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Whose National Emergency? - From Marion Scrygmour

For only the third time since the introduction of the Race Discrimination Act, legislation has been introduced that specifically excludes the operation of that Act. And it depends on the “race power” to achieve this. The so-called “race power”, passed overwhelmingly 40 years ago, and always assumed to be for the “benefit” of Aboriginal people, now allows discrimination against Aboriginal people... On the three occasions it has been suspended, it has been aimed at Aboriginal people only: over the Wik legislation; over Hindmarsh Island; and for the purposes of the second Intervention into the Northern Territory.

And let’s look at the way it has been used in that Intervention. It has been used:

  • to compulsorily acquire interest in Aboriginal private property in “prescribed communities”;
  • to remove the permit system, or the right of Aboriginal traditional owners to say who can, and who cannot, come onto their property;
  • to arbitrarily control individual Aboriginal incomes;
  • to control Aboriginal organisations and assets.

It is, in other words, a leap back to the days of the first Intervention, to the days of assimilation, control and coercion; to the days when Aboriginal people were regarded as too naïve, and too simple, to control their own affairs. And it has nothing to do with the protection of children.

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A Scared Snake - From 'The Alchemist'
12 oct  |  No more rabbits in the hat. That's what everyone said about John Howard's re-election strategy. It was embarrassing. Bags of gold, funding for hospitals, a war on paedophiles ­- none of it swung the polls. He was finished. Then last night, after a modest admission of shortcomings, he flung another rabbit to the mob. He, John Howard, the man who had long underplayed the sufferings of aboriginals since whitey arrived, now executed a backflip. He would guide Australia, both the left and the right, to achieve the illusive dream: a "new reconciliation" - whatever that is - with the original inhabitants. Halleluiah! One Great Tribe United at Last.

A stroke of diabolical genius. It could work. Howard might convince enough swinging voters that he is answering the call of his heart to heal Australia. Further, that he is the only person in the land who could pull it off. Thus anyone who cast a vote against him, would also be casting a vote against a reconciled, re-born Oz. On last night's TV news, an aboriginal elder offered this comment: "Howard's got a new skin, but he's the same old snake". Exactly. This initiative is driven by desperation, even fear. Something else is going on in Howard's mind, apart from the ignominy of losing office. I think I know what it is — but let it wait until tomorrow's 100 Words. . . read more

The pointless battle against binge drinking
5 may  |  By Stephen Myles

Since the days of Alexander the Great, binge drinking has been a very popular past time - leading to him apparently killing a friend and burning down Persepolis while drunk.

Those are some Great shoes to fill.

Yet, governments, schools and the media have repeatedly tried to teach us of binge drinking's dangers. 

Dartmouth University has taken the lead, instigating a new nationwide policy to curb heavy drinking by their students.

Pour me another glass.

Binge drinking is defined as "the consumption of five or more drinks in a row by men — or four or more drinks in a row by women — at least once in the previous 2 weeks. Heavy binge drinking includes three or more such episodes in 2 weeks."

Seems I don't know anyone who isn't a heavy binge drinker.

Do you think this definition should be changed or should we change people's attitudes? Or should you follow HPD's no fools guide to drinking a lot but not dying?  . . read more

Voices from Inside the Northern Territory Emergency
7 jan  |  The former Howard's government radical intervention into indigenous communities in the Northern Territory is supported by the new Rudd Labor government. The NT National Emergency Response Legislation 2007 went much further than protecting the children. Here are some voices of those directly affected who want the world to hear. . . read more
Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? - From John Howard
12 nov  |  Whether it’s defence, whether it’s roads, whether it’s education or whether it’s health, it’s all being made possible because we have built a strong economy. Never forget what we inherited. Never forget the $96 billion of debt. Never forget the 8.2% of unemployment. Never forget interest rates reached 17% under the former Government. Never forget that we were told by our opponents that the leaders of Asia would not deal with this country, and yet eleven-and-a-half years later we have achieved a remarkable duality in foreign policy - a close, enduring relationship with our great ally, the United States, side by side with a constructive and enduring relationship with the fastest growing nation in the world, China. The ALP wants the Australian people to believe that the Australian economy is on autopilot, that it just happens automatically, it’s all due to the resources boom, it’s got nothing to do with the quality of the people in charge. They want to sort of slip by unnoticed...

The choice you face on the 24th of November has become more intense and more urgent because of some of the stormclouds that are gathering on our economy both domestically and internationally. With the right leadership, the skill that people like Peter Costello have displayed over the last eleven-and-a-half years, we can continue to see it grow. We can reach that great goal of full employment. We can once again walk the shopping malls and the streets of this nation and meet enthusiastic young people bubbling with hope and pride and confidence about their future job prospects. But if we get it wrong, if we hand it over to inexperienced people, a government dominated by 70% of former trade union officials, if we have a nation for the first time in its history with a Labor Government at every level, coast to coast, wall to wall without lead or hindrance, isn’t that a huge risk – isn’t that taking too big a risk with the prosperity that we have worked so hard to build?  . . read more

Another Day Another Aboriginal Embarrassment- by Sean Maguire
28 aug  |  A couple of days ago it was reported across the world's media that an Aboriginal group in the Northern Territory was appealing to the UN to be given refugee status. They wanted to be legally considered 'internally displaced' as they claimed with the Federal Government's intervention they had been forced from their land.

Following that, James Anaya, a special envoy from the UN Human Rights Commission, publically came out and said the policies of the intervention were ‘racist' and that they broke many of the articles of ‘the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples'.

One of the clearest Articles broken reads:

Article 19: ‘States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them'

How embarrassing. International condemnation and refugees in a first world country.

Yet, White Australia is silent. Most of us can reconcile that it's a far away problem, with people we've never really connected with. We might feel bad occasionally but at least we don't steal the children anymore.

And, even if it is bad being Aboriginal at least the intervention is something, at least we're doing something.

And for most of us that's it, it's just a problem we can push further into the back of our minds, and a people we can push further toward the extinction our ancestors always wanted.  . . read more

Moral Blindness - From Tom Morton
12 feb  |  In its initial response to the 'Bringing them Home' Report in 1997, the Howard government argued that 'We do not believe our generation should be asked to accept responsibility for the acts of earlier generations.' But many of those acts occurred within the lifetimes of generations now living.

Mick Dodson: “Who are these people, who is this generation that took my grandmother, my father, my mother and my grandfather and my two sisters? Who is this generation that tried to take me from my family in 1960? What generation do we look to if Mr Howard says it wasn't this one? Where is this mythical group of Australians who made these laws, adopted these policies, put them into practice, who took the kids?”.

Critics of the 'Bringing them Home' Report believe the report demonises the white officials who were involved in removing indigenous children. The late Editor of Quadrant magazine, P.P. McGuinness, reiterated this point in an editorial.”To denigrate the honest and sincere efforts of so many people who thought they were doing the right thing”, says McGuinness, “is merely a historical ignorance.” But according to philosopher Raimond Gaita, this view represents a kind of moral blindness about our immediate past. [More] . . read more

Howard's Lost Decade - From Richard Flanagan
30 nov  |  John Howard famously said the times were his, and for more than a decade it seemed they were. Australia experienced the greatest and most sustained boom in its history. Yet at its end Australia's indigenous population was in a ruinous state, its extraordinary environment was threatened on numerous fronts, and its people were beginning to ask where the wealth had gone: public schools and public health were in crisis, social welfare was straitened, housing was unaffordable for many, and wages and conditions were being cut under Howard's industrial reforms...

In the wake of his defeat the attacks on Howard's legacy will turn ferocious, but at their heart will be an unease, a ritual exorcism of something deeper that Australians would perhaps rather not admit. For a decade Howard's power had resided in his ability to speak directly and powerfully to the great negativity at the core of the Australian soul - its timidity, its conformity, its fear of other people and new ideas, its colonial desire to ape rather than lead, its shame that sometimes seems close to a terror of the uniqueness of its land and people.

At the end of his concession speech, Howard claimed to have left Australia prouder, stronger and more prosperous. But it didn't feel that way. It felt like it had been a lost decade. It felt like the country was frightened, unsure of what it now is, unready for the great changes it must make, and ill-fitted for the robust debates it must have. There was a strange sense that Australia, which had seemed so often to sleepwalk, mesmerised, through the past 11 years, had suddenly woken up. But where it might go and what it might do and be, no one any longer knew.

From The Guardian. Richard Flanagan is a novelist. . . read more

Fuck Shoe!
26 oct  |  By Don Reilly

On Australia's public broadcaster the ABC, Australia's former Prime-Minster John Howard had a shoe thrown at him "for Iraqi dead". The most disappointing aspect of the protest was that the thrower was miles off and that we didn't get to see some Bush-esque dodging and weaving from some ferocious footwear. 

The other disappointing aspect was that while Howard will be forever remembered as the PM that committed Australia to two unwinnable wars, his vicious vision continues to live on in a pathetic party we once had faith in.

Reminds me of when Margaret Thatcher was asked what her greatest achievement was in government and she answered "Tony Blair". It was her ability to completely change government so that her successors would have to follow her that she prized most highly.

So for Gillard whose pledged to keep our troops in Afghanistan, take a look at Howard- those are some big shoes to fill but you seem to be measuring up nicely. 

Wonder when you'll be weaving some rubber-soled missiles.  . . read more

A Matter of Life and Death - From Tim Costello
7 nov  |  I am not campaigning for Kevin Rudd in this Federal election. And conversely I am not campaigning against either the government, the Prime Minister, or my brother. But I have bought into the election campaign because I believe the issue of overseas aid and the position of the two major parties is critical. Indeed it is a matter of life and death.

World Vision research shows that the extra funding that Labor has committed to aid, if delivered, could allow funding of programs that could reduce child deaths by 140,000 each year in the Asia Pacific region. As well the funding boost could also reduce maternal deaths by 4,200, lead to at least 29,000 fewer deaths from AIDS and 31,000 fewer deaths from TB annually. It could also provide access to safe drinking water to almost 37 million people.

Overseas aid is too important to be captured by partisan politics and it is my sincere hope that the Government will move to match the ALP's pledge on aid... to boost overseas aid to 0.5% of Gross National Income... Individually, Australians are among the most generous donors on the planet in terms of their giving to overseas aid and we expect our government to also act generously and with compassion... unfortunately our overall level of government aid is languishing badly. Over the last decade we have failed to show international leadership on critical issues such as climate change and on the level of overseas aid we give as a nation. This is an issue Australians understand, it is an issue people care about. . . read more

Who Protects the Constitution? - From 'The Outsider'
24 jul  |  Three years ago, at the time of the Tampa Crisis, Robert Manne wrote "In Australia we have the vice of highly concentrated executive power without the American virtue of congressional independence and oversight." This is now exacerbated by the interference of the Federal execuitve power in the affairs of the judiciary. Remember ex Queensland Premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen's classic statement when asked "what do you understand by the doctrine of the separation of powers under the Westminster system?". He replied, "I don't know which doctrine you refer to."

Well, the Canberra mob aren't that dumb but they sure as hell know how to push and prod our liberties and rights, again and again, so as to make you wonder - what can we do about it? The bungling defence in the Haneef case simply won't do. And the courage of the Labor opposition deserts them at the very moment we need to roast the Govrnment on the barbecue of sedition.

The answer may lie with the judiciary itself. Surely there is action that can be taken to protect the separation of powers in the Constitution when the boundaries are wilfully blurred? This is a conservative issue not a left wing one. And Howard fiddles while our home burns. . . read more

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY!
"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." -- Ronald Reagan (1986)