Hard News: Not such as to engender confidence
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A guy is driving on the Warringah expressway. Some battler in a Commodore cuts in ahead of him, forcing him to brake.
'Where'd you get your license - K-mart?' the guy mutters.
A little later an aboriginal in an expensive car pulls the same trick.
'We should never have given those bastards the right to vote back in '67,' says the guy, 'look how they abuse it.' -
Joe "Weakness being numerical inferiority, perhaps?"
Amongst other things. I'm not saying they were soft and lame. Colonists wasted everyone, the world over, taking every cheap advantage they could.
Michael, I'm talking about scale, not individual anecdotes. Yes there were a few organised battles with the Aboriginals in which, by and large, got slaughtered. There were a lot more against the Maori, who were far fewer in number, and not all of them went the colonist's way. Yes there was a great toll on the Maori from disease and poor working conditions. But same goes for the Aboriginals. You would have to never have seen personally the state of the two races in comparison to think that Maori are in anywhere near such a bad way as the Aboriginals.
I don't know to what extent the difference boils down to the races themselves, rather than their treatment. Maori were and are quite different people, possibly much closer in mindset to the Europeans who were taking them over (however much they might deny it). They were much more apt to take on European techniques and technology, to explore, to become crew on ships, to organize and fight than the aboriginals. Some of that no doubt derives from geographical differences between Australia and NZ.
But the treatment also comes to a large extent *from* their differences in nature. Just as Maori were more quickly able to get what Europeans were about, so the Europeans probably understood where the Maori were coming from. It doesn't seem that such mutual understanding ever existed, and still doesn't, between Europeans and Aboriginals. So the Europeans found it far easier to treat Aboriginals like animals, and indeed vermin to be exterminated in many cases.
So it's a bit of both - their existing nature *and* how they were treated - that accounts for the far more shocking current state of average Aboriginal life than Maori.
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Maori at the time of first contact, and well past the treaty, were strong. And very good at organised warfare. The first contact with Europeans ended in bloodshed, pakeha blood. And there are plenty of other examples of maori strength.
I'm a cycnic on this. (tho' there were undoubtably some with good intentions on all sides throughout). If Europeans had overwhelming military/violent superiority in 1840 (as the colonists did in Australia), they'd never have waltzed about here signing a treaty.
Similarly, if Europeans hadn't significantly out-numbered maori at the time of franchise, maori probably would have had to fight for the vote; and for some period we may well have had out won variety of apartheid.
I don't think we're better- I think we're luckier. Luckier because it's worked out better for NZ, and given us, however slow and unsatisfactory, a range of ways and means and skills for getting on. But most of the gains for maori have been hard-won, over a very long period. Harry Evison's "Te Waipounamu" tells the story from a Southern perspective very well. -
Tim Flannery makes a good case in The Future Eaters that the main reason the Botany Bay penal colony wasn't situated in NZ was due to the intractability of the locals.
Cook already had Tasman's charts of NZ, Western Australia and Van Diemen's Land. He came here expecting to find the place, The big surprise came after leaving NZ, when he ran up against the hitherto unknown East Coast of Australia.
As a possible site for a penal colony, NZ looked good - similar climatic conditions to Europe, etc. The only trouble was those pesky uppity natives.
BTW 1788, Flannery's edition of the remarkable Watkin Tench's journal of the first fleet and the settlement of Botany Bay and Sydney Cove, is a great account of first contact with aboriginals.
When you compare Tench's - and even Governor Phillip's - attitudes to that of Howard, you can onlly conclude that things have gone horribly backwards.Meanwhile, for those who like such things, a one-page history of Australia by the great Simon O'Really, from Australian Motorcycle News:
http://members.tripod.com/fredgassit/fguvnor.gif -
Sorry Joe, couldn't get that link to work.
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Works for me - here's another one:
http://dem0n.qgl.org/images/gassit/fguvnor.gif -
Got it, cheers, v.good
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Golly... my eyes aren't up to that.
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Ben
I thought ideas of Racial Hierarchy had gone from civilised minds.Might be worth looking at time-lines though.
1840 Maori where enfranchised with the rights of British subjects - so the let the debate begin here.
1967 Indigenous Australians got the vote.127 years of active legisative descrimination by removing basic human dignity has a price.
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1967 Indigenous Australians got the vote.
127 years of active legisative descrimination by removing basic human dignity has a price
I quite agree.
But as Pilger hgas pointed out, modern Australia was born through the staggering brutality of the penal system.
OTOH, Steven Carden's new book New Zealand Unleashed makes the point that Maori were a lot easier for the British to deal with in a manner that met up with an emerging imperial conscience because they made sense to the British - they had homes and gardens.
The Austronesians (I like that too), on the other hand, were much easier to treat as animals.
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1967 Indigenous Australians got the vote.
...
I quite agree.
I don't.
What actually happened in 1967 was that the Federal Goverment gained the power to make laws specific to Indigenous Australians (a power they didn't previously have), and their numbers were included in the reckoning of Parliamentary seats, etc.
In most states, Indigenous Australians got the right to vote in 1901 - at the same time as everyone else. And got citizenship in 1948 - also at the same time as everyone else got a seperate Australian citizenship.
127 years of active legisative descrimination by removing basic human dignity has a price
Far from it, as I discuss above, active legislative discrimination (from the Federal Government) was only possible after 1967 - not before.
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Graeme
Gerrymander has nothing on this little beauty. Your point is a nonsense.
http://fadar.aec.gov.au/_content/when/history/ab_vote.htm
Have you judged bouts for Don King?
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WH,
You can read a summary of the Little Children are Sacred report here, or you can download the full report here.
I haven't read the whole report yet, but I'm encouraged to hear that the Australian state and federal governments are taking action on this, whatever their motives may be. Does anyone have any improvements to the report they wish to suggest?
The Inquiry is, of course, concerned with the Northern territory experience. It is not able to correct, or recommend corrections to, 200 years or 100 years of the disempowerment and institutional discrimination to which Aboriginal people have been subjected. Nor is the Inquiry able to right the political and social wrongs that have led to the dysfunction which now exists to
a considerable degree in the NT. The best it can hope to achieve is to present meaningful proposals that the government might adopt so that Aboriginal communities themselves, with support, can effectively prevent sexual abuse of their children.The themes of the [meetings between stakeholders and the members of the the Inquiry] are reflected throughout Part I of the report generally. Those themes can be reduced to a number of key areas to which our recommendations are addressed. They are:
• Alcoholism
• Education
• Poverty
• Housing
• Health
• Substance abuse
• Gambling
• Pornography
• Unemployment
• Responses by government agencies
• Law and justice
• Rehabilitation of offenders. -
. . . active legislative discrimination (from the Federal Government) was only possible after 1967 - not before.
No doubt you'll also be able to invoke Terra Nullius in order to demonstrate that aboriginals never existed. Weasel words on stilts.
I haven't read the whole report yet, but I'm encouraged to hear that the Australian state and federal governments are taking action on this, whatever their motives may be.
Sorry, but isn't this the very report that Howard has gone ahead precipitately and ignored the recommendations of?
The present Territory Government, which came to power in 2001, was at least prepared to look at the problem, unlike its Country Liberal predecessor, which had shown a long-standing contempt for aboriginal welfare.
Knowing Howard's track record on aboriginal issues, his effective sidelining of the Territory Government's report hardly seems cause for optimism. -
nah, graeme's right. the "got the vote in 67" meme is a myth.
all that happened was that the feds were able to legislate about aboriginal people. prior to that the states handled aboriginal affairs themselves.
almost all of the injustices again aboriginal people were conducted by state agencies, not federal ones. they used to have conferences and share methods for assimilating them, for example.
so, the children removal/protection activity that only stopped in the 1970s(?) was actually devised by victoria in the 1880s. it took a few decades to spread to other states like western australia/queensland.
the "lefty-liberal" filmsy response that our rwdb friends like to bitch about started when the federal government was able to moderate the extreme policies of the states.
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the "got the vote in 67" meme is a myth.
From a strictly legal viewpoint, sure - but there are plenty of Australians alive today who recall the referendum of 1967 as being the watershed, and widespread aboriginal voting didn't take place until after that date.
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WH,
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21986091-5000117,00.html
Aboriginal people have been crying out for action on this front for many years. They have been calling on bi-partisan support and action across the political spectrum. Finally, we have a Federal Government with the principled support of the Federal Opposition giving the issue the "designated, urgent national significance" it deserves.
It is good to know that so many people have sympathy for the plight of the Aboriginal people, and are familiar with the histories of their oppression. I suppose my own focus is on exploring solutions to current problems.
Who knows, maybe Labor will win the next election.
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yeah - the Herald article this morning is similar:
Howard remains determined. Beside him is Noel Pearson, a respected Aboriginal activist whose tough-love proposals for his tribal lands on Cape York Peninsula provided the model for intervention in the Northern Territory.
"The people who are nay-saying any type of intervention are people whose children, like my own, sleep safe at night".
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Weston
Left & Right have played their parts in the past. I fear the problem is still one of Black vs White.
This is military intervention in peoples lands and lives. All within the Federal State of Australia.
I fear the real goal has more to do with the competition of Federal vs State power. As with the recent water debate in OZ.
When was the last military intervention that worked to liberate the resident population?
It's both a Trojan Horse to usurp land rights and a Show Pony of Power in the battle of Fed vs State control.
The ozzy battler will kick up bobsydie(?) about water, but not about this.
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Howard's mission to recue the children?
Shame on these journalistic suckholes.Alan Ramsey has what is probably the longest memory in the Canberra press gallery:
Howard's national emergency is a political one.
He has an election to win. The genuine national emergency he is hiding behind is the one his Government has ignored effortlessly for 11 years. Just read the public record. -
When was the last military intervention that worked to liberate the resident population?
Solomons? Timor? Those motorists snowed in on the Desert road a couple of years back?
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As yet Solomons & Timor Leste are not yet liberated.
In both stated cases they are still occupied by the military and will be in at least the mid term - if not the foreseeable future.
For all the good they have done (and some good may come from Howies wee tanty here as well).
They have not succeeded in liberating the resident population and must stay to impose security.
Such a step is to be taken only as a last resort, not the first.
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I'm rejioning if your advocating martial law - not because I think it's good, but better to be the oppressor than the oppressed - you can't pay for therapy if your dead.
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WH,
Left & Right have played their parts in the past. I fear the problem is still one of Black vs White.
I'm just saying the LCAS report seemed well written and holistic/comprehensive, and I'm not inclined to dismiss it unless I've seen good reason to. If the problem is as serious as is being claimed, what intervention would we like to see? I think most people would like to see the situation improve, but any progress is going to be slow and hard won I suspect.
Howard's national emergency is a political one.
That may be true, and perhaps I am being naive. But would you rather have this issue on the agenda or off it? Good article btw.
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. . . perhaps am being naive. But would you rather have this issue on the agenda or off it?
Naturally something should be done with all urgency. Unfortunately Howard is unlikely to take up the offers of those such as Mick Dodson and make this a bipartisan effort. Those who unconditionally cheer him on are either cynical or naive. For an indication of how this may play out it might be worth looking at the present situations in PNG's Manus Island and Nauru, which have been reduced to squalid offshore immigration holding camps in the wake of Howard's manufactured Tampa incident.
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