Albo's question

[Yenn]

The way it is going at the moment I feel that the question was thought up to placate the Aboriginal and Torres Straits islanders, rather than do any good for them.

They have many beefs about the way they are treated and I have no idea how to make life better for them, but we cannot go along with things such as the incarceration rate being too high. They seem to think that there should be a limit on numbers an jail, but not on their commitment of crimes.

[nomadpete]

The numbers of incarcerated, in any demographic group will depend largely upon the culture of those social groups.

 

It would be rather foolish to simply stop all punishment of crime for one demographic group, in the hope that those criminals will suddenly stop carrying out antisocial criminal acts.

 

The people of those particular demographic groups - families, peers, etc, must collectively take some responsibility for the higher percentage of criminal behaviour.

 

Many indigenous communities feel that they have a right to inflict criminal acts upon everybody around them. That is why they end up excessively in jails. This has been a multigenerational bad culture that is not caused by 'all whiteys'.

 

The fact that quite a lot of indigenous people have better morals does not lessen the sad situation of the rebellious destructive troublemakers (and their victims).

 

I have seen both types. And each type will vigorously deny any connection with the opposing type.

[octave]

 

10 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

The numbers of incarcerated, in any demographic group will depend largely upon the culture of those social groups.

If we look at those who are incarcerated we could probably draw the conclusion that people from the wealthier classes are less likely to commit crimes since jails are populated by people form the less advantaged classes than the wealthier classes. Can we therefore draw conclusions about class and wealth when it comes to incarceration statistics.  

 

 

[facthunter]

You shouldn't be Jailed  for not paying fines if you are nearly destitute. Nev

[old man emu]

41 minutes ago, facthunter said:

You shouldn't be Jailed  for not paying fines if you are nearly destitute. Nev

We stopped doing that in NSW after a young bloke locked up for unpaid fines was beaten to death by a fair dinkum crim.

 

On the weekend four Indigenous juveniles were arrested in Bourke after breaking into a motel room and stealing property. In Walgett, the Coroner has just completed a "death in custody" Inquest into the death of a 24-year-old Indigenous person who fell into flood waters while running away from police in the early hours of the morning. I believe he was a passenger in a stolen car. Why were these people wandering about deserted towns late at night.

 

It is clear that the  concepts of European law are lost on these people. But we cannot throw our hands up and give in. If Indigenous people want their voice to be ensured by an amendment to the non-Aboriginal Constitution, then the non-Aboriginals should demand that the Elders start enforcing some sort of natural law on their juniors. We are expected now to say things like this: "We pay our respects to Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all First Nations people present today.” There also seems to be the addition of the words "and future" after "past and present". 

 

I was lead to believe that Respect was something a person earned through above average effort. These Elders don't seem to be making much effort to be paid respect. You can't tell me that after 60 millennia Indigenous societies didn't work out some type of rule system to maintain a degree of day-to-day peace within their own groups. 

 

 

[onetrack]

We've recently had a massive outbreak of really severe juvenile crime in the Kimberley region of W.A. - Broome and Kununurra in particular. The offenders are virtually all indigenous youths. They come from totally dysfunctional families, quite a number suffer from severe intellectual disabilities, usually caused by excessive alcohol intake on their parents behalf. These juveniles have no respect for anything, or anyone.

 

They have been stealing vehicles wholesale, bashing and robbing people, ram raids on businesses, housebreaking, even rapes and general assaults on women and girls. The W.A. Police have had to seriously increase the number of police in the Northern areas of W.A. to try and get the problem under control. The police rounded up and charged around 100 of these juveniles and sent them to the juvenile reform institution known as Banksia Hill, just S of Perth City.

 

These juveniles promptly trashed Banksia Hill, starting fires, wrecking cells, attacking Banksia Hill staff and warders - so they sent around 20 of the hard-core juveenile crims to the main jail at Casuarina, S of Perth, where they again rioted, set fire to cells in Casuarina, tore the cells apart, and threw metal bars, window frames, and anything else they could rip up or rip off, at staff and warders there.

 

I don't know where these so-called "respected elders" are, when all this is happening, but I doubt any of these "respected elders" would even get the slightest respect from these little hoods. I fear we are simply seeing the tip of a major indigenous crime wave amongst the younger indigenes, which will result in some serious backlash against all those with indigenous ancestry.

The indigenes constantly demand respect, but they themselves often have little respect for anything. I think they all need to be educated to the fact that respect has to be earnt - and constant anti-social, criminal behaviour, and destructive behaviour, gets them less and less respect with every passing year. 

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-16/escalating-crime-crisis-prompts-kimberley-police-blitz/100835574

 

https://www.9news.com.au/national/western-australia-major-police-crackdown-to-stop-youth-crime-in-the-kimberley/30d3d3ac-213e-43f3-beed-4175628bebb0

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-21/third-of-banksia-hill-detention-centre-cells-damaged-unusable/101167766

 

https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/wa/wa-premier-defends-youth-detainee-shackles-c-7636061

[Bruce Tuncks]

The problem is that their power has a history of being used negatively. Stopping people from climbing hills for example.

It is easy to see why a calorie-deprived tribe should have a taboo against unnecessary exercise, but they should not be able to stop exercise-deprived people from climbing.

Around here, the Melbourne road duplication was stopped near Ararat for a tree ( which was too young to be in tribal traditions ) because of indigenous " voice".

And they have apparently stopped rock-climbing in the Grampians. They stopped it at Uluru...  I wonder if there was any cost to those who stopped it.

[Bruce Tuncks]

And housing!  When I was a builder in Alice Springs, there was a group which consisted of an aboriginal elder, an architect and a supplier of construction stuff.

They tendered "appropriate" dwellings for new entrants from the desert. They were told in no uncertain terms that their " racist " design was tossed out and that " the aboriginies would have housing the same as everybody else " which meant that the houses would be mined for firewood etc.

[facthunter]

Isn't THAT symptomatic of the PROBLEM? Nev

[old man emu]

Here's a radical approach to ending alcohol-fuelled violence in those remote areas by using European law. Simply cancel all liquor licences in those areas. There will be some alcohol brought in, but then you could re-define the word "sell" in the Liquor Act to include "give, supply, obtain for". That redefinition would prevent trips away to buy alcohol.

[facthunter]

The alcohol sellers don't care about the consequences of what makes them a profit. That's been proven consistently. . Prohibition only produced Rum Runners in the USA.. Alcohol in excess breeds violence everywhere. There's plenty of BAD drunks.  Nev

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, facthunter said:

The alcohol sellers don't care about the consequences of what makes them a profit.

Do you apply the same logic to stopping the sale of drugs in these areas, too? Why should communities suffer the effects of a drug - and alcohol is a drug - while a few rake in the dough? You don't control drugs by punishing the users. You have to cut off the serpent's head. At least by cancelling liquor licences in these areas, Police are given a means to prosecute the real perpetrators of the problem. And don't weep for the landed gentry. They'll still fly in their own personal supplies. As for the White workers, they'll simply revert to being Bush Baptists. 

[Bruce Tuncks]

The outstations like Yuendumu are fairly dry. Yuendumu sure is, by resolution of the elected town council. The alcoholics migrate to Alice Springs where they give Aborigines a bad name. The fact is, most of them are teetotal....  far more than the white population anyway.

Once I went there as a cabling contractor's laborer. We were stopped at 2 police roadblocks and scanned for sly grog. Apparently there was a sport meeting on, and people from other settlements were expected. They are not all dry.

My take is that white people were culled out by alcohol a thousand years ago, but Aborigines were not. So the culling is happening now.

[Bruce Tuncks]

Something similar to onetrack's observations happened at Alice Springs.  I blamed ( and still do ) Peter Costello's and John Howards baby bonus.

I saw an interview with Costello saying that "nobody would have a baby just for the money"...   well, hundreds of Aboriginal girls did, or were forced to.

Now there are hundreds of dysfunctional  unwanted youths hunter-gathering in the suburbs of the town. Lots of respectable people are leaving.

I was told that if you ring the police, they ask if indigenous were involved. If the answer is yes, then you get told that there is nothing the police can do.

Maybe it was not just the baby bonus, but the general lack of supervision happening everywhere except for the poor amateur aviators.

[willedoo]

I don't think there's many wet communities left in Australia after Howard brought in the dry laws. From my understanding, drunkenness in the communities is caused by grog being smuggled in. Howard's thing was well intentioned and might have worked to a certain degree, but in a lot of cases, it just shifted the problem to town. As Bruce would know well, Alice Springs is a prime example. Since Howard's laws, the floating, non permanent population in Alice Springs has grown enormously, along with a corresponding crime rate.

 

Which brings us to the elders. Go into a lot of communities and the first thing you will notice is that there's mainly children and old people there. Those ages in between are in town.

14 hours ago, old man emu said:

I was lead to believe that Respect was something a person earned through above average effort. These Elders don't seem to be making much effort to be paid respect. You can't tell me that after 60 millennia Indigenous societies didn't work out some type of rule system to maintain a degree of day-to-day peace within their own groups. 

The elders did have an ancient, proven rule system to prevent this break down in their society, but white law won't let them use it because it involves corporal punishment. The elders have their hands tied and are very frustrated at the state of affairs, to say the least. It's white law that has taken their power to discipline away. Nowdays, a lot of the young ones just laugh at them. A few years back, they tried a system to enable traditional Aboriginal law to be exercised in some NT communities. Naturally, the rednecks screamed loudly about how we should not have two laws. Then the do-gooders stepped in and got most of the disciplinary measures banned. There were some deaths from femoral artery perforation by leg spearing and that was the end of it.

 

I don't blame the elders; I sympathise with them. They're between a rock and a hard place. The whole Aboriginal question is not black and white (no pun intended); it's more like an onion where you have to peel the layers back. I'm not very well versed in city or coastal Aboriginals; my comments are in reference to more remote, traditional people.

[Yenn]

Willedoo. You say John Howards thing was well intentioned, but it didn't work. That is what the Voice may be intended to sort out. Our governments have a habit of going off half cocked and maybe an aboriginal voice could point out that it isn't working. I can see that as a reason for a yes vote, but I really want more information, especially about how the government can control who has a say. Looking at past governments they would all skew the voice to make themselves look or even better, make the opposition look bad.

[old man emu]

11 minutes ago, Yenn said:

That is what the Voice may be intended to sort out.

I fully agree with you there. 

 

12 minutes ago, Yenn said:

Looking at past governments they would all skew the voice to make themselves look or even better, make the opposition look bad.

Didn't we just have an election and tossed out a mob we considered to be crooked?  Haven't we reached the point where we wouldn't trust a politician as far as we could throw one? 

[Jerry_Atrick]

Most knew he was crooked when they voted for him and we still had to wait the full election term to get rid of him 

[spacesailor]

Isn,t

Palm Island Queensland Aboriginal controled .

spacesailor

[onetrack]

Alice Springs is the only place where I've seen local Police stationed at the end of the checkouts in the supermarkets simply to try and stop the vast amount of thieving by the indigenes.

They seem to treat thieving as a sport, obviously for the adrenaline kick.

I personally think the problem of the indigenes not recognising that ownership of consumer products belongs to someone else, as a deeply-ingrained cultural thing that even after 200 years, they cannot get out of their thought processes. 

I consider that their tribal habit of attacks and stealing from other tribes (women and weapons, and even food) for a degree of excitement, is probably what is behind it all.

[spacesailor]

Thats why the poms invented ' Foot-Ball '  the first ' games ' used a sheep head,

AND

The score was " nil dead "  .

After which factories used it to stop rival work gangs bashing each other.

Then Rugby had a player pickup the " football ", & run with it, as there were few rules at the time. 

spacesailor

[old man emu]

11 hours ago, onetrack said:

not recognising that ownership of consumer products belongs to someone else,

 

You can't use that excuse for the actions of people born in the 21st Century, at least 150 years after first contact with European culture. Why is it that they cry for the loss of most of their cultural heritage (the good bits in European eyes), yet fall back on this concept of lack of personal ownership? 

 

And the argument falls in light of what someone has said here about hunting results. If the men went hunting and failed for several days, then were successful, the men would feast, keeping the women and children away. Only after teh men were satiated would they allow the women and children to eat. Where is the concept of equality of "possession" of assets in that?

[Old Koreelah]

On 1/8/2022 at 2:39 PM, willedoo said:

…the government people had come up, decided the people should have nice houses …

It turned out that they weren't consulted about the housing plan …

the kids used to go up there and vandalise the houses for something to do.

Same thing happened near my home town- first in the 1920s then in the 70s. The dumb authorities never learned a thing.

I believe the locals were never consulted; as usual, white fellas were in charge. Lots of white outsiders made money. The people moved into their brand new village, far more modern than most local whites could afford. That only increased resentment. At about the same time, welfare cheques became the predominant income; prior to this, casual labour was the norm, which at least contrinbuted to a grudging respect for some black fellas as “good workers”.

 

On 1/8/2022 at 2:39 PM, willedoo said:

People used to forget that the money was only temporarily in the hands of the aboriginals short term.

In many rural communities, local whites would be appalled to realise their local economy depended on black fellas.

[Bruce Tuncks]

The economic benefits from millions of dollars flowing into black welfare is what keeps Alice Springs going for sure. It's not long before some thieving whitefeller has the money

which was given to the blacks.

 

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

I was friends with a bank teller lady who told me that $5000 was not an excessive welfare fortnightly cheque. This was the total of siddown money, kid money and royalty money.