dadpad wrote:I wonder if removing all the children from the influence of their communities and parents might be helpfull? You know, break the cycle of abuse.
oh! wait on............
Well that's exactly what's on the table dad - Noel Pearson floated it and Brough said it might be considered. - Well hey - we do it to urban white families (sometimes very wrongly). As Deb said, the welfare action people are very worried about creating another stolen generation.
Personally I'm against it, but, as Mrs Hinge says, a lot of the stolen generation are grateful for being stolen, and even many of those who resent it don't want to lose what they gained from the experience - they just want their culture as well. It's not black and white. No pun intended.
The lovely Mrs Hinge said a few weeks ago something was brewing and she wasn't sure what the end game might be, but she was uneasy. Now she thinks Brough let it slip. Close down communities because they're dysfunctional which she reads as close them down because they are too difficult to service and in many cases they occupy land which could be used for more profitable purposes - particularly the DOGIT communities in the Cape.
Armed with that thought I watch with interest JH's push for nuclear power, and the waste dump for Australia - wouldn't it be a convenient way to fight the NIMBY protests by putting the waste somewhere where it wasn't anyone's backyard?
As has been said the child abuse has been known about for years - I remember mentioning the two year old with syphillis a little while ago - why is it news now when the govt has done everything to hide indigenous affairs from the spotlight (close ATSIC, mainstream it's programs, refuse to cooperate with UN investigations into indigenous living standards and poopoo their findings) - they've got their pet Noel (who has a vision which the libs can coopt). Mrs Hinge smells an election issue, I smell media (PBL) in bed with the govt again.
Sorry I'm rambling but I've just remembered another thing - a lot of commentators said that criminal charges weren't laid because perpetrators hid behind culture. Crap-I-say. There wasn't the will to prosecute - it was too hard and they're only boongs. Definitely indigenous people are unwilling to testify against their elders, but if a child has been sexually abused there is genetic evidence sufficient make an eyewitness account redundant.
(And I'm by no means suggesting that sexual (& other) abuse of small children is exclusive aboriginal territory!) But what can a person living in an urban setting at the other end of the continent make of her claims of sexual abuse of children as young as seven months by adult male members of their own (aboriginal) communities? I felt (from what I saw, read & heard in the media) that she was sincere & rather at the end of her tether with her responsibilities toward the aboriginal people in her care. I saw her decision to "go public" as a plea for help. I felt that Mal Brough ( the federal minister with responsibility for aboriginal affairs) seemed to jump on the "outraged bandwagon" very readily .... an opportunity for a bit of pious grand-standing. Ugh.
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