I thought the Aboriginal people recieve heaps of help and support from the Government?
The Govt. has tried ineffectively to offer assistance to indigenous people. Most of the money has been squandered by bureauracy and corruption. ATSIC was doomed to fail from the beginning because it was setup without any consultation with the indigenous people. Plus the person who ran it was corrupt.
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...the key issue here is to recognise not only that ATSIC failed but that it was doomed to fail. It was in essence primarily devised by non-indigenous people for indigenous people. Given that fact, it is hardly surprising that it failed.
It is a major flaw in the Govt. that they like to paint everyone with the same brush. Not recognising that indigenous culture is different to our own has been one of the main reasons why the the Govt. has failed.
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The government has chosen to ignore the fact that indigenous culture not only exists but is different. This is "culture nullius". indigenous people according to Minister Vanstone are to be treated "the same". Now at first sight that might seem a very egalitarian way of doing things. To treat people the same, however, assumes that people are the same. Yet anyone with a smidgeon of understanding of indigenous people, their culture and their history will recognise immediately are different in important ways. The government's failure to acknowledge this is deeply disturbing. It might be dubbed racist by some.
Can you imagine if the reverse happened and indigenous people invaded Australia and forced us to leave like them? They forced us to leave in small huts and hunt for our food and eat things like goanna and kangaroo? I don't think we'd deal too well.
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Elder women are the ones who tell us that the help is best given as education and work programms that give self esteem back to their communities. . it has worked for some. . but others are too lazy and whinging to give it a go. . .that is the opinion of many ABORIGINAL people themselves.
Education and employment are not the only ways the indigenous community needs help. Healthcare is number one, there are no doctors close to their communities. I would have thought as a start they could have trained medical professionals to go and live and work close to their communities.
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The word sorry becomes moot when no effective action is taken to really help a needy people.
Gizmo, sorry to say it but you sound like John Howard. The significance of sorry goes well beyond your understanding and probably mine of the issues concerning indigenous people. It goes without saying that an apology needs to be followed up by action.
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What is needed is not that indigenous people be treated the same but their culture be treated with the same respect. Acknowledging and celebrating indigenous cultural differences must concern all of us. It is clear that the changes to ATSIC are driven by a Prime Minister who simply does not understand this idea. His calls for "practical reconciliation" are evidence of this. In similar vein he criticises ATSIC for focussing "far too much on the symbolic rights issues". That is political speak for "cultural issues".
- Indigenous life expectancy is 20 years less than other Australians and other health indicators are significantly worse. - Indigenous unemployment is almost five times the national average. - Indigenous people are 14 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-indigenous Australians - Access to adequate housing, power, clean water and sewerage systems, roads and other infrastructure is significantly less than that of other Australians
I urge anyone to read the following article from which I quote Myth #3:
Myth 3: indigenous people already receive more government dollars that other Australians
Indigenous communities rank as some of the most disadvantaged in the world. Health, housing, education, employment and income indicators lag well behind those for other Australians. However, many non-indigenous Australians believe that Indigenous people are the recipients of generous 'hand-outs' that are not available to the remainder of the community.
In Australia, claims of excessive spending on Indigenous services are frequently made to gain political advantage. Bodies such as the indigenous and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), which provide basic service delivery to Indigenous communities, are often the targets.
The reality is that such spending is mostly for services automatically provided to the rest of the community. Additionally, the provision of services to Indigenous communities is often more expensive due to their generally small, dispersed and isolated nature. In other respects spending on Indigenous services is neither excessive, nor adequate to redress the relative disadvantage faced by Indigenous Australians. For instance, in 1995-96, despite significantly worse health indicators, for every $1 per capita spending on non-indigenous health, only $1.08 was spent on Indigenous health. Taking into account all relevant factors, a recent study concluded there was a spending shortfall of at least $245 million per year.
Healthcare is number one, there are no doctors close to their communities
Well that's a load of crap because I work in I.T. health and my software is installed in a number of aboriginal clinics, their compuers, software, medications, equipment, bandages, etc are all government supplied. The people at the top of the clinics (internal)chain of command refuse to pay for ongoing technical support though so they end up with old useless computers running software that is out of date
"The Daily Telegraph has just about run out of adjectives to capture the incompetence of these Macquarie St state-stranglers. For now, we'll limit it to three: deceitful, callous and irresponsible." - Editorial, Wednesday November 12, 2008
The Govt. has tried ineffectively to offer assistance to indigenous people.
The problem is NOT the governments fault entirely!. . .these people need to stop drinking and 'sniffing' their lives away!
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. . .It is a major flaw in the Govt. that they like to paint everyone with the same brush. Not recognising that indigenous culture is different to our own has been one of the main reasons why the the Govt. has failed.
That is exactly 'The Culture' I was talking about!!. . it is not strong enough to keep them alive as a race. You want to be the big 'saviour'??. . go and live out where the problems are. . like many doctors who have given up in despair. . they report a strong resistance to 'white man' intervention and the Aboriginal riff-raff tell them they are not welcome. They are not prepared to do a days work for a days pay . . they have the 'handout' mentality and it is killing them. Health care could be available to them if they did not make many areas no-go zones with crime and violence.
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. . Can you imagine if the reverse happened and indigenous people invaded Australia and forced us to live like them? They forced us to live in small huts and hunt for our food and eat things like goanna and kangaroo? I don't think we'd deal too well.
That could be a possibility yet. . we could get invaded and have to stand up for ourselves. . our chances would be a lot better with healthy, non drunk and educated people. Our culture is far from perfect. . but we could only be overtaken by a people that were stronger and better armed than ourselves which is what has happened to the aboriginals.
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Education and employment are not the only ways the indigenous community needs help. Healthcare is number one, there are no doctors close to their communities. I would have thought as a start they could have trained medical professionals to go and live and work close to their communities.
When the aboriginal men who have sex with 10 year old girls (and younger) and leave them with Clymidia and Syphillis stop acting in such a devastating way . .their communities might start to flourish instead of dying. Doctors report treating too many sex abuse victims and they don't have time for the regular issues and their attempts to save the kids are falling on the deaf ears of tribal Elders!!. . . aboriginals own governance is seriously wanting and if they don't listen to their 'own kind' . .who will they listen to?? .
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Gizmo, sorry to say it but you sound like John Howard. The significance of sorry goes well beyond your understanding and probably mine of the issues concerning indigenous people. It goes without saying that an apology needs to be followed up by action..
I abhor John Howard . . but he is going on Constitutional Law advice when he refuses to make an official 'sorry'. That does NOT mean I agree with him (you better read more carfully before you attribute motives to me) but the legal ramifications would be too much for taxpayers to bear. . and we are paying too much for everything now. You really want to see your taxes wasted by the BILLIONS on such a cause? . .think about it. It would not remedy anything. . just waste time and resources need to pay those doctors and teachers you keep bleating about. . you can't have it both ways. . decide which is truly the best way to help.
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Some facts:
- Indigenous life expectancy is 20 years less than other Australians and other health indicators are significantly worse. - Indigenous unemployment is almost five times the national average. - Indigenous people are 14 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-indigenous Australians - Access to adequate housing, power, clean water and sewerage systems, roads and other infrastructure is significantly less than that of other Australians
I have been an eye-witness to the burning and vandalism of 10 brand new homes built to house aboriginal people on a tribal reserve. . . their housing shortages are mostly of their own doing. They want to live the 'wandering' life (which is now impossible) and destroy much of the help they have been given. I get my opinion from a well respected Elder of a N.T tribe who works in Government departments trying to help her own people. She is ashamed of the apathy her own people show and is outspoken about the lack of basic respect 'her people' have for any help they are given. SHE sees her own culture dying out and she blamed her own people and said the government was doing a fair job trying to turn things around. Educated Aborigines recognise the need for moving forward (meaning the end of eating speared food) and any education they put to good use would help them.
DEMOCRACY = Voters deciding by Poll on who will be the local member that "Big Business" will push around.
I voted Johnny because his been getting us out of debt (that labor got us into) and he is strengthen our economy. I think that government should allow immigrates into the country but on the same hand, if they are not going to make an effort to 'blend' into Australia then I think they should be denied. By blend I don't mean change who they are or the way they dress but stop conjugating in certain areas and making them into there own little country, I mean seriously, did you come here to become Australian? Or did you come here to make Australia become your nationality?
I really cannot say that the government has got US out of debt. They have got the government out of debt, mainly by selling all our assets, and moved the debt onto the private sector. Whilst the government is out of debt and bringing in massive budget surplaces, we are now one of the highest taxed countries in the world, with diminishing services to show for it, and a national balance of trade that is on a par with America, commonly reckognized as the worst in the world. Add to that the miserly treatment of the states (yes, they are no better of from the GST, which some very cursory research without the spin will show), it is easy to see that this government credentials cannot come close to what Labor did to stimulate the economy. They are living of the hard work done by Keating (which Labor have payed for ever since), and a bouyant world economy. Even first year economic students will agree on this fact. The saddest part is, Labor are now too gutless and divided to push this forward. Which means, we will end up with the libs again, even thought the majority hate what he does, most are too selfish to risk the alternative.
The media is dominated by, and being dictated to by our stand-over Liberal government, and sadly, people aren't hearing the other side of the political argument on account of Johnny wont let them. It doesn't matter that Beazley wishes to abolish full-fee paying students, making more places available and affordable for everyday Australians, or that he wishes to impose child-porn filters, or put more money into youth because our right-wing dictatorship wont hear of it, thus are buying/bribing every morsel of air & cyber space they can get their grubby little maulers on. Youth are being taught that it's SOOOOOOOOOOO uncool to vote left, sub-cultured even (trend word for labor voters among youth right now) and are convinced that a youth begotten war criminal Howard is some sort of American Idle, something their media tells them they want to be. So, they believe it!!
All we really need now, is for the community's decency standards to be raised significantly. No need to point the fingers at anyone, but ideas that accept marginalising people and uncompassionate behaviour as part of life should be rightly condemned, just like we condemn drugs, violence and the like. This way everyone will live happier and we will have no need to point the fingers at anyone. -Thomi DeEst.
Looks like Howard is more than happy for a rich, white, christian sect to dictate it's own rules (like not voting). Is it just me or is he more of a puppet these days?
In heaven, there are no interesting people - Nietzsche
Howard has no problems with white Christians no matter if they are an evil sect or not, but in his own words he is very uncomforatble with non-white non-Christians races.
I just wish the people of Australia would get out of their selfish me mood at any cost and condemn this man for the terrible person he really is.
Btw brilliant pic of Howard by Chris Lane, shows the true arrogant bastard Howard is.
Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege.
You may not agree with his politics (and many don't) but is such strong language heading towards being 'inciteful' ?
@ Vercordious . . and a persons decision not to vote is a problem??. . look at the choices on offer at election time. . . . liars, spin doctors, puppets and war mongers . . I have never voted in my life. . and I will only do so when a candidate I prefer has his name added to the ticket. (I am not Bretheren BTW).
Just for interests sake. . it is not compulsory to vote in this country . . it IS compulsory to visit a polling booth and have your name ticked off the list. . how and what you do in the booth is another matter. . as is testimony by the number of foolish donkey votes and snide remarks written on ballot papers.
DEMOCRACY = Voters deciding by Poll on who will be the local member that "Big Business" will push around.
No better insight into Howard's moral fibre than in his choosing of his 3 "towering figures of the late 20 century": Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II.
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Edging closer to darkness By John Watson The Age, October 23, 2006
Nelson Mandela was a terrorist. Who says so? No less an authority than Margaret Thatcher. She would have nothing to do with him or his African National Congress, a "typical terrorist organisation".
This stand was characteristic of the Conservative prime minister, whose political impact made her an obvious choice as one of John Howard's three "towering figures of the late 20 century". The same goes for US president Ronald Reagan, whose administration opposed a 1986 congressional resolution calling on South Africa's apartheid regime to release Mandela and recognise the African National Congress. The third selection in the triumvirate hailed by Howard for their "moral clarity", Pope John Paul II, a leading voice against the Iraq war, was slightly less obvious.
But Howard could never have put Mandela up alongside two leaders who declared him a terrorist. The awkward contrast with today's view of Mandela as a great statesmen is not just a historical curiosity. When present Conservative leader David Cameron recently said Thatcher had been wrong about Mandela and the ANC, the response showed this issue was very much alive.
Some who misjudged Mandela still wield power, and that includes unprecedented power to act on their judgements on who is a terrorist. No one more so than US Vice-President d**k Cheney, who has defended his vote against the 1986 resolution on Mandela on the grounds that "the ANC was then viewed as a terrorist organisation . . . I don't have any problem at all with the vote I cast 20 years ago."
Such views mattered then and perhaps even more now that the "war on terror" is global. A government that deems someone to be a terrorist, or a potential one, can subject them - before any independent testing of the evidence, much less a conviction - to a completely different legal regime from anyone accused of any other crime or criminal propensity, however heinous.
In the '80s, the "moral clarity" of Thatcher and Reagan helped the apartheid regime convince most white South Africans they were in a "terrorist war", involving a "total onslaught on civilised values". Since the terrorists didn't play by the rules, nor could the state if it was to defend its citizens. The crucial conclusion, one that resonates loudly through the smoke and fury and fear of the contemporary "war on terror", was that this justified an extraordinary distortion of the rule of law: it no longer applied equally to everyone.
Australia has experienced nothing like the attacks on home soil that stampeded white South Africans into accepting ever-more draconian laws under the Terrorism Act. Yet even when the country was shaken by a 1983 car bombing in the capital, Pretoria, that killed 19 people and injured 217, one could still read an editorial such as this three days later in the Argus: "It is a nation's response to terrorism that will determine the success or otherwise of a terrorist's methods. Among his aims is the intention to terrorise a government into subverting its own society, usually by denying its citizens due processes of law . . . The terrorists' determination to break the rule of law should be met by an equal determination to uphold it."
The government's response was bad law, and condemned internationally. Now that other nations have adopted similar measures it is still bad law, even if enacted in good faith. Lest it be thought South Africa's "war" was a domestic affair inextricably tied to the injustice of apartheid, the government declared there were close links between the ANC, IRA and PLO, and that terrorists should be hunted down wherever they were found. The government's anti-communist rhetoric also played well in Washington and London during the Cold War, which, as Howard observed, has "at least a family resemblance" to the struggle against today's "new tyranny, the tyranny of Islamist terrorism".
Anyone who objected to casting aside centuries of hard-won rights and legal process was soft on terrorists, a leftist, or subversive. In fact, many dissenters were conservative liberal democrats. The most damaging subversion was of the rule of law and just process. Legislation enabled the state to use detentions and banning orders, which were often imposed even as the subjects walked free from court. Australia has now seen this happen with the imposition of a control order on Jack Thomas after a jury acquitted him of terrorism offences (he at least has restricted rights of appeal).
While al-Qaeda and its ilk are clearly terrorist organisations, even if Satan ran their operations that would not alter the fact that some people accused of terrorism offences will be innocent. But while lip service may still be paid to the presumption of innocence, it's scorned in practice.
Australia's acceptance of the detention of its citizen, David Hicks, by the US for five years in Guantanamo Bay, and his trial by a military commission almost universally rejected by legal authorities as an unjust process, is based on a view of him as a terrorist threat. For that reason alone, he is subject to a regime that would be unacceptable for any person accused of any other crime (and any US citizen, terrorist or not).
The direction in which this is taking us is illustrated by Attorney-General Philip Ruddock's false distinction between torture and sleep deprivation. He says coercion is acceptable to obtain evidence from terrorist suspects. Heaven help the wrongly accused innocent in such a system. Because the law no longer applies equally to everyone, everyone is less protected by the law.
This is a slope along which South Africa descended to legalised brutality against not only terrorists but "sympathisers" (a net that could snare almost any anti-apartheid activist). Apartheid was an abomination, rotten and corrupt at heart, and its rulers could never trust in justice as their defence. The old South Africa was in a different league of lawless law, but Australia and allied nations have edged closer to the example of those dark days than democracies ever should.
There was already a thriving thread about John Howard and related matters. I have, therefore, merged the two threads - Paula
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I was disgusted by what I just saw on "Youtube" (Palestinians families-babies, kids, women and men massacred) I wandered why we only got one side of the story all the time, and I had my suspicions. Suspicions no more. Check this out.
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