ATSIC dead in the water

Good. It should be harpooned while it is wallowing around. Lets revert to one nation, one Government, one law. Yesterday I thought we were going to be presented with ATSIC by another name. Latham still thinks it the go but I think the punters are sick and tired of separate governments. Howard is reading it that way as well and even his detractors must admit Hawke’s ATSIC has failed. Reinstitute Indigenous Affairs as a separate department and give it the flexibility to respond to known problems. Laws, policy and standards are in place to help disadvantage Australians – lets use them wherever it matters. Update: The Editor of the Australian underscores the problem we have in Australia by printing this letter from Andrew Sweeney
MARK Latham’s plan to abolish ATSIC is racist. He would find it inconceivable that parliament could be abolished, yet he plans to decide the fate of indigenous governance himself. Indigenous Australians won’t be free until they have governance that privileged white men can’t sack. Mr Latham should look to his own prospects for governance. Privileged white voters like myself don’t want another heavy-handed PM.
Reality check, Andrew It’s a reasonable case to say ATSIC itself is racist. It is, after all, an Australian Government body that disenfranchises most Australians There is no such thing as governance that privileged white men can’t sack. All governance is sackable by the votors and the last thing we want is an un-sackable body playing loosely with public monies. Your not priviledged because your white but because you are an Australian. We all have a vote (except if your white and then you can’t vote for ATSIC) Andrew says heavy-handed, I say decisive. If it ain’t working – fix it or demolish it.

Indigenous red herrings

Indigenous Australians are more likely to die young than people in Nigeria, Bangladesh or India, a report by the Fred Hollows Foundation says.
Fair enough. The fact that indigenous Australians have an income stream most probably has some bearing on the subject. Money and idle time lead to some of indigenous Australian’s health issues. Troubled people in Nigeria, Bangladesh and India have a different sort of problem. They have no money to buy anything, let alone substances to abuse. ATSIC say the average income for Aborigines is $14,000, 30% less than other Australians, but it sure as hell takes Nigeria, Bangladesh and India out of the formula. Let’s compare apples with apples.
Foundation chief executive Mike Lynskey said the poor health of many of Australia’s indigenous people was an indictment of our society.
I agree wholeheartedly and we have a lot of work to do but the indictment doesn’t read ‘maliciously disadvantaged their health’, it’s more along the lines that money has been wasted on projects by ATSIC, and others, that have more to do with grandiose dreams than practical help. ATSIC has directed a lot of effort towards home ownership and whereas that has merit, I’m not sure we shouldn’t fix the endemic alcohol and drug dependency that exists in many groups and impacts on poor health, low birth-weights and short life-spans, before we just move the problems into white picquet fenced bungalows. From Geoff Clark, Chairman of ATSIC. (quoting the last figures I could find)
We acknowledge the Federal Government will outlay about $2.5 billion dollars in the 2002-03 financial year on Indigenous Affairs but less than half is administered by ATSIC.
Three Points. 1. The $2.5 billion dollars does not include mining royalties or individual and business income, so all in all, quite a significant sum for 400,000 plus Australians, 2. The ‘less than half that is administered by ATSIC’ needs auditing – quickly, and 3. $2.5 billion dollars indicate it is not the amount of money that is the problem. The Fred Hollows Foundation does a good job but we all know on which side Fred’s politics lay and I think it’s disingenuous to keep on bringing up these half arsed facts without raising some coalface issues. Let?s hope ATSIC’s replacement is better advised and audited than has been the case in the past and that they work at grass roots levels as well as pursuing high and lofty ideals. Update: A comment from a reader who lives at the coal face states Where I live substance abuse is not the issue…It has everything to do with poor personal hygiene, gambling away welfare payments and a total lack of willingness to take responsibility for their own lives. I know different problems occur at different communities including those with little or no problems but something needs to be done overall and I don’t think ATSIC is the answer.

ATSIC weakens

This is your money, Taxpayers. While good men with good intentions try and help the aborigines, ATSIC stifles the debate with red herrings. You thought ATSIC was there to help our indigenous brothers. Wrong. They are there to help themselves. Clark, an accused rapist and thug receives $85,000 of taxpayers money for legal costs in cases that clearly have nothing to do with protecting commissioners from frivolous claims from actions whilst conducting ATSIC affairs. Sugar Ray Robinson cashes $4,000 cheques at a pub for his mates and then loses a million dollars of taxpayers money via suticase diplomacy
A senior legal person who worked with QSRB said it was common for cheques up to $40,000 to be cashed and the money put in a suitcase and taken to native title claims, where it was distributed among those present as “travel allowance and accommodation”. No receipts, no details.
Sack ’em – start again. Run courses on behavior and public accounting as a pre-requisite to becoming a commissioner or just pick proven quality with standard audit regulations.

Assimilate or die out

Keith WIndschuttle starts a debate on assimilation. He is of the opinion that it is the way ahead for aborigines and I for one agree and have been saying so on this and other sites for some years now. To me the recent Redfern riot is the result of rounding up aborigines and putting them in a locality all by themselves and saying ‘ be good boys and girls now and we will give you lots of support and help. (read ‘money’) The good one see the writing on the wall and move to suburbia and we are left with losers and rabble. We have the same subgroups in white society but we don’t round them up and put them in one locality – they are spread out. If I was given the power to fix the problem I would start by sitting down with elders, say at Yeundemu, and ask – do you really want to live here? Is your attachment to the land so strong as to keep you in squallor? I have a strong attachment to the South West of Western Australia where generations of my family rest under marble headstones but I moved on and followed a career in the military. The call of home is strong but it is easily muffled by a lot of other considerations and I think to stay there, just because your family were there, condems one to a life limited by the locale. Yeundemu (at least the last time I was there )is a desert shithole – a great place to drive through on the way to somewhere, anywhere.
Under Hawke, the commonwealth government actively supported the “outstation” or “homeland” movement under which some Aboriginal communities withdrew from larger centres of population into isolated areas. The government also increased funding to the existing remote communities located on the old missions and reserves and in largely Aboriginal-populated country towns.
I don’t agree with Bob Hawke on this, in fact I don’t recall agreeing with much that he did, but ‘outstation’ or ‘homeland’ relocation has to be the best example of ‘hide the problem’ around. We shouldn’t lock them up in desert ‘homelands’ Let them come into town, let the kids envy others and let them work out for themselves that ‘envy’ doesn’t lift your lifestyle but education does. If a school room is 100% full of kids from dysfunctional families then there is no benchmark. In towns, with a mix of success and failure, black and white, the comparisons are obvious. In competition, kids strive to win
The Australian Bureau of Statistics shows clearly that, in suburban Australia, there is now an Aboriginal middle class (population 18,000). Even at lower socio-economic levels, in urban regions the majority of Aboriginal adult males have jobs and the majority of Aboriginal children complete school. In the remote communities and towns, where Coombs’s policies have prevailed, these statistics are completely reversed.
Knowing the left will be incensed by Windschuttle’s lates foray in to politics I went on over to Robert Corr for his take. He says of Windschuttle;
But what of his claim that we should simply move people off their traditional lands? I reckon that’s a cop-out.
Rob, it was a cop out to force them there and I don’t think anyone is talking about forcing them off their tribal lands, just encouraging them to move to where the action is. Move to town, go to school, get a job, earn and save, buy a block of land, build on it – eureka – you have equity in the land. something you will never get in the desert. Stay where you are and even with land rights you are left with no equity in shit country. Sit in the sand, teach your kids about the dreamtime, watch them sniff petrol, grow up, beat the wife, stay drunk all day, die, get buried, get nowhere in life, didn’t improve on the last generation. No hope for the next. Rob’s answer is to reinforce failure.
In my opinion, the narrow rights that native title confers are the real problem with land rights. If that title confered real, economic title to the land, it might go further (but by no means all the way) to making those communities viable.
Economic title to Yeundemu will give people equity in stuff-all. And don’t counter with ‘give em land rights to functional, profitable properties’ because without education and training functional becomes disfunctional quicker than you can say ‘Land Rights Now.’ Again – go to town, go to school, get a job, buy some land. Assimilate or die out. WIndschuttle, as always speaks sense, go read his full article

Two laws

Police in Alice Springs are under fire for moving on topless dancers
ATSIC’s only female commissioner, Alison Anderson, is considering a formal complaint to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. She said she would defy authorities to dance topless at a ceremony in Alice Springs yesterday afternoon. “This is part of our law, this is part of our culture, this is what makes us Aboriginal,” she said.
I’d normally have no hastles with girls going topless although I have a preference for the toplessees to be young nubiles but in this case I think we need to think it through. If a group of white girls went topless in public in a group they would be charged with indecent exposure. I’m not defending the law on indecent exposure only to say it exists and police are duty bound to apply the law without fear or favour. It comes down to this – one country – one law. The tribal cultural thing is frought with danger as witnessed by the creep who claimed his male privelidges over a 12 or 13 year old ‘promised bride’. To Commissioner, Alison Anderson’s statement This is part of our law, this is part of our culture, this is what makes us Aboriginal I must add; and one law, this is what makes us Australian. So, until parliament changes the law to something like…it is an offence for people to go naked in public except for groups of aborigine women… then the police at Alice are correct.

Kiwi’s are flying

Our Kiwi cousins are showing signs of coming out of the long white cloud of left wing ideology as they begin to question Helen Clark’s distorted idea of nationality.
A revolt against special privilege for Maori has begun across NZ, led by bold new Opposition Leader Don Brash and fuelled by years of simmering resentment among white Kiwis about welfare, land claims and political correctness. Suddenly, race relations between white and Maori have become the only issue in NZ politics, propelling the Opposition to the top of the polls, sending the Government into frantic reverse and prompting violent clashes between Maori protesters and police.
And;
The vast majority of Kiwis are saying they want one law applied equally to white and brown, according to a new survey by Massey University social policy researcher Phil Gendall.
It’s not often that our cousins lead the pack but Canberra might like to preempt a similar ground swell in Australia and consider one law applied equally to white, black, brown or brindle. More>> Sounds reasonable to me. Update: After posting this I noticed an article by Andrew Bolt on the same subject. It’s worth the read.

War Zone Redfern

Police aim for 40 arrests. From News.com That’s a start now let’s not forget the leaders. They need their day in court as well. munro.jpg Lyle Munro again
Mr Munro said suggestions the youths were goaded by older people demeaned their intelligence.
Yeah, right. I didn’t see much intelligence to demean in the scenes I saw. Least of all from Munro.
But he said he was not concerned about police targeting those they believe had incited the riot If they arrest me, they’re going to have to arrest a lot of other elders.”
If they were involved in the riot or didn’t do anything to stop it then they should be arrested
He said he believed he was being wrongly targeted because of previous run-ins with police and his “history in black affairs”.
Yep. Thats how it works. Develop a reputation as a dangerous idiot and the police check you each time you incite a riot.

Race Riot?

Drunken riot, more likely. Picture this; Two nights ago Kev Gillett and his mates get drunk and start throwing molotov cocktails at police in response to one of our number getting himself killed in an accident. Would I be writing this now or would I be suffering a dearth of amenities such as a computer because I was in goal. Your damn right, I’d be in goal – so why aren’t those little shits from Redfern in goal now. Plenty of videos, plenty of stills, plenty of ID. Double standards. redfern1.jpg NSW police in Redfern War Zone. Chief Bastard at BastardInc suggests a rifle company from 3RAR would have changed the scoreline and I agree. However Aid to the Civil Power is a cumbersome tool and rightly so, but some military tactics would have helped the poor police. redfern2.jpg Try this- 100 police come up behind the ‘poor drunken fellow me’ darlings. 30 go either aside to block withdrawal routes into the houses and 30 stay back to secure the ammo (molotov cocktail and paver supplies) and act as a cut-off party. No retreat. (For the nitpickers and mathmeticians, the other ten are Command and Control) Arrest the leaders first and then the thugs, one by one. Next morning send a car to collect Senator Wridgeway and take him to Long Bay where he can try and talk some sense into the lads. He has nothing of merit to say to the country about the incident so he may as well try and make them see how negative their actions are. Laurie Quartermaine, Aboriginal leader and Ostrich blames the politicians. Lyle Munro (same link – scroll down) blames the politicians, the police and ATSIC.
At an impromptu public meeting in Redfern’s notorious Eveleigh Street yesterday, community leaders accused police of regularly harassing and beating Aboriginal youths in the area. “The stand had to be taken once and for all,” Lyall Munro said. “We’re sick of the intimidation by police. You should be proud of the efforts of young people to defend Aboriginal people.” Mr Munro lashed out at ATSIC and other indigenous organisations, which he said had failed to represent local Aborigines adequately.
You should be proud of the efforts of young people to defend Aboriginal people.” Excuse me. Are we talking about the same incident? I don’t know what position this Lyall idiot holds but he should be relieved of it – NOW Newsflash guys. The country blames the thugs. Black, white or brindle; not a race riot, a riot of thugs trying to kill police. Readers, wait for the first aborigine leader to blame the thugs. Write down the name and remember it – a true leader.

Aboriginals run amok

Fifty hurt in inner-Sydney riot. Riots smack of spontaneity, this event sounds very organized. redfern.jpg Pictured: Police Officers tend to an injured colleague as violence erupts in Redfern overnight.
Eight police officers remain in hospital after a total of 50 were injured trying to subdue a riot near Redfern railway station into the early hours of this morning. The bridge at the station resembled a military zone as at least 60 officers defended one side of Lawson St, facing about 50 angry local residents. Armed with bricks, rocks, broken bottles and molotov cocktails, the group threw missiles at police, passing trains, vehicles and businesses.
Molotov Cocktails!!!! That suggests someone had a supply line running. Fuel containers, rags cut to length and bottles. The bottles would have been easy – just empty the one you?re drinking from and use that, but fuel and rags for ignition smacks of a system.
“They had a number of wheelie bins lined up with paving stones in them – in fact there were eight of those. There were a number of large tubs with beer bottles in them,” he said.
There is a structure there, a hierarchy that needs pinning down and relocating to Long Bay or wherever bad guys go nowadays.
Police held a press conference yesterday to deny officers were pursuing Thomas at the time of the accident but posters began to appear around the suburb, calling them “murderers”.
Hmmm, posters as well. Artists or compilers on hand with computers, printers and photo-copiers.
At 2am when rioters threw fireworks and firebombs into police lines.
If the NSW Police don’t arrest the entire 50 aborigines and put them away then the public have a right to know why not. Note the location – Redfern in Sydney. Yes, this has happened in a suburb near you. I have no recollection of anything of this nature happening before in Australia. Riot – rubbish. It’s a campaign of civil disobedience and all the perpetrators need to be charged and put away. Update: Brogden, NSW Opposition leader says ‘bulldoze the suburb.’
“He said police should have been better equipped to deal with the rioters and bulldozing the area, notorious for drug dealing and crime, could help. The fact that 40 or 50 police were injured whilst they stood there and copped it from young Aboriginal thugs and others is an unacceptable position going forward,” Mr Brogden said. “I’d bring the bulldozers in because I think allowing this to happen every couple of years, which is what’s going to happen, will never fix the problem.”
Drastic, but hey – drastic times.

Geoff Clark

Geoff Clark, ATSIC commissioner, convicted thug and accused rapist still refuses to resign from his 240,000 job.
A VICTORIAN judge has found suspended ATSIC chairman Geoff Clark led two pack rapes against a woman 33 years ago. In granting Carol Anne Stingel the right to bring a civil action for damages against the Aboriginal leader, Victorian County Court judge John Hanlon said he was satisfied Ms Stingel was raped six times in 1971 – the first two of which were led by Mr Clark. “I am satisfied, to the requisite degree, that the events that she described in 1971 did take place and that Mr Clark was, in fact, the leader of the pack on the first two occasions on which she was raped,” Judge Hanlon said.
Just what do you have to do to get sacked from ATSIC?
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