Right Pulse

It is with welcome relief that Tony Abbott has spoken out against Aboriginal welcome ceremonies. It is an infantile exclusionary paternalistic practice that should be done away with. Wilson Tuckey has also added his two cents:

Mr Abbott ignited debate on the issue when he accused Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his ministers of engaging in “tokenism” and unnecessary political correctness when they acknowledge traditional owners while speaking at functions.

“I certainly make these acknowledgements at what I think are suitable occasions. But to do it as a matter of course, to do it automatically – it does just look like formalism and tokenism,” he said.

Mr Tuckey went further, saying the acknowledgement of traditional owners was a “farce”.

“I have never thanked anyone for the right to be on the soil that is Australian,” he said.

Of course the Greens being freedom hating mongers are calling for any one that disagrees with the practice to resign.

But Liberal frontbencher Peter Dutton says Mr Tuckey has a right to speak his mind even if people disagree with the comments.

“I don’t have any issue with what Wilson said frankly or his right to say it.”

Keith Windschuttle is now accusing one of the chief proponents of the ‘stolen generations’ – Robert Manne – of distorting political history for contemporary political gain. Essentially the issue revolves around an attempt by Chief Protector of Aborigines in the Northern Territory, Dr Cecil Cook, in the 1930s to institute racist Aboriginal policies across the Commonwealth. The attempts were rejected by the then Lyons government but it appears Manne – who is well known for championing left-wing pet causes – may have deliberately distorted the political record.

On September 19 1933, the Lyons Cabinet considered but failed to approve Cook’s proposal. It recommended an opinion be sought from the Secretary of the Department of the Interior. At the time, the Secretary was not J. A. Carrodus, a departmental officer who Manne wrongly elevated in status to bolster his case, but Herbert Brown, who advised his Minister: “My own view is that half-castes who have been given certain rights and enjoy the franchise, should have the same privileges in respect to selecting their husbands or wives, as are enjoyed by other citizens of the Commonwealth.” Perkins agreed and based his August 1934 statement on this advice….

In failing to mention these three critical responses, while pretending the government gave “full endorsement” to the very opposite approach, Manne falsified Australian political history on an issue that he, more than almost any other academic commentator in the country, had the opportunity, the interest and the ability to investigate thoroughly and report honestly. If Manne can get away with behaviour of this kind, it would mean Australian universities no longer demand any standard of truthfulness from their academic staff.

I would think it highly unlikely that an academic inquiry be launched against Manne. It seems that the political left are pretty good at protecting their own, aka the Fabrication of Aboriginal History – Tasmania.

UPDATE

Recent interview on ABC’s Counterpoint.

…so argues Keith Windschuttle in the Quadrant and his latest book: The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume Three, The Stolen Generations 1881–2008.  By the strength of his Quadrant article, it seems the intellectual climate on the issue will begin to turn. Some observations made by KW.

- Not one Federal Court ruling has upheld the idea of a generation of Aboriginal children having been forcibly removed from their parents for the purpose of destroying the Aboriginal race,

- The High Court ruled in 1997 that there was no Aboriginal genocide,

- The figure of 50,000 children having been ‘stolen’, as argued by the PM and others, is a work of fiction. Archival evidence shows that just over 8,000 children were removed from their parents between 1910 to 1970 – some voluntarly  – for a range of legitimate child welfare reasons, or reasons that were also given for removing white children from their parent(s) at the time.

 - Very few infants were ever removed from their parents, the majority being teenagers who later returned to their parents after education and workplace training, while full blooded Aboriginals were mostly left alone by government officials,

Most children affected had been orphaned, abandoned, des­titute, neglected or subject to various forms of domestic violence, sexual exploitation and sexual abuse.

- In other cases parents regularly accompanied their children to Aboriginal settlements or children were placed with Aboriginal foster parents,

- During the period of the so-called ‘genocide’ the Aboriginal population actually increased 68 per cent,

 - The Joseph Lyons Commonwealth government in 1933 rejected proposals to regulate the marriage of Aboriginal half-castes,

- There is no evidence that Aboriginal activists thought there was an Aboriginal genocide during the 1960s and ’70s and…

A greater mystery is that some of the best-known of an earlier generation of Aboriginal activists had been in an even better position to see what was going on. In the 1940s and 1950s, William Ferguson, Walter Page and Pearl Gibbs actually served as directors of the Aborigines Welfare Board of New South Wales, one of the very organisations then committing the purported genocide. Yet they never realised what was happening. Of all people, they were the ones who should have identified it first. How could they possibly have missed it? If the Stolen Generations story was true, then at that very time, right across Australia, in all states and territories, scores of white welfare officials, backed by parliamentarians and senior public ser­vants, were forcibly removing Aboriginal children to put an end to Aboriginality. How did these hundreds of white people, for a period of more than sixty years, maintain the discipline needed to keep the whole thing so quiet that Aboriginal activists like Ferguson, Page and Gibbs were oblivious to its existence? Why did no one leak the truth? A conspiracy on this scale must have been the best-kept secret in Australian history. On these grounds alone, the inherent implausibil­ity of Read’s thesis should always have been self-evident.

Just recently:

AN ABORIGINAL rapist was given too much leniency because of his race and extremely deprived background, the Court of Appeal ruled today.

Justices Marcia Neave and Robert Redlich said the sentence imposed on Rodney Daryl Moore, who raped a woman who was eight months pregnant, was “manifestly inadequate”….

The DPP argued in the appeal that legal precedent dictated that race should play no part in sentencing.

Justices Neave and Redlich said a previous appeal decision had stated “in sentencing persons of Aboriginal descent, the court must avoid any hint of racism, paternalism or collective guilt”.

Next step should be to get rid of Koori Courts and stop Rudd re-establishing ATSIC.

I always regarded Rudd’s apology to the ‘stolen’ generation as hollow. If children were really forcibly removed from their parents solely because of race and culture, then it seems a miss carriage of justice for no compensation to be offered by Rudd. For this reason I’ve maintain previously that Rudd does not really believe in the claims made by members of the ‘stolen’ generation. He was only looking for kudos with the chattering classes and victimology groups so as to distinguish himself from Howard. The latest from one of these activists:

Kevin Rudd’s apology this week to the forgotten Australians, those whose lives were scarred in institutional care, was a reminder that there is still unfinished business stemming from that first Government apology – to the stolen generations….

…a national tribunal to facilitate these claims, and assist people with a legitimate legal right in accessing compensation. The proposed tribunal would be a partnership between governments, churches, indigenous organisations and the stolen generations community, but would also be independent. The premise was that governments should stop tenaciously defending claims by the stolen generations and instead facilitate appropriate compensation in situations where it was merited.

The Public Interest Advocacy Centre will tomorrow release Restoring Identity: Final Report. It puts this option squarely back on the table.

Activists seek a national tribunal for two reasons. So far all attempts to obtain compensation through standard legal means have failed because clamants have been unable to prove they were in fact ‘stolen’.   A national tribunal can then dispense with standard legal practice and be politically manipulated to ensure the ‘right’ outcome. Devoid of evidence – bring on the cash!

How vain and vacuous then was Rudd’s apology to the ‘stolen’ generation of yesteryear:

WELFARE workers have swooped on the opal mining town of Lightning Ridge in northwest NSW, removing more than 40 Aboriginal children from decrepit homes in shanty towns…Aboriginal women, stunned by the removals, say it amounts to a “modern-day Stolen Generation”, but the most recent statistics on child removals show Aboriginal children are being taken from their parents in numbers much greater than the Stolen Generations…Nationwide, Aboriginal children comprise just 4.4 per cent of all children, and yet make up 24 per cent of all children in care.

Is it any wonder that Rudd has declined a UN request to offer compensation to the ‘stolen’ generation. And of course the ABC covers the issue like the ‘stolen’ generation is an established historical fact, not some ex post made up story.

AAP has hit rock bottom with an error riddled article about activist Lowitja O’Donoghue receiving some made-up award from the Governor-General.

Born in 1932, Ms O’Donoghue was taken from her parents and raised by missionaries before beginning a career as a nurse.

No, she was abandoned by her father. Given that she perpetuated this falsehood for so long – probably to garner sympathy and support - is it any wonder that she no longer refers to ‘the stolen generation’ but ‘a stolen generation.’ Continuing:

Her advocacy on behalf of aboriginal people reached new heights with the 1967 referendum that, for the first time, recognised indigenous people as Australian citizens.

Wrong again. From No Republic:

There is a widespread belief, reported in the media, that the 1967 referendum gave the Aboriginal people, for the first time, Australian citizenship and the right to vote. But they were already citizens. Moreover the right to vote had been granted in a piecemeal way, in four States, at least in law, if not in practice, before Federation.

A secondary purpose of the 1967 referendum was to remove provisions from the Constitution against counting Aboriginal people (then considered mainly nomadic) in reckoning the number of people for electoral purposes. The principal purpose was to give the Federal Parliament a power, with the States, to legislate with respect to Aboriginal people.

And then we have this ridiculous statement from an equally ridiculous minister:

Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin told the function the award carried congratulations from every single Australian.

“It does place you among the greatest of Australians, the greatest,” Ms Macklin said.

You can count me out, thanks. This is what Lowitja O’Donoghue said in April 2009:

Ms O’Donoghue said she did not support a directly elected body because Aboriginal people would always want to support their own people. “My view is that we are not a democratic people…”

So we should have a referendum to take away the vote from Aboriginals then, like the 1967 referendum in reverse; cause apparently Lowitja O’Donoghue lobbied so hard for the vote to begin with? If you believe AAP’s take on history that is.

That’s the opinion of respected anthropologist Peter Sutton,  talking on ABC PM:

I’m not sure that governments can close gaps by action in this context other than tweaking things around the edges. I wish it were otherwise. I have the view that in the short-term these interventions are necessary, or at least most of them are, but in the long-term that the best action would be to actually withdraw government from interfering so much with people’s lives and racially structuring the community so that there are developing two nations in the way that we haven’t had before, or at least not on the scale that we’ve had before in the last 30 or 40 years.

I don’t see new government programmes, no matter how well intentioned, closing the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australia. If anything, programmes have made problems worse by creating addiction to welfare, creating a sense of economic and political entitlement through a politicised education system and providing remote communities the ability to practice a culture that is inconsistent with modern society. The Howard government spent record sums of money on Aboriginal issues, and we now learn that the gap has only grown larger. At some point remote communities will need to take responsibility for their own welfare instead of just throwing it back on government.

They’ll have to learn what’s good for them like the rest of the community are being forced to, with big government and big green programmes

Cape York leader declared Noel Pearson yesterday he could no longer trust the Rudd Government to properly consult and gain consent from traditional owners after state and territory environment ministers dismissed his objections and moved ahead with the first steps towards World Heritage listing for Cape York.

Mr Pearson is locked in a bitter dispute with the Queensland Government over plans to ban development of the cape’s “wild rivers”, which he argues will destroy opportunities for Aborigines to create economic development in the communities. He sees the Rudd Government’s silence over the issue and its failure to stop the move towards World Heritage listing as a breach of faith.

So out comes a bit of old fashioned racism from Warren Mundine:

“Why should Aboriginal people carry the can for white man’s abuse of the environment and locking us into a non-economic future. In native title, mining companies sign off with Aboriginal people before mining projects go ahead. We expect the same thing from Governments with environmental issues.”

So either you want the benefits of economic development or not? If you want the benefits then you carry the costs along with everyone else. The costs are not unique to a racial group.

That’s not my opinion, but the opinion of aboriginal activist Lowitja O’Donoghue in the context of the setting up of a replacement ATSIC body:

Ms O’Donoghue said she did not support a directly elected body because Aboriginal people would always want to support their own people. “My view is that we are not a democratic people…”

So I never want to hear again from an aboriginal activist about how they were denied general voting rights by the Federal government (some exceptions were made for military service and previous state voting rights) upon Australia’s Federation.

This whole new body just smacks of entitlement and victimology, with its aim of taking the rights and money off other people. It is also typical of the left, who give token support to democracy and individual rights and liberty. While being funded by tax-payers, the new body also wants:

…a future fund financed via a percentage of mining tax receipts. They also want the body to gain charitable status to receive tax-free donations. The national representative body would play over the next 20 years a leading role in achieving constitutional recognition and a treaty.

In otherwords a seperate government from the Commonwealth, which will be undemocratic, paid for of course by the 56 per cent of families living in the Commonwealth that actually pay tax. Sounds like a great deal for aboriginal self-styled elites.