Category: Aboriginal Issues

Kultcha

Posted by Chief Blogger – 2 February, 2012

Gary Johns picks apart the expert panel calling for aristocratic styled rights for those that self-identify as aborigines.

…..the experts did not recommend non-discrimination. In place of the race power, they want recognition of culture, and laws for the advancement of Aborigines. What if these are contradictory?….They are seeking to use as a substitute for race a far more nebulous concept, culture, to achieve recognition. It seems that culture is the new black.

Then we can have a mature discussion about aboriginal culture – its not all dots on bark.

Just say no to these tax-payer funded rent seekers

Posted by Chief Blogger – 19 January, 2012

No is a very simple quick word and it is the best way to sum up my reaction to the proposal to give ‘aboriginal’ people special legal entitlements in our constitution:

“negative reply,” early 13c., from O.E. na (adv.) “never, no,” from ne “not, no” + a “ever,” from P.Gmc. *ne (cf. O.N., O.Fris., O.H.G. ne, Goth. ni “not”), from PIE base *ne- “no, not” (see un-). Second element from PIE *aiw- “vital force, life, long life, eternity” (see aye (2)). As an adj. meaning “not any” (c.1200) it is reduced from O.E. nan (see none), the final -n omitted first before consonants and then altogether. No-no (n.) first attested 1942. No problem as an interjection of assurance, first attested 1963. Phrase no can do “it is not possible” is attested from 1914. Construction no X, no Y attested from 1530s (in no peny no pardon).

A few issues stand out.

  1. The proposal is driven by self-interest, not what is in the best interests of the country. A panel of self-apportioned tax payer funded ‘experts’ – usual suspects – have come up with the proposal. Normally referendums are initiated by the people via some type of convention, not a closed elitist shop. There is no mass movement wanting these changes. The only support for this proposal is from those that stand to benefit, both in status and financial standing.
  2. The whole proposal seems to give legal status to a latter-day leftist endorsed aristocracy, where special legal privileges and access to taxation are provided to a group of people based on genealogical connection, and where rights are hereditary – able to be passed on to children without recourse to merit or justice (not fake social justice). Unlike the Queen however, these people would actually enforce their claims over laws and taxation. As a consequence the whole proposal is hideously anti-democratic and an affront to the principles of private property, individual liberty and equality before the law. Better suited to some type of medieval kingdom than a democratic Commonwealth.
  3. What is an aborigine and how does one qualify? Recent legal cases seem to suggest that one need only have a vague distant genealogical connection to have the cash registers ring and emblems thrown in your direction. Is this a fair method of determining who gets access to these aristocratic like privileges over laws and taxation?
  4. The proposal claims that the constitution racially discriminates against aborigines. I’ve read the constitution and I can’t find the section that is racist. There is a section that allows the Commonwealth to make laws for Aborigines, which was passed overwhelmingly in a referendum. There is nothing racist about the constitution. Presumably the ‘expert’ panel would not want that section abolished and along with it the privileged access it affords them to Commonwealth taxation.
  5. The whole proposal is predicated on an historical fraud. The concept of Australia is a strictly non-indigenous idea. The first people to recognise that Australia was an island continent, to call themselves Australian and to envisage a nation for a continent and a continent for a nation were not Aboriginal. So for instance, when the ‘experts’ claim that: “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages are the original Australian languages..” they are mistaken. The original Australian language is English.

MORE

Looks like the advocates are going to take there time:

THE deadline for holding a referendum to acknowledge indigenous Australians at or before the 2013 election has been abandoned, because the expert panel fears it would face certain defeat if it were rushed.

I’m pretty confident it would face certain defeat, period.

When is someone not an aborigine?

Posted by Chief Blogger – 28 September, 2011

No doubt by now you have heard of the Federal court ruling which found against Andrew Bolt over comments he wrote about nine people who may in fact not really be aborigines, but self identify as such to claim government benefits and privileges.

The judge claimed that Bolt’s articles breached Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, which is one of those laws written with enough ambiguity to allow the above nine freedom haters to use and abuse to protect their native racket.  The Herald Sun say they may appeal. The ABC is salivating tonight on the news about the decision.

Apart from the obvious freedom of speech issue, the salient issue is about who really qualifies as an aborigine. At what point is someone not allowed to be an aborigine, or does someone only have to self-identify as such to claim the range of benefits and privileges that society and the government see fit to bestow upon aborigines? Australia does not seem to have any blood quantum laws relating to those claiming to be aboriginal. For instance, some native American tribes require a person to have at least one parent to qualify for a tribe in order to qualify for US government benefits. Other tribes stipulate other qualifications. Here in Australia it seems anything goes. The above nine were claiming after the court case that they don’t have to prove their genealogical ‘identify to anybody’. This would not be an issue, except that they use that identify to fleece the rest of us of our hard earned money.

BTW, the ABC’s 730 report did not interview a single person who disagreed with the ruling.

UPDATE

“Regardless of the niceties of the case, the fact is today in Australia… journalists, commentators, ordinary citizens are not free to make critical and unpopular remarks in the course of ordinary political exchange,” Senator Brandis told Sky News.

“I think that is a terrible thing.

I don’t know how to solve the problem: change the constitution or just the law? What is clear is that self-identified Aborigines are all unproductive government funded and protected individuals, like some type of latter-day aristocracy.

The incredulity of it all

Posted by Chief Blogger – 8 August, 2011

Conservatives have been banging on about the ill effects of welfare for years, but now all of a sudden aboriginal leaders are claiming they have discovered something:

WITH his heartfelt plea for an end to welfare handouts in the remote indigenous domain, Galarrwuy Yunupingu has thrown down the gauntlet.

The northeast Arnhem Land clan leader is insisting that the entire political and bureaucratic class confront the failure of the passive welfare paradigm in remote Australia.

He wants no more tinkering around the fringes of the vast network of social support projects now in place but instead the abolition of welfare payments to his people — and for the simplest of reasons: “It’s a killer.”

Yunupingu’s call, couched in a mazy speech on the opening day of the weekend’s Garma culture festival, was delivered to an audience of startled luminaries.

Seems not everyone is convinced.

Gillard says no to Christian God, yes to the god of the dream time

Posted by Chief Blogger – 28 September, 2010

Gillard is an atheist. Fine. Everyone is entitled to their own personal choices free of government interference. It’s called individual liberty, something the left do not always subscribed to, but something that should be respected. So it was no surprise that Gillard skipped out on the parliamentary church service to welcome in the new parliament today. Gillard also refused to swear an oath to God in becoming PM. That’s her business, no need for vain hollow acts.

However, in rejecting Christianity and in the customs that follow,why did Gillard (and Abbott!) endorse and attend the aboriginal ‘welcome ceremony’ for the new parliament today? The ‘welcome ceremony’ is a quasi-religious event that has nothing to do with the Constitution or Westminister custom. More to the point, ‘welcome ceremonies’ have nothing to do with Australia: the political idea of the world’s only unified, democratic and free continent-nation, a distinctively non-aboriginal concept. What type gall must a person have to think they can ‘welcome’ Australians to the country they and by implication their ancestors conceived of and built up?!?!

“On the occasion of this opening of the 43rd Parliament I welcome you,”

So said the chief witch doctor:

“With this welcome I express the hope of a united, reconciled nation, the oldest living culture joined with the many diverse cultures of a modern successful Australia.”

Apart from the fact that when Howard was PM no one from the left was calling for unity or political consensus, and also the habitually dubious claim that aboriginal culture is the oldest living today: what aspect of Aboriginal culture are we all meant to be reconciled with at this time?

(pause….silence….crickets chirp)

Gee where to begin, ritual torture and abuse? Welfare and drug dependency? Don’t say happy unified families and communities. This is not an aboriginal idea more an aspirational ideal shared by most Australians.

—–

Now we have Gillard via the GG pushing the ‘first Australian’ mantra.

….the need for constitutional reform to recognise the First Australians and local government were also of “great significance in this term.”

And of course the political elite don’t mean the first people to actually identify and call themselves Australians. The first recorded English usage of the name ‘Australia’ was by Matthew Flinders in 1814. Governor Macquarie began to use the name from 1817 and from then onwards British people born in Australia began to call themselves Australian. The first Australians, a geographic and then a demographic term.

As far as we know aboriginals had no coherent concept of a continent. Supposed mythical dreams and maps interpreted and ‘discovered’ by sympathetic academics are not a substitute for the former. Nor were Aboriginals unified as a common people who identified themselves as Australians or anything of the like.

Federation gave birth to a Australia as a political and economic concept. Aboriginals were by and large separate from the Federation process, and hence debate occurred as to if they were entitled to all the privileges of citizenship, etc…

In any of this how can the political elite claim that aboriginals of today, with all their genealogical and mitochondrial dna complexities, be the ‘first Australians’? It is a claim that simply says, a group of people today, who at times have a tenuous link to another group of people who lived 222 years ago, are the first Australians. If that was all one needed to do to be Australian – just turn up and have a genealogical link – then virtually anyone arriving at any of our international airports would qualify. It make very little historical sense and I’ve yet to see an explanation for it.

Hilarious: Greens self-righteous anger

Posted by Chief Blogger – 16 March, 2010

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.”

“There were no stolen generations” continued – update

Posted by Chief Blogger – 1 February, 2010

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.

“There were no stolen generations”

Posted by Chief Blogger – 16 January, 2010

…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.

Justice is still blind in some quarters

Posted by Chief Blogger – 24 November, 2009

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.

Show me the evidence, then the $$$

Posted by Chief Blogger – 19 November, 2009

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!