pm.

Did anyone read the Sarah Smiles article in the Age, 7/10, " Work for dole changes to come"?

Are we looking here at (finally) an acknowledgement from governments that work is just not available for certain species of working class people (ie, aborigines), or are we witnessing welfare-bashing and welfare cuts by stealth?

Rubbery figures

Submitted by Michael de Angelos on October 4, 2008 - 5:53pm.

You’re at it again, Eliot. There is a vast difference between the stolen generations and white kids being removed for safety from situations were they are being abused - physically, mentally or sexually.

Indigenous Australians were removed form their parents for the reasons of assimilation with the aim of eventually wiping out full blood Aboriginals. It was a cultural genocide.

This was bound to create a psyche of discrimination and loss that would be felt for generations.

Unless you subscribe to the beliefs of the ridiculous former National Party member Bill O'Chee, who lives comfortably on a pension no other Aussie gets (apart from MP's) who stated in an interview: "Aboriginals should have done as white Australians did-saved money through the generations and bought property and built wealth" (or words to that effect), calmly dismissing the notion that not only were Aboriginals denied equal pay (if they were paid) but prohibited from buying property.

Taking children away for all the right reasons

Submitted by Eliot Ramsey on October 3, 2008 - 2:26pm.

Fiona Reynolds: "The parents, aunties, cousins, and other family members and friends (or some of them at least) have the legal right to leave their own places of abode plus the means to travel to visit those children."

But the underlying practice is the same.

I mean, other types of state run children's hostels or homes in 1920 were probably run differently than today, too. The people taking kids back then probably thought they were doing the right thing for the right reasons, then, too. And probably thought they were doing it just the right way.

So, 88 years later, there are actually more Aboriginal children removed from their families' homes today. Bizarre.

Proportionately, how many white kids in Queensland have been stolen this year compared with Aboriginal kids?

In 2001 there were 97280 Aboriginal people and 18525 Torres Strait Islander people in Queensland. Total Indigenous population for Queensland, 115, 805.

Total population for Queensland (end of June 2007) 4,182,100 minus 115805 = 4,066, 295.

700 is about 0.6 per cent of 115,805.

0.6 per cent of 4,066,295, on the other hand, is 24,397.77

Were there 24,000+ white kids taken off their families in Queensland last year?

Or is that something they're working up to do in the future? You know? To close the gap?

Fiona Reynolds: "Eliot, what the f*** does that have to do with theNorthern Territory Intervention? Try to keep to the topic."

Sorry, it was just the "wedging" thing. Like, Tampa? Refugees? The intervention? Wasn't that wedging?

an afternoon's frolick in the (father) park

Submitted by Paul Walter on October 3, 2008 - 5:10pm.

Eliot, don't be offended.

Fiona just means "what the frolick", not what you may think it to mean.

Of course more aboriginal kids have been removed than white. Much, much less comparatively has been done/ spent over many years to ensure the status quo. What's an indigenous baby's life when we are talking about million dollar mansions and all the other junk that is so important to certain sections of the community , gained thru extortionate tax cuts for inhabitants of mortgage belt electorates?

Fiona: Paul, I refuse to have anything to do with all the frolicking that has been happening on Webdiary while I've been (more or less) away. Eliot may use his own imagination about the word to which I was alluding. Hint: could be associated with that good ol' Tudor boy, Morton... (with whom Eliot – given his erudition – is doubtless familiar). But then again, maybe not (the association, that is, not Eliot's erudition which I would never ever dream of questioning).

We will restore our reputation as a compassionate nation...

Submitted by Eliot Ramsey on October 3, 2008 - 12:01pm.

Michael de Angelos: " The main thrust was, yet again, what a brilliant strategist Howard had proven to be by wedging the then Opposition. "

Jeez, mate. Rudd's has since pissed all over him in that field:

THE Rudd Government is rejecting asylum seeker applications at a higher rate than the Howard government, according to an analysis of new figures.
An Asylum Seeker Research Centre report says the immigration department has knocked back 41 of the 42 cases it has had referred to it since Labor took power after the November 2007 election, a rejection rate of 97.6 per cent.

Huh?

Submitted by Fiona Reynolds on October 3, 2008 - 12:06pm.

Eliot, what the f*** does that have to do with theNorthern Territory Intervention? Try to keep to the topic.

Do some research

Submitted by Michael de Angelos on October 3, 2008 - 10:50am.

Looking back on a few articles written by both the SMH and Australian over the NT intervention will make your weep. The main thrust was, yet again, what a brilliant strategist Howard had proven to be by wedging the then Opposition. The actual plight of indigenous Australians was like a side-bar to wrap around the story of the coming election.

We now know what the outcome of the election was and how John Howard retired to play golf, pick up the odd award at neocon dinners in Washington whilst criticising the new government from abroad (breaching all precious protocol), and basically giving Aboriginal Australians a metaphorical two fingered salute after his previous hand wringing over the plight of sexual abuse.

Even in defeat this misery of a human being showed what he really was, not a man of great humility.

One of the great problems, as written in the Herald just a few weeks ago by an Aboriginal elder, was the endless attitude of white Australians to impose their culture upon Aboriginal Australians.

First we nicked the land and then and now, continue to impose our puritan values(only learnt by us over just a few decades) - ones that haven't actually proved to be amazingly successful as we see with the Wall Street meltdown, a youth culture of binge-drinking and drug taking, a pay later mentality etc - upon a society that survived quite nicely without us for 60,000 years.

That includes these silly and destructives ideas that can come down to the simplest of daily activities: tying welfare to children going to school. Apart from the dubious idea that any child will actually use 60% of the rubbish they are being taught at schools which have become de facto child minding centres over less than 100 years of white history worldwide, it ignores the inbuilt nature of indigenous Australians to not work to fixed timetables. If they wish to go walkabout, they will. It's what makes them who they are. Just as we want a white picket fence, they don't.

Yet we have introduced extraordinarily destructive elements like alcohol that will down any culture. Having demoralised a small section of our people since our arrival and tried to take their spirit, they still try to live as they always have.

We hold the Noel Pearsons of the world up as examples (as he does it himself ) as though he is something all Aboriginals should aspire to be if they would just accept white Australia's values. Great, just what the world needs, a whole lot more barristers ! (apologies Malcolm B).

People like Aboriginal Australians threaten us. Not physically but mentally. We simply cannot accept a people who just doesn’t aspire to our acquisitive nature. Or the "goods sickness", as the American Indians call it. We continue to proclaim our system is best, by acting as though there is no other, and magnanimously act like we will let them in on our secrets as though we live in a system that has had thousands of years of brilliant success, when it's actually been one of utter disaster with brief periods of sunshine.

I don't share the author's feeling that a Royal Commission will be forthcoming. The new Rudd government appears to me to wish to act like the Howard years never really happened. There are so many ills from that time that need exposure but the Labor government appears to have adopted a business as usual attitude, albeit with a far more humane face.

Who's 'Sorry' now?

Submitted by Eliot Ramsey on October 3, 2008 - 10:50am.

Number of Aboriginal children in state care in Queensland in 1920:

699

Number of Aboriginal children in state care in Queensland in 2008:

700

Not same same

Submitted by Fiona Reynolds on October 3, 2008 - 11:55am.

I don't know for certain, Eliot Ramsey, but two clear differences are likely:

1. The parents, aunties, cousins, and other family members and friends of the foster children probably know where those children have been placed.

2. The parents, aunties, cousins, and other family members and friends (or some of them at least) have the legal right to leave their own places of abode plus the means to travel to visit those children.

Undefined and unresolved

Submitted by Jenny Hume on October 2, 2008 - 6:41pm.

Does anyone actually have any ideas as to how the situation of indigenous people in this country can be improved?

We've been throwing schemes and money and ideas and control measures at our indigenous population for decades and yet their situation never seems to improve one iota.

That strongly suggests to me that there is an underlying issue that not only has not been addressed, it has not even been defined.

You cannot find a solution to a problem that you have not first defined. You cannot cure a disease if you only treat the symptoms.

However, deep down, we all know what the problem really is, but none of us are prepared to articulate it. Why? Because we know that once we do, we have to face up to some unsavoury truths.

Much easier to keep on keeping on with failed schemes and money wasted. That at least allows us to go on comforting ourselves that we did at least try and tesll ourselves that despite our best intentions, we failed through no fault of our own.

Hollow..

Unresolved

Submitted by Alan Curran on October 2, 2008 - 10:42pm.

Jenny Hume, what is needed is some plain talking and cutting out all the politically correct stuff.

At the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) held in WA, they promised to hold a special meeting next year to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Rudd and Macklin will call for a report, but before anything is done you can just see Sir Humphrey saying to Macklin, "Very brave, minister".

Why cannot one honest person tell us how much money we are throwing at this problem, and what are all the rorts and ripoffs that must be costing countless $millions? These should be published on the front pages of all the newspapers. Then we can get some idea of where to start.

We don't normally have much in common, methinks

Submitted by Malcolm B Duncan on October 3, 2008 - 1:16am.

Alan Curran, I'm not just name-dropping here. Many years ago I had lunch with Nugget Coombs and his son Jim. Jim and I are old friends and I know the rest of the family to a greater or lesser extent.

Now, whatever you may think of his politics, I reckon Nugget played a pivotal and passionate role in the post-war reconstruction of this country. Never did explain economics to me, then again, I never asked but, after the second bottle of red, the conversation turned to the problem with indigenous aboriginals. I was saying something to the effect: we keep throwing all this money at the problem and it doesn't get better; their health is still appalling; housing is terrible etc What can we do?

Nugget was never more passionate in my experience than when confronting that question. He spent most of the last years of his life living and breathing Aboriginal rights. He didn't have a solution.

Nugget was way brighter than I am.

The question remains: what do we do? How can we raise our heads in civilised society while a significant minority of the population (whether it be white or not and it is both) has poor health based on income and lack of access to things like dental programmes?

F'd if I know. Even an arch conservative like my ex-father-in-law used to spend significant time looking after dental health in remote areas of the NT.

What exactly are we doing wrong and what exactly do we have to do to do right?

You seem to be rich in many ways, how, apart from conscience-assuaging handouts, do the rich and articulate benefit the poor?

We may have found some human commonality after all.

Not litigating at the moment are you?

blue moons

Submitted by Paul Walter on October 2, 2008 - 5:40pm.

I don't get why Labor needs to be ashamed of the failed decade of the Howard lot. It should be ashamed if it backs off in the gutless way it has over rainforests, tho.

Is it more about having to return to fair welfare and restoring privacy, when they are as obsessed with welfare "reform" as much as the old lot, infatuated with eco rationalist nonsense and only interested in Noel Pearson's sort of blinkered approach.

Don't people get yet that an attack on Aboriginal welfare was only a shoe-horn for an attack on welfare in general, based on nothing better than a perverted and mean-spirited" Classical" Ricardian/Malthusian ideology, decribed so well in original form by critics like Dickens? Look around at the world at large people- places like India and Africa. Nothing much has changed.

Don't people get that if governments can erode aboriginal rights as to intrusion into / sequestration / privitisation of what remains of homelands, it becomes easier to continue to roll back rights for eveyone else, so that Dr Haneef situations become the norm, rather than the current exception?

They are all obsessed with "security" and micro-management and ALL control freaks!

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