Right Pulse

Looks like Rudd is seeking special rights for Aboriginals in the Australian constitution. As if there are rights that Aboriginals deserve but the rest of the nation doesn’t. Another case of reverse apartheid.

Senator Bartlett and his ‘healing’ fund, I covered a day or so ago, have done battle with conservative bloggers and he’s come off worse. Big mistake from Bartlett, to say the least. It started with Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun making a post about Bartlett going up against a blogger at the Daily Telegraph and then Bartlett decided to post on Bolt’s site and all hell broke lose. Bartlett wrote:

The Stolen Generations Assessor in Tasmania has issue payments to a number of people who had their claims assessed. All claims were tested and assessed. Some were knocked back. Presumably this government body, required to act in accordance with Tasmanian law, didn’t pay out money to people who just made things up. You can pretend they don’t exist if you like, but those of us who prefer to deal with reality and reason have better things to do.

And Bolt wrote in response:

You presume incorrectly. Actually, the Tasmanian Assessor under law is not required - or even authorised - to determine whether Aborigines claiming compensation for being “stolen” were in fact taken forcibly or for racist reasons. It is enough under Tasmanian law that they were raised as wards of the state by non-whites. Incredible, but true. Hence we find, for instance, a woman being compensated even for having been rescued from a home so bad that her mother was jailed for three months for child neglect.

It went on with other readers, but there are too many posts to reference. To his credit, Bartlett came back for more punishment:

It seems you are more interested in waging some sort of ideological crusade or score some political or rhetorical points against whoever you perceive to be your opponents, rather than looking at ways to reduce some of the individual and social impacts of failed and wrong policies of the past….For anyone who doesn’t want to dwell in the point scoring and wants to look at the reality of the impact of these past practices, it’s worth having a look at some of the submissions to the Senate Inquiry - available here - and yes, even just amongst those, there are at least 10 from people who indicate being directly impacted by Stolen Generations.

The crusade lives on! From Bolt:

Have you noticed that some of the names on your list are of people who make no claims to actually having been stolen? Have you checked why exactly those people who do claim they were “stolen” were actually taken? If you do, you’d find some were “stolen” in states that actually had no “stolen generations” policies at all. You’d also find that “stolen” children turn out to be children saved from starvation, rape and neglect. Take Margaret Hooker, for instance, one of the names you offer on that link. Check her real story.

Or check Eddie Thomas’ real story here.

This issue is crying out for a judicial inquiry into these people’s claims.

Peter Saunders, from the Centre for Independent Studies, argues on ABC’s Counterpoint against the Australian welfare state and taxation system. A system that takes money from individuals and families and then gives it back to them through welfare benefits:

…it’s saying that people who feel that they would be better off with their own money, buying the things that they need, organising their own budgets, looking after their own families and dependants should be able to say that, they should be able to declare independence from the government:

I don’t want your Medicare, I don’t want your social insurance, I don’t want your schools, I don’t want any of that stuff. I’m willing to pay tax in so far as it’s necessary for the redistributive component of the welfare state, to help people who genuinely can’t help themselves, but I’m fed up with paying tax so you can give it back to me again. And in return will you please leave me alone with this increasing amount of paternalistic regulation that you’re bringing in. Stop running my life for me.

A case of the Government stealing from the middle class and then giving the money back - as if it was a privilege to receive from the Government what was already yours.

Churning’ is that you’re paying for your own benefits. Your listeners can look it up; the Australian Bureau of Statistics produced a report last year which proudly stated that the average family with dependent children was paying in all tax (not just income tax but GST and so on) was paying I think it was something like $516 dollars a week in all taxes and was being given in the value of all benefits and services $503 a week. So there was this massive bureaucracy to take the money off you, including taking more than you should have done in order to give it back at the end of the tax year, and then there’s another massive bureaucracy to hand it all back again.

No club for victim hood here. Our friends seeking ‘healing funds’ could learn a few things. It is another reason why an Aboriginal state would never work - Aboriginal elites want independence from the Australian Government but can’t survive without Australian Government money and support as it is.

I could do with some healing like this:

The federal government should establish a “healing fund” to pay for services to members of the stolen generations, a Senate committee has recommended.

Well before the ‘healing’ starts, the Government should attempt to establish the veracity of those claiming to be ’stolen’, but that does not seem to be a priority. Instead, the usual members of the club for victim hood are out asking and demanding for more:

Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation national director Gary Highland said the recommendations fall short of what is needed to deliver justice to the stolen generations.

In other words, super size my healing! From the ABC:

A member of the Stolen Generations has slammed a parliamentary committee’s decision to establish a “healing fund” rather than provide compensation payments.

Indigenous businesswoman Sharon Firebrace says she believes the Government is avoiding costly compensation….

“I just think it’s a tricky way of tricking Aboriginal people,” she said.

“As I said, it’s trinkets and beads. I think it’s a cheap way for the government to get out of costly compensation.”

If the Government wanted to give me money for nothing I’d be happy to be tricked into taking it, I’m sure most people would. And BTW, the ABC describes Sharon Firebrace as a member of the ’stolen’ generation, as if they had verified the claim. By contrast:

AUSTRALIA’S richest man, Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, has described the lives of many Aborigines as crap and criticised successive governments for giving welfare not opportunities.

When it comes to advice, I think I’d be taking Twiggy’s over Firebrace’s. Twiggy’s thoughts reflect Helen Hughes’ book Lands of Shame, where she outlines how leftist Aboriginal policies created welfare dependency and the other spate of problems now facing Aboriginal communities. Hughes writes:

Communal land ownership and the consequent absence of private housing, communal health services, indigenous education and ”customary law” support for assailants against their weak victims have led to the stultification and degradation of traditional culture so that it has not moved from sorcery to the rule of reason, from polygamy to the equality of women with men and from ”pay-back” to the rule of law. Welfare dependence has led to widespread alcoholism and violence, particularly against women and children.

Is anything likely to change under Rudd? Remember, he’s “…an old-fashioned Christian socialist.” - Kevin Rudd, Australian Financial Review, February 2003.

Yes I know a blog of a blog, but this is the latest in the Australian cultural wars…linked here. It is an explanation as to why Australian academics have so long ‘clinged’ to the Australian aboriginal genocide thesis, in spite of the overwhelming evidence against it. As I have long suspected, most of Australia’s historians have written history with the aim of promoting a contemporary political agenda - in this case Aboriginal land, legal and special welfare rights. So it is a case of not letting the facts getting in the way of a sad story.

All aboard for the gravy train, first stop Aboriginal victim hood ville then express to sit down money. Be sure to put your feet up on the seats, alcohol and drugs allowed on the train. Harassing other passengers will not face prosecution under white man’s law.

So goes Aboriginal politics and it looks set to continue with the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to be signed by the Rudd Government. From Keith Windschuttle:

As well as the old ATSIC campaign for a black state, the declaration endorses other policies long demanded by radical Aboriginal activists. It supports the establishment of a body very much like ATSIC itself, that is, for the revival of a separate indigenous “parliament”.

Would one expect anything less from the UN. Is it any wonder that North America and even NZ decided not to sign the declaration.

The declaration also endorses customary law and wants indigenous tribunals to determine breaches and punishments, with the sole constraint that they remain consistent with concepts of international human rights. Apart from the fact that indigenous people remain entitled to all the host nation’s welfare and citizenship benefits, the latter’s legal system does not rate a mention.

Basically reverse apartheid, with all the powers and privileges of having a separate Government, just not any of the responsibilities.

In short, the United Nations has endorsed a program which, if introduced in Australia, would revive the entire separatist agenda of Aboriginal politics of the Hawke-Keating era, an agenda which, apart from lucrative positions here and abroad for a select class of tertiary-educated activists, has had no positive outcomes for Aboriginal people to speak of, and whose awful failings are reproduced with depressing frequency in the reports of one commission of inquiry after another.

So much for our founding father’s wish of a nation for a continent and a continent for a nation. Not if Rudd gets his way.

You are a judge conducting a review of Aboriginal abuse and you discover the following:

The inquiry found it likely that upwards of 14 per cent of the 1000 children living in the isolated communities had been raped or molested.

Toddlers aged two or three had been “prepared for sex” by predatory relatives, according to one teacher’s evidence.

The four-year-old daughter of a chronic petrol sniffer had been found on the street, having been raped vaginally and possibly anally. Described as a “failure-to-thrive baby”, the child later died in an accident….

A school principal described how underage girls were locked in a room at night until they agreed to have sex.

You are concerned of course and recommend the following ideas to help solve the problem:

His 46 recommendations provide for more police and welfare workers, restrictions on pornography, reintroduction of police-backed night patrols through the communities and the compulsory notification to family services of cases of sexually transmitted disease involving children.

But because you are a member of the chattering classes (all left elitist talk no action) you find it hard to impose moral choices on others, because well….moral standards are relative aren’t they and who are you to judge a culture as savage:

The measures, however, should be carried out in co-operation with local people and not imposed, as was the case when the Howard government intervened in the NT last year.

“My approach in these recommendations is to empower the people who are likely to do the most good, and that is the Aboriginal people themselves,” Mr Mullighan said. “If you have a problem concerning Aboriginal people, the best way to address it is through Aboriginal people.

Given the systemic problems in these communities does anyone seriously believe there are any innocent adults - people that have either participated in or not reported abuse to the police?

Interesting article in The Australian regarding the 2020 Summit and Aboriginal issues:

The 2020 Summit saw a revival of the con artists. The same old personalities attempted to hijack the debate and put governance and recognition above overcoming the social scourges affecting Aboriginal people around the country. It is a warped set of priorities that would have symbolism more important than overcoming substance abuse and improving household safety, education and economic participation.

Well of course, “…governance and recognition…” means power and stature for Aboriginal urban elites.

It is easy for well-known personalities to remain at the podium delivering tired old rhetoric. But indigenous Australia has heard that message a thousand times in the past two decades and it isn’t improving anybody’s life. Sadly, there is an industry built around indigenous affairs and many of the stakeholders will fight tooth and nail to keep the status quo….

…Many policy solutions are wrongly personality-based rather than delivering measurable improvements. Instead of being sacked, the architects of these policy failures just do the rounds. There is a small sub-industry in indigenous affairs of bureaucrats who move from department to department or from one level of government to another. The result is that Aboriginal Australians suffer under soft social programs hopelessly incapable of solving complex technical problems. Politicians wanting to “do the right thing” make the easy or popular decisions rather than address the core problems, and year after year the scam continues.

Amongst all of this what ever happened to individual responsibility? As argued by George Will at Townhall:

Conservatism argues…that self-interestedness is universal among individuals, but the dignity of individuals is bound up with the exercise of self-reliance and personal responsibility in pursuing one’s interests.

The entitlement mentality encouraged by the welfare state exacerbates social conflicts — between generations (the welfare state transfers wealth to the elderly), between racial and ethnic groups (through group preferences) and between all organized interests (from farmers to labor unions to recipients of corporate welfare) as government, not impersonal market forces, distributes scarce resources. This, conservatism insists, explains why as government has grown so has cynicism about it.

The overwhelming experience since the 1970s is the type of sterile politically correct Government intervention of the past has not solved the social problems - but fostered dependency and destoyed individual responsibility.

This is the latest from the 2020 Summit - to resurrect ATSIC. As Macquarie News reports:

There’s this South Australian Commissioner, for Aboriginal Engagement, which is such a disconnected title anyway, his name is Klynton Wanganeen, an Aborigine, who’s a welder by trade, urging the reformation of an ATSIC style group. He says Aboriginal communities have had funding cuts, and are not represented at the national and State levels.

Well, let’s not forget how dysfunctional, this indigenous self-governing body was. Let’s not forget how much money ATSIC put into the hands of many community elders, and greedy-guts, who fritted it away. There were loans handed out to businesses, which were never able to pay the money back - and that was just the start of it. Both the major parties concurred with this point, by the way.

There were repeated cases of funding duplication, too. So much of the money was used on symbolic projects, according to John Howard. There were rape allegations - proven in the civil court - against its chairman.

And the vast majority of Aboriginal people, were hugely critical of the way ATSIC operated. A former Royal Commissioner into Black deaths, even recommended that ATSIC should never been resurrected.

And this Adelaide Commissioner, Klynton Wanganeen, wants to go back to all of that?

And its only the beginning of the summit. How much more will we have to endure? Thankfully there is not wide support for the idea, as reported in The Australian:

Mr Mundine said ATSIC had demonstrated the problems of poor-quality candidates being elected by a small number of voters. “We don’t want to be getting into a whole lot of bureaucracy that supports these people, because it is taking resources away from the scarce resources that we have got in the first place,” he said.

The latest issue of Quadrant has an article by John Stone, which runs with the theme generated on this blog about the incorrect use of the word genocide to describe the ’stolen’ generations.

When the Bringing Them Home report was published, Howard refused to accept its untruthful central thesis. A decade later, no evidence has been provided—and certainly none that has stood up in court—for its claims. Its shameful charges of “genocide” are now treated with the scorn they always deserved. Faced with this barefaced attempt at moral blackmail, Howard stood firm.

I think it is a credit to Howard that his opponents have finally come round to see his point of view, including the current PM. It also says something of Howard that he stood firm when the tied was against him, yet he still came out on top. How many other issues will history prove Howard to be right? Further to the article:

Pressed to offer a formal “apology” on behalf of Australians today for those alleged atrocities of which their forebears have been accused by the Henry Reynolds school of black-armband “historians”, Howard remained immovable. He saw that, as usual where Aboriginal issues are concerned, this matter was really about money (first, last and foremost) and shaming the nation. He refused to countenance either.

And guess what? It’s already happening. This from the Northern Territory News back in February:

Michael Mansell said yesterday the Territory’s indigenous population would benefit more from being in a seventh Aboriginal state than they would if the Territory became an independent state….

Mr Mansell, the Aboriginal Provisional Government national secretary, said the Territory would reduce greatly in size under the radical plan.

And instead of mining companies and other land users paying leases to the Commonwealth and Territory Governments, they would pay the seventh Aboriginal state.

If you want to check out the ‘Aboriginal Provisional Government’ website, go here.