Albo's question

[red750]

I heard Warren Mundine say that the referendum is a waste of millions which would be better spent trying to solve the problems. He believes The Voice will have little effect, as it was tried previously with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Commission which was abandoned a few years ago.

[red750]

Two other stories at the top of tonight's news highlight some of the inconsistencies with the treatment of whiltes and aboriginies. First there was the aboriginal woman gaoled without bail for being drunk and drugged on a train, and whose pleas for help in the cell were ignored and she died of a stomach problem. Then the guy who was "next level drunk", got in his 4x4 to get more beer, and backed over his mate of 25 years and killed him. Allowed out on bail. Notice the difference?

[octave]

28 minutes ago, red750 said:

I heard Warren Mundine say that the referendum is a waste of millions which would be better spent trying to solve the problems. He believes The Voice will have little effect, as it was tried previously with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Commission which was abandoned a few years ago.

 

Voice to parliament no campaign to push for recognition of migrants as well as Indigenous people

 

I am open to support other options.   Mundine may be supporting the no case for the "voice' but he is supporting including acknowledging of indigenous peoples in the preamble of the constitution.    I am guessing the folks jumping for joy that Mundine is opposing the "voice" are not going to support his idea regarding the preamble.    

 

"Warren Mundine says no campaign will propose a new referendum on an acknowledgment in the preamble of the constitution"

[Bruce Tuncks]

In Alice Springs, about 20 years ago, I was told by a cop that they could not help " If indigenous people were involved".

Indigenous actually have a dedicated pre-paid legal service waiting to be called on. This is way ahead of what the rest of us have.

[Bruce Tuncks]

AND as a kid of about ten years old, I went "hunting" for kangaroos with some blacks. We drove out to a borehole site with a Ford flat-top truck and the roos were shot with 303 rifles as they drank from the stock-troughs. Even then, I thought this was unfair on the roos.

Back at the ranch, we had a great campfire going and I liked the festivities.

[Bruce Tuncks]

What would I do if I had power? ( thanks Octave for the asking )  A few things...

1.  I would institute a real "basics " card, and apply it to anybody who had proven that they needed it, whites too. And parents of amok kids.

This card would NOT be usable for gambling or grog. Sure, there would be ways around the idea, so there would be loopholes left to plug. For example, taking advantage of a basics card and using it to circumvent the spirit of the idea could lead to your status as a retailer being in trouble.

2. I would re-introduce the concept of "walkabout" and apply it to many of those currently sentenced to incarceration, as well as those who came close but were let free. Walkabout is healthy exercise in my opinion.

3. I would not, at first, interfere with the positive discrimination ideas such as subsidising the pay for aborigines. I accept the arguments ( eg by Octave ) on this matter.

4. I would insist that those who were using "traditional" hunting rights used traditional weapons against the animals and fish. So no trucks and rifles instead of  spears.

 

I honestly don't think I'm racist, gosh I sure would have voted for Obama.

Edited January 30, 2023 by Bruce Tuncks

[onetrack]

Quote

4. I would insist that those who were using "traditional" hunting rights used traditional weapons against the animals and fish. So no trucks and rifles instead of  spears.

I'm all for that. No "white mans improvements" to be used when doing "traditional" hunting and fishing. Make their own fishing gear from sharpened bones and sticks. Don't use our roads, walk through the bush. I reckon they'd soon give up their "traditions".

[Marty_d]

4 hours ago, red750 said:

I heard Warren Mundine say that the referendum is a waste of millions which would be better spent trying to solve the problems. He believes The Voice will have little effect, as it was tried previously with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Commission which was abandoned a few years ago.

Well, if the "No" team pack up their bags and quit, it'll cost a lot less.

[pmccarthy]

Someone earlier in this thread crystallised it for me. Show me the wording in the constitution now, then show me the change in wording that is being sought, then I will decide how to vote.

[old man emu]

22 minutes ago, pmccarthy said:

Someone earlier in this thread crystallised it for me.

Glad to have helped you to direct your thinking on how you will answer the referendum question.

[octave]

1 hour ago, pmccarthy said:

Show me the wording in the constitution now, then show me the change in wording that is being sought, then I will decide how to vote.

 

Sounds like a fair position to take. I believe the precise wording will be debated in parliament in march.

Edited January 30, 2023 by octave

[red750]

More details on the aboriginal woman who died in custody.

[Bruce Tuncks]

I liked how there is a proposal to differentiate between violent and non-violent offending. Well overdue, but still welcome to see.

I reckon violence against strangers is the worst thing ever.

That woman was in for shoplifting, which is not a violent offense. She almost certainly would have turned up to court, so there was no reason to refuse her bail.

[kgwilson]

As a Kiwi married to an Aussie & having lived here for 18 years now my observations are these

 

Australians in general are racist.

Aboriginals are seen as not equal to Europeans and cause problems.

There is a culture of Us and Them.

No government has ever done anything effective to deal with what they see as an Aboriginal problem.

Politicians have their public opinion and their personal opinion (which is never admitted) but influences their decisions.

Historically the treatment of aboriginal people has been absolutely appalling.

 

Obviously these are generalisations and do not apply to everyone.

 

Everything done to date with apologies for past injustices, Closing the Gap, providing handouts, etc has been an abject failure. How could it be anything else with current Aboriginal incarceration rates and the Alice Springs current issues among the hundreds of other things.

 

Some recognition in the constitution and providing a Voice to Parliament may not be perfect but I think it is a good first step. The aboriginal Tribes and Mobs need to become masters of their own destiny and current processes don't provide this. Maybe the Voice will enable them to get together and get some consensus on issues that confront them. Maybe it won't. Trying to modify a many thousands of years old culture in 200 years is far to big an ask.

 

The No campaigners seem to want something more in a sort of Treaty. How can you have a treaty 200 years after conquering these people? 

 

I'll be voting yes not because it will make anything perfect but because everything else done in the past has failed, and failed miserably.

 

 

[red750]

Just how WOKE can you go?
The comments below are taken from a recent Daily Mail article.

 

A former indigenous politician who received a prestigious award from Barack Obama has described Aboriginal’ welcome to country’ ceremonies as ‘bullshit’.

 

Quote from former indigenous NT minister Bess Price (mother of Jacinta Price).  ‘All the “Welcome to Country”, all the “Smoking Ceremonies” and all the made-up bullshit rituals about “pay our respects to elders past and present” is just one big lie.

 

The ‘welcome to country’ was adopted into Australia’s parliamentary protocols in 2008, after the then prime minister Kevin Rudd delivered his apology to the stolen generation.

 

However, two years after that decision Aboriginal entertainer Ernie Dingo claimed that he invented the concept in 1976 when Pacific Island dancers demanded they receive a traditional welcome.

 

The Aboriginals have supposedly been here for at least 30,000 years (some say more like 60,000 years). That was about 29,750 years before the British arrived.

 

The fact is, as uncomfortable and as unfashionable as it is, aboriginal Australia had not produced anything resembling a Shakespeare, nothing much in the way of technology, never discovered the wheel and no philosophy to speak of, in the 30,000 years available to it.  The English brought the rule of law, the Westminster system, the notion of progress and all the benefits of the science, technology and ingenuity of the modern European tradition.

 

On 26 January 1788 when the First Fleet ships unloaded their ~1200 convicts, Royal Marine guards and officials, not a shot was fired.  As they looked around what’s now Circular Quay they saw nothing other than bush.  Not a single building, planted field, domesticated plant or animal – nothing at all. It was the same across the continent. It was “terra nullius” – a vacant land. There was no indigenous Army to defeat in battle, no Aboriginal flag to lower. There was nothing to claim as the spoils of victory. There was just wild bush. The few Aborigines who came out to have a look at these strange people were completely illiterate and innumerate and those on the south side of the harbour spoke a language completely unintelligible to those on the north side of the harbour and they’d been constantly at war with each other for as long as anyone can remember. To this day Australian Aboriginal languages consist of around 290-363 dialects belonging to an estimated 28 language families and isolates, spoken by Aboriginal Australians of mainland Australia and a few nearby islands.

 

There was no “invasion”.

 

Since the arrival of the English, only about 250 years ago, Australia has prospered and developed into a modern first-world country, along with all other Western democracies.

 

Yet for at least 30,000 years (prior to the arrival of the British) the Aboriginals seemed to have not progressed one step.

 

To put this into perspective, the Egyptian empire came and went between around 1570 BC and 1070 BC.

 

Aboriginals had inhabited our great land for at least 27,000 years prior to the Egyptian empire.

 

The Greek empire was at its peak in the period 500 BC to 300 BC and the Roman empire was at its peak around 117 BC.

 

Each of those empires was highly advanced and contributed enormously to the advancement of the modern world.

 

It, therefore, beats me why the Aboriginals are now so revered.

 

55 years ago, under the Holt Liberal government, that 90.77 per cent of Australians voted to remove race from the constitution, putting ‘indigenous’ Australian people on the same legal footing as all other Australians and allowing them to be counted in the Australian population. It was a momentous shift towards equality. Half a decade later, the Albanese Labor government wants to insert ‘race’ back into the constitution!

 

To enshrine a special place in the constitution based purely on racial grounds is racism pure and simple. Length of time on the continent whether it be 40,000 years, 250 years or 10 years shouldn’t be the determinant for any special consideration to any population cohort in the constitution.

 

JUST A LITTLE SOMETHING TO CONTEMPLATE BEFORE SIGNING UP TO “THE VOICE” – TAKE CARE –  WE ALREADY HAVE A PARLIAMENT THAT REPRESENTS “ALL” AUSTRALIANS!

[facthunter]

Has "someone" put their name to that because it is presented as someone's opinion very much.  There are plenty of places in Europe where neighbouring "tribes' don't understand each other's language. The absence of a flag means nothing whatever. Thats  not needed for them to know who they are.  The English Garden was unsuitable to this place and monoculture is also not suitable on a grand scale. People took what they needed and no more so things were not wiped out.. Because they were SO different it was assumed they were inferior, but they lived with the land not modifying and poisoning it. Property was shared and that aided survival in a harsh land. They didn't accumulate personal wealth items as that would be a hindrance when you moved on.   All those EMPIRES came and went and left their relics and wealth behind often wasting slaves lives to build exotic tombs for their spirits to live forever. It's all pointless really and was mostly about POWER for a few to rule over the others.  . Nev

[kgwilson]

Written from someone who has no concept of another culture that had no need of technology and inventions of Europe and Asia. They were in tune with the harsh land they lived in and managed to survive in every corner of it for those 60,000 years without building empires and monuments. The concept of ownership didn't even enter their minds.

[Old Koreelah]

21 hours ago, onetrack said:

I'm all for that. No "white mans improvements" to be used when doing "traditional" hunting and fishing. Make their own fishing gear from sharpened bones and sticks..

Banning modern tools and weapons might be hard to enforce, but might help. I fear many communities have already lost most of the old skills, but have seen others which haven’t.

 

When walking along a beach in Arnhem Land with my wife we encountered a bunch of young local blokes making small fishing spears totally from stuff growing nearby, then hunting in the surf. They showed us one they’d caught.

[old man emu]

22 minutes ago, Old Koreelah said:

in Arnhem Land

Yes. Arnhem Land - far from the madding crowds and European influence to this very day. I doubt if those boys' parents give a tinker's cuss for the Voice. 

 

Aborigines in remote areas call it "sit down money". Closer in, it's "the dole". Either way, it is money paid for idleness. Right now, pineapple growers are watching their fruit ripen in the field and rotting   when it should be being picked. Why isn't it being picked? No labour to do it. Why no labour? Sit down money. It reminds me of Aesop's fable about the ants and the grasshopper.

 https://read.gov/aesop/052.html

 

Another thing being played up is this desire of Aborigines to stay "on country". Now that's a reasonable desire, but not when it means that the remainders have to be fed and clothed by those prepared to create income by the application of brain or brawn. Why not become seasonal FIFOuters? Seems to work well enough for Asians and Indians. 

 

And getting on to the troubles in the Alice, I heard a Local say that the problem is one of public transport. Those from outside the Alice use some of their money to go into town. Then they blow it and don't have the return fare, so they stay in the Alice and cause the problems. 

 

Would I be right, Tuncksy, that the long time Aboriginal residents of the Alice don't create the problem, but it's the migrants?

[Bruce Tuncks]

It's the alcoholics from the outstations, so yes u are right OME. Yuendumu is a dry community, made so be the vote of the elders who live there. The alcoholics among them move to the town ( Alice Springs ) and sleep in the usually dry Todd river.

There are far more teetotallers among the blacks than there are among the whites these days. But the whites are much better at keeping their drinking hidden.

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

Once I took a picture of a heap of flagons in the Todd.  The town council outlawed flagons, and cask wine became the cheapest alcohol.

These days, the much younger council is banning cask wine because of its " undesirable drinking patterns".

I ask you, would you prefer to be hit over the head with a half-full bottle or a half-full cask?

[old man emu]

Drink half a cask of Chateau de Cardboard and you'll feel like you've been hit over the head with an empty plaggon.

[Bruce Tuncks]

Yes, but really it would hurt more to be hit on the head with a half-full flagon. This is what they banned all those years ago. It was just lucky for the alcoholics that " coolie casks" were introduced at that time. Alcoholic aborigines have an unerring sense of finding just what the cheapest alcohol comes in. It used to be flagons of sherry, then it became casks of coolibah white

[spacesailor]

Cold metho,  

I was sailing far north Queensland & could't find cooking stove metho, the shop girl said it was to  stop them drinking the metho, they ask for a "  cold one to go " . 

(  no small size container's sold )

spacesailor

 

[facthunter]

Metho has a bad taste added to it to make it unpalatable. People used to add Nugget bootpolish to it for the sweet tase of nitrobenzene. Ya gotta be desperate. I believe the grog is most of the problem and for whiteys too that are dysfunctional and "off their Brain". most days.   Nev