Oceania The Aboriginal Problem

Introduction & Background

I believe that there is a serious problem within Aboriginal society today. I believe that the problems are caused both by

the Aboriginal community and both Local, State and Federal Governments.

Let me first state that I am not a racist. I am a realist, and have viewed the problems of Aboriginals with my own eyes.

Racialism is defined as the following from 'The Collins Australian Pocket Dictionary': "A doctrine without scientific support, that claims the superiority of some one race". Let me state that I am not claiming superiority of the Caucasian

race over the Australian Aboriginal race. I am stating that there is a problem within that society which IS backed by

scientific support, in the means of statistical data, ie: high crime rate, alcoholism, etc... My arguments will also put

forth double standards from the Government, which is in fact reverse-racism, but namely hypocracy.

Some of you may say "But he has just moved to the Northern Territory, how can he come to these conclusions already?!". In actual fact, I have spent at least 2 months here in the NT visiting my parents already. My parents have lived here for 2 and a half years, and I trust their judgement and opinion from their first hand experiences. I also trust the judgements and opions of their friends here, who have lived here either all their lives, or for at least 20+ years. One of those people has received the Order of Australia, so his character is of high repute.

The Problem

Aboriginals are provided a Centerlink wage from the government. Why? They do not seek jobs at all. When I was 18-19, and on unemployment benefits for a few months, I had to provide weekly reports of all the jobs I applied for. REVERSE-RACISM & HYPOCRACY!

Aboriginal kids don't go to school! Why are they not forced to? You see them walking around the shopping centers when they should be in school, and they are wearing designer clothing (Fubu, NBA singlets, etc...) - where do they get the money from?

Why should they be getting money for doing nothing, when they should be in school, getting an education and getting a career and EARNING their money.

Bleeding left-wingers whinge and complain of the high percentage of Aboriginal youth in jail / custody. They aren't in jail

for no reason... there are a lot of Aboriginals in there, simply because they have committed crimes!

Example of hypocracy: A white male youth was sentenced in court for bashing an aboriginal. He was given a 3 month jail

sentence. Same situation, but reversed. An aborginal youth was only given a caution for bashing a white youth. Both cases

were presided by Magistrate Trigg in the Northern Territory. HYPOCRACY.

Example of hypocracy: There was a report on the local news the other night that an elderly Aboriginal was in trouble for

having sex with a 15 year old Aboriginal girl. Local, State & Federal law simply states that this is rape. However, the

lawyers for the occused are trying to claim that it was his right to have sex with her under tribal law. So do Aboriginals choose what law suits them best under any circumstances, ie: Tribal or Australian Law? HYPOCRACY.

ATSIC, the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Commission has proven a dibacle, which has been admitted by the Federal Government, who are looking at half a dozen scenarios of reforming the body. The average Aboriginal recieves $2,500 dollars annually from ATSIC (ATSIC is granted an estimed $1 billion dollars from the Federal Government, and the the figure is from an Aboriginal population of 2% from an estimated 20 million Australian population). Why is this so? Aboriginals are granted the same rights as everyone else, government support (Centerlink, etc...), yet why do they receive money over and above the entitlements of the average Australian citizen? Geoff Clark has also proven to be an absolute disgrace as Chairman of ATSIC. I am sure you all know his track record here,

 

For the record, I spent 18 years of my life near an aborginal settlement and went to school with, became friends with and became a part of aboriginal peoples' lives.


You say you're not racist, but go on to proclaim that aboriginals do not seek jobs, do not go to school, and get money for nothing. If you're not racist, I'd say you're extremely ignorant. I do not doubt for a second that there are people from every background that fit your description, but to apply these characteristics to an entire race is ludicrous.

I really don't think any argument will sway you because the interminable hyperbole you provided in your post shows that you see a problem, but not a cause; a reason why there is a situation like this at all. And there are many such reasons.



Why should I, and the fellow Australian citizen have to say sorry for something they didn't do, and for something that happened over 200 years ago!

It was only 30 years ago that the forced removal of aboriginal children was still going on. 30 years. Do you know someone in their 30's? Now imagine that one out of every six families in this country had a child taken from their home by the government. (I've read statistics of between 1 in 10 and 1 in 3. Take your pick.) Imagine every single family in this country being affected by something so hurtful there aren't even words to describe it. You cannot even imagine being in that situation, can you?

And that's doesn't even take into account previous wrongs done by generations of white settlers!

As a Salvo once said in 1885: "We, as white people, occupying the land of these Aboriginals, have a large debt to pay. Scientists speak of them as the lowest type of mankind. The white man, led away by his pride of heart, greed and lust, has not scrupled to poison, shoot or destroy as many... as he could with safety to his own skin."

I am sorry. I'm sorry that people like you still exist in this world.

 

Firstly, let me say this. Aboriginal is an adjective. Aborigine is the noun. I will come down hard on anyone who talks about "Aboriginals", as they are bass-ackwards ignorant and I cannot abide stupidity.

Gatherer, are we paying attention to that? It's poor use of the English language, like the chorus to Kelly Rowland's Stole, where she uses two verbs back to back. For someone who was complaining about how the immigrant community doesn't speak English, you're awfully haughty.


What I'm going to say is controversial. It is also true and nothing anyone will say can change that.

Before you talk about the "problems", Gatherer, I ask you to consider this.

Until the late 1950's at the earliest, the Government had a policy of removing Aborginial children from their parents and assimilating them into white society, with the intent that their aboriginality would be bred out of them. Those who remember Tom Keneally's The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith will remember the idea of fractionalising the percentage of Aboriginie within Jimmy (a half-caste, IIRC) by marrying him off to a white girl so his children would be less Aborginial. And so on.

What this act constitutued was nothing short of the jus cogen crime against humanity which we label as genocide. A jus cogen is a law above the state. Any crime covered by the 1998 Rome Statute of the ICC - crimes against humanity - are of an authority which supercedes the state, and genocide is a jus cogen. Therefore, the supreme global law on genocide is the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, written by Raphael Lemkin. I posted a thread last year about it, and I rememebr a few people being upset with the idea that we committed genocide. They think genocide is something for other nations, and anyways, we didn't mean harm like the Nazis did so it somehow wasn't genocide. The letter of the law is absolute and unambiguous.

Article 1

The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.

Article 2

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Article 3

The following acts shall be punishable:

(a) Genocide;

(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;

(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;

(d ) Attempt to commit genocide;

(e) Complicity in genocide.

Article 4

Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.


So, Gatherer who is not racist but - when you talk of the Aborginial Problem, and you realise that there is NO ambiguity about our Genocidal past, you may (or I suspect may not) recognise the etymological faux pas you've made. We wanted to remove the Aboriginal blood from Aboriginies by breeding them with white people, and assimilating them into culture. We wanted to destroy their culture - and I couldn't give a flying **** how nice or benevolent any you think we were being - and purify their blood because they were a problem.


And how, pray tell, did the Nazis deal with the Jewish Problem and the purity of blood? Genocide. I'm truly, truly ashamed of this period in our history, and it's made that much worse by redneck threads like these.

As I s

 

Gath, I won't touch on the racism/reverse-racism issue. Putting a label on what we perceive to be happening ultimately doesn't get us any closer to solving the problem.

There are two issues that I will raise, though: firstly, the proposed solution "make Aboriginal children go to school." I agree that education is the key, but the problem and the solution are much more complex than simply rounding the kids up every morning and whacking them onto the bus. I work as a criminal lawyer over here in WA, and as you'd guess, a large percentage of my firm's clientele is in fact indigenous Australian. I see every day what the media likes to call flagrant injustices against other members of the population.

What you don't see (partially because of legal professional privilege and partially because it doesn't sell newspapers) is the horrendous record of alcoholism, solvent and substance abuse, violence, and sexual abuse within these children's families.

Am I making excuses for them? No. But ask yourself this: how well will you do your homework and Grow Up To Be A Contributing Member Of Society if every night your father (if he lives with you and isn't in prison) drinks heavily, your mother is beaten regularly by members of her own family, your uncle likes to come into your room at night and sodomise you, and you sniff paint with your cousins to take your mind off the fear, the despair, and the godawful conditions you live in?

And when your only real source of information is TV and radio, where handsome black men extol the virtues of having money, hoes by the dozen, and that the only way you can get these things is by hurting others or simply taking them, how will you learn any different? Will a police officer teach you? Unlikely. Will the courts? No; their primary function is punishment, not social work. Will a social worker, heavily overburdened with other kids who are in just the same situation as you? Doubt it.

And if you wind up in a juvenile institution, as so many of our half-informed columnists and politicians seem to demand, will they teach you any of these things? No, because you will be in with boys and girls a few years older who will only teach you far better ways of committing the offences you got caught for...and will reinforce the notion that authority is to be feared and avoided, not respected and complied with out of good citizenship.

The point of all the above: it's going to take more than a militant newspaper calling for mandatory sentences for three strike offenders to solve this problem. And let's admit it, ladies and gentlemen--there is a problem. But don't come back with half-baked measures like "bring back conscription", or "lock 'em all up" ... if for no other reason than, one day, you will have to let them out, or spend half the nation's budget on prison bars.

Instead, look at it from commercial, welfare, and legal aspects. Lock up the spraycans. Stop glamourising alcohol consumption as the only way to be sociable. Stop spending your money on more bars, more guards, and more prisons and spend it on working with the families that are in need. The alcoholism, sexual abuse, and substance abuse problems go back generations in this country. It will probably take generations to overcome it...not a single government only looking three years ahead to the next poll.

And on the issue of an apology, understand this--it's not an issue, to me at least, of apologising for something my ancestors did. It's simply acknowledging that a great wrong was done, and making a commitment to right that wrong. Howard is a strong political leader, but I believe down to my soul he would be remembered as a great leader if he would only take this step.