6 Jul 2012

Why Toomelah Collapsed

By Chris Graham

Keywords:

When Jenny Macklin decided to continue Mal Brough's policy of cutting back local Community Development Employment Programs, she put Toomelah on the road to ruin, writes Tracker's Chris Graham

Toomelah is a struggling town. But so too are most of the state's former Aboriginal missions and reserves, and there's more than 60 of them.

The reasons why are many and varied, although one event in particular helps explain the current decay of black bush communities. And it never made the national headlines.

After producing great footy players, Toomelah's other talent was running a thriving Community Development Employment Program (CDEP).

CDEP is an Aboriginal-created program where participants, in a broad sense, worked for the dole. It began as a pilot program at the community of Barunga, an hour's drive east of Katherine in the Northern Territory.

Ironically, CDEP was unveiled in federal parliament by the Fraser government on 26 May 1977, a date that would later become Sorry Day. At the time, Ian Viner, the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, told parliament:

"Unemployment benefits have been available to Aboriginals as to other Australians. In some cases... the lack of activity when combined with unemployment benefit has produced serious social problems such as alcoholism and other health hazards. CDEP will provide work for all Aboriginals in a particular community who wish to work."

From its humble beginnings, CDEP quickly spread across the nation. By 1986, there were more than 4000 participants, about 1.8 per cent of the total Aboriginal population in Australia. Within 10 years, the figure had increased more than seven-fold to almost 29,000 participants.

By 2001, the total number of CDEP participants had grown to 35,400 — roughly 25 per cent of the total Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workforce. There were almost 300 organisations delivering the program, the overwhelming majority of them local Aboriginal community groups.

In Toomelah, as in many Aboriginal communities, there was no shortage of people looking for work. They too embraced CDEP. Local participants provided most of the civil services that local, state and federal governments should provide Aboriginal communities, but rarely do.

By 2009, Toomelah's CDEP workers ran the local shop through the Toomelah Co-op. CDEP crews kept the streets clean, mowed the parks and gardens and the footy oval, drove the community bus, and repaired and maintained local housing and infrastructure.

In short, CDEP kept the town alive, and all levels of government were only too willing to watch it happen — it was, after all, a dirt cheap way of providing basic services to Aboriginal communities, without having to dip seriously into the pockets of Australian taxpayers.

Rene Adams, who ran the program through the Co-op, says under CDEP Toomelah was a different town.

"It was thriving, it really was," she told Tracker. "The community was clean. We had a cemetery crew that looked after the graves. We ran a night patrol, with shifts. They'd watch the school, the Co-op, the [health] clinic, the pre-school, the land council office. And you could have eaten off the roads, they maintained things that well."

The local community-owned shop employed 26 workers through CDEP, and workers grew hemp to provide pulp for a local paper factory. All up, around 130 local residents in a town of less than 400 accessed employment through the CDEP. So successful was the Co-op's operation that in 2000 it won the Prime Minister's Award for Excellence in Community Partnerships.

Over the next half decade, the Co-op went from strength to strength, and took over the administration of CDEPs in outlying towns, with more than 175 participants across three communities. And then, with the abolition of ATSIC in the mid-2000s, things began to unravel.

The Howard government's Indigenous affairs minister, Mal Brough, and minister for employment, Joe Hockey decided that CDEP had become a "destination" rather than a path to "real employment".

They made the mistake that many white bureaucrats have made, believing that CDEP was created by Aboriginal people as a path to mainstream employment. In fact, CDEP was created as a way for Aboriginal people to work in their communities, and to provide basic services in the absence of government doing its job, albeit at a greatly discounted rate.

Regardless, Brough and Hockey scaled back CDEP in urban, regional and remote centres. No thought was given to the reality that in many places — particularly those like regional NSW — CDEP was the only source of employment for Aboriginal people.

Labor went to the 2007 federal election promising to re-invigorate CDEP — in the Northern Territory for example, it was being axed as part of the NT intervention. But having won office, the Rudd government simply continued the "reforms" started by Brough and Hockey.

By 2009, three decades after it began, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, announced CDEP would be abolished in "non-remote areas with established economies".

One of the ironies is that Labor won office in 2007 claiming, repeatedly, that the biggest problem with the Liberals' policies in Aboriginal affairs is they adopted a "one size fits all" approach. Macklin's CDEP policy is based on nothing more than lines on a map.

The small community of Mungindi, for example, is just 150 kilometres from Toomelah. It has kept its CDEP. But Toomelah falls within 30 kilometres of a major centre, Goondiwindi, where, says Macklin, there are "local job opportunities".

Had Macklin read Marcus Einfeld's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity report then they would have realised that it was sparked by a massive riot in Goondiwindi in 1986, led by more than 100 Toomelah residents protesting appalling levels of racial discrimination and notably, their inability to secure employment.

And had she bothered to ask Rene Adams about the work history of the region, she would have discovered that in the 20-year history of the program in Toomelah, no single CDEP participant had ever left the program after securing a job in Goondiwindi.

"Goondiwindi is a lot better than what it was, but it's still a racist town," Adams said.

Adams' view is backed by Elaine Edwards, deputy chair of the Toomelah-Boggabilla Local Aboriginal Land Council, who along with other senior elders, met with Tracker in Goondiwindi recently. They all agreed that racism means Aboriginal people still struggle to find employment in Goondiwindi.

Adams had previously tried warning the Minister personally. In 2009, prior to the abolition of CDEP, she phoned into a live interview Macklin was conducting on ABC Radio in Tamworth, ambushing her on the air.

She did it again in 2010 and 2011, and also wrote to the Department of Employment and Workplace relations on the likely impact on the community.

"We had to do reports for (the government). We predicted it would be bad, but we never predicted it would be this bad. It's five or six times worse than we thought," says Adams.

And she wasn't alone in warning Macklin of the impending disaster. Numerous submissions to a parliamentary inquiry into the legislation abolishing CDEP warned Macklin of the dangers of her policy, including a combined submission from Professor Jon Altman and Dr Kirrily Jordan from the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR).

"Rather than the stated aim of shifting CDEP participants into so-called 'real jobs', the likely result is shifting people out of active work through the CDEP scheme and onto long-term income support," they wrote. That is precisely what has occurred.

In late 2009, Jordan completed a second report, this time specifically into the CDEP operations in the APY Lands in South Australia. Unlike Toomelah, the APY Lands was not considered close enough to "real economies" to lose CDEP altogether, but it was slated for reform.

Jordan noted: "This preliminary analysis concludes that although some of the measures introduced in July 2009 have had positive impacts, the changes to the scheme itself are tending to undermine the productive capacity of CDEP and induce a return to 'sit down money'.

"This is ostensibly what the government seeks to curtail and indeed what the CDEP scheme itself was designed to minimise."

In an email to Tracker last week, Macklin explained that she was aware of the problems in Toomelah, and the federal government was providing assistance:

"The Indigenous Employment Program is providing more than $1.1 million in Toomelah and Boggabilla for training, mentoring and helping local people get a job. We are also delivering $462,000 for Indigenous Community Links in Toomelah to help local people access employment services. This builds on the $450,000 provided from 2008-09 for these services."

Ironically, the explanatory memorandum that accompanied Macklin's legislation into parliament (the plain English summary to help other politicians understand what they're voting for) stated that there would be "nil financial impact" from the proposed Bill.

Abolishing CDEP in regional communities around the nation might not have had any impact on the bottom line of Jenny Macklin's department, but the impact on the community of Toomelah was devastating.

"All the people who were on CDEP are basically unemployed now," says Rene Adams.

With the closure of CDEP, the community store, with its two dozen employees, was forced to close. That means a loaf of bread is a 14 kilometre drive away in Boggabilla.

"We lasted 26 weeks, but it finally collapsed," says Adams.

Under the Rudd government's schools stimulus package, around $600,000 was spent on building a new school canteen at Toomelah primary.

It began to serve not only as a source of food for schoolchildren, but as the only "store" in the community.

Today, even the school canteen lies vacant, courtesy of repeated break-ins. There is, of course, no night patrol in Toomelah anymore either.

No-one is cleaning up the community anymore; the cemetery crew is gone, the civil services have ground to a halt. The street lights are blacked out, there's no-one to attend to local plumbing or basic repair and maintenance of community assets.

If Toomelah residents want work, they have to find it outside their town, but there is no public transport to and from Toomelah, save for a morning school bus, which is only for students. 20-30 local men are now in jail.

Violence in the community has increased exponentially, so much so that more than 60 videos of fights between local residents have been posted on YouTube in the past year. A punch-up in the street has become the entertainment of choice for a community in serious decline.

"Mental health issues and suicides have increased. There's more drugs, more violence, more alcohol. It's heart-breaking to see Toomelah the way it is," Adams told Tracker.

The media have overwhelmingly missed the real story at Toomelah.

Both the Herald and the ABC acknowledged CDEP as one of the causes of problems in Toomelah, but no follow-up stories delved into how and why it occurred. Indeed rather than grill the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, 7.30 Report gave air-time to Mal Brough, one of the architects of the destruction of CDEP.

Brough, as always, focussed his remarks on "saving the children", and called for the Toomelah community to be shut down. His appearance prompted zero media follow-up.

This is the second article in a two-part series on Toomelah by the editor of Tracker magazine, Chris Graham. Read the first part here.

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Ashar
Posted Friday, July 6, 2012 - 14:31

Tell me why, as a person with responsibility over vulnerable communities, cognizant of the fallout from these decisions, these politicians should not be considered guilt of being criminally negligent, and willfully dishonest in the planning and execution of their duties?

altmanj
Posted Friday, July 6, 2012 - 21:41

The so called reform of CDEP has fundamentally destroyed a program that combined workfare, or active participation, with community development. In the name of imagined real jobs the Australian government has created passive welfare, anomie and dependence. This has been a shameful policy reform process that is even more shameful because the Australian government was shown with evidence from numerous official surveys and much research that CDEP generated economic, social and cultural benefits. Wearing neoliberal lenses the Howard, Rudd then Gillard governments have created dependency and passivity in the name of 'real' jobs. Yes Ashar, for a government committed to evidence based policy making this verges on criminal neglect; it is certainly dangerous ideologically-driven reform that has, as Chris Graham has demonstrated, created unconscionable suffering. Clever people devised CDEP as an alternate to limited market opportunity in regional and remote Australia; far less clever people have destroyed the program and replaced it with well, nothing but destructive unemployment. This has been plain dumb policy making. Thanks Chris for accurately sheeting home responsibility for many of the social problems prevalent in neglected regional towns like Toomelah owing to destructive federal 'intervention' in the name of Closing the Gap!

This user is a New Matilda supporter. aussiegreg
Posted Saturday, July 7, 2012 - 23:58

I suspect the unspoken policy goal here is to depopulate remote communities by forcing those on the dole to move away for work.

It's hard to maintain taxpayer generosity when they see Toomelah rebuilt to First World standards with their money only to see the inhabitants repay this gift by reducing it back to Third World standards inside a decade -- not to mention the unpunished paedophilia, wife bashing, etc.

Every year the taxpayer pours more and more money into the black hole (no pun intended) of the aboriginal industry -- it's up over $34,000 (in Federal funds alone) for each aboriginal person in Australia. And a lot of that is CDEP. Is it any wonder that hard-working people ask menacing questions about their taxes? Or that Aboriginal Affairs at a Federal level has become a bi-partisan policy?

altmanj
Posted Sunday, July 8, 2012 - 09:27

i want to respond to aussiegreg because I believe he is correct on two points, yes the government aim is to either move people from places like Toomelah to real jobs elsewhere or to force them into imagined real jobs for all in situ. And yes Australian taxpayers somewhat oversimplistically believe that 'their' taxes are being wasted because they might not ask the hard questions, be poorly informed or just are self interested preferring state support for middle class welfare rather than those in Australian society in greatest need. It is unclear if aussiegreg shares the mythical concerned taxpayer's view or is just reporting it?

There are other ways of viewing these issues. First how did places like Toomelah come about in settler colonial Australia? Mainly as a result of state colonial policy. Second how fairly have such places been treated historically? In a word, appallingly, historically excluded from the mainstream provisions of the Australian nation-state to its citizens, discriminated against, marginalised and mistreated. Third, does the current generation have some social justice obligation to address deep historic legacy? Absolutely! And are we doing it in the right way? Definitely not! What Chris Graham's account shows is that current political and bureaucratic incompetence is undermining gains made through community control in recent years. How much of your estimated $34,000 per capita actually reaches Aboriginal people in need as distinct to others? And no, CDEP does not and never has made up a sizeable proportion of support to Indigenous people, it was an Indigenous specific scheme mainly funded through notional welfare entitlement offsets to provide employment and community and enterprise development. Lots of other Australians get such support, rarely on an equitable needs basis.

To move forward as a rich nation we need to address historical legacies that address shortfalls in Aboriginal health, housing, education, etc in places like Toomelah. But more importantly we need to ensure that there is a high level of community engagement and control of development processes otherwise they will fail as they are currently. And we need to ensure that assistance to Aboriginal citizens actually reaches them. And lest this sounds like too much about rights and too little about responsibility (for some), the pathway to individual and community taking responsibility will surely be through devolution of decision making powers,control and accountability to community first.

This user is a New Matilda supporter. aussiegreg
Posted Sunday, July 8, 2012 - 15:30

No, @altmanj, just reporting, but not without sympathy, especially for the working poor.

I'm assuming you disapprove, as I do, of middle class welfare, business welfare, any government programme without a means test, and all the other ways the taxpayer's dollar is wasted while those in desperate need go without.

I'm not sure about the history -- my friend Burnham Burnham had some pretty robust vews of the abuses of history by the Aboriginal Industry, which he liked to point out provided 10 jobs for whitefellas for every one for a blackfella. (Mind you, he didn't think most blackfella public servants earn't their keep!)

And you are right that very little of that "$34,000 per capita actually reaches Aboriginal people in need", which is why I referred to that money being poured "into the black hole of [that same] aboriginal industry".

I don't know anything about CDEP, so I will defer to your expertise in the matter. It just happens to be one of the few things for which there is a line in the budget, and I don't remember seeing any notes about the funding coming from other welfare offsets. Mind you, those basic-wage taxpayers would be even more likely to resent those who choose to live in communities without any real work getting the dole as they would their getting CDEP money.

jackal01
Posted Sunday, July 8, 2012 - 19:34

Guys

I can accept your opinions and facts as read, understood, as meaningful to yourselves.

But aussiegreg says:
"Every year the taxpayer pours more and more money into the black hole"

Ladies and Gentleman.
77% of all Australians work for the Taxpayer, who ever you think he is.

A Nurse, Teacher gets 100% of their income of the Tax Base and gives 33% back, money that wasn't his to start with. So 67% which is his income for services rendered, he gets from this mythical person called the Tax payer. A road construction worker or anyone who builds infastructure like roads, rail, the electricity grid, public transport etc also gets 67% from this mythical person after giving back 33% in income tax. The butcher who sells any or all his goods to either the Government or one of its employees makes either all or part of his income from this Mythical Person.

An Unemployed person gets less then all those working because he basically does nothing.

So where does all this money, the 67% that you don't give back, come from. Exports, the resources of a land that did not belong to us, that we took for exactly that reason. So, we infact only give back a very small percentage of what once belonged to the indiginous people and then we say that we are keeping them rather then their land is keeping us. take away our exports of Uranium, Coal, Gas etc and we would all be bashing each others heads in because there would be no money in the Tax Purse, because we all only take out we do not put in.

Its about time the white fellow stopped bull shitting about what and who actualy supports life and the population of this nation which has transplanted itself from Europe like a cancer a cancer sucking the life out of this continent, until, there is nothing left, like Greece an economy of smoke, mirrors and ego's. its like breaking into someone elses house and eating everything in the fridge, until their is nothing left, the problem is we can't leave because there is no other house to break into, to steal food from etc.

Thats why Marbo was so such a shock to the white fellows system of exploitation, a Farmer can't make an income and pay taxes of Land he does not posses, own, does not belong to him, or has to pay Royalties on.

A lot of white fellows fantacies that they created something out of nothing. Get on a boat and sit in the middle of the Ocean and see what you can create out of nothing or live in the Simpson desert and see what you can create.

White fellow is here because we wore out our welcome over their, we had boats and the price of a ticket and we ended up here and then we took and took and we are still taking because our kids have a need too and so will their kids, but their is only so much of the planet left that we can still steal, we have stolen most of it. Country bumpkins are already moving into the Cities because their lives out their are unsastainable. Cities are the reservations of old, we want the rest of their land because we need it, without it nothing of what we think we are is possible and we know it, admitting it however is the hard bit. Admitting means admitting that our lives and those of our children a built on myths, bull shit and Plunder, even murder.

Civilised or just thieves in fancy stitches??????

This user is a New Matilda supporter. aussiegreg
Posted Monday, July 9, 2012 - 02:25

@jackal01

Nice to see you are still seeing everything in black and white!

I'm not sure there are many full-blood aborigines left in Australia, and not many more of mixed blood who would meet the tests for a grant of native title under the original court decision in Mabo. Very little land considered useful by white culture was actually subject to such claim (right-wing scaremongering notwithstanding) but Keating's legislation greatly expanded the scope of the new doctrine, extending it to those conditional grazing leases which were the subject of the Wik case, for example.

That still leaves an awful lot of productive land -- and productive of much more than exports -- which would not seem to fit your idea of being properly the property of the residents of Toomelah and similar hellholes.

It's true that land is an input into most enterprises but usually a minor one -- capital and labour and intellectual property are much more important. When the whitefellas arrived (many unwillingly) this continent supported 70,000 blackfellas who lived lives that were nasty, brutish and short. Today there are 22.6 million of us, black, white and brindle, and 70,000 new immigrants arrive every four months. And our enterprising use of the land and those other factors has given us such prosperity we can afford to pour $34,000 for every blackfella in the country into that black hole.

My family has done its bit -- I am sixth generation Australian through <i>three </i>of my grandparents -- and I probably have some aboriginal blood, so I will be making my claim under your system.

Exports as a percentage of GDP have leapt to 25% from half that at the turn of the millennium, almost entirely on the back of a ten-fold increase in the price of iron ore and a five-fold increase in the price of coal. Those bubbles are already deflating, and exports' share of our national income will fall back to somewhere in the teens, or lower if the world falls into a deep recession as the sovereign debt crisis in Europe and North America bites.

The remaining 80+% of economic activity which does not depend on exports should keep us at a good standard of living, but whether we can afford the Aboriginal Industry is a moot point.

jackal01
Posted Monday, July 9, 2012 - 05:44

aussiegreg thats right, stiff uper lip, at least you have a back bone un-like some.

Yes, Black and White, base colors.

Even the human body, life itself needs energy, current.

An electric circuit needs positive and negative, they are the foundation stones.

Humans need land and water, oxygen. We think we a clever because we squeese 34 million people into a City. 34 million consumers living on top of shops increasing the efficiency of the infastructure by a factor of ten as long as this Mythical tax payer can supply them with the cash to be able to consume.

In the 1930 America needed cash, they had millions living in tents. The Jew, Roosevelt, got into power because he said he was going to get the money from the Europeans because they owed America for WW1
In the end we slaughtered 150 million to fix the problem because nothing Roosevelt did including confiscating everybodies gold fixed the problem.

Our way of life and our Cane Toad breeding is unsustainable, the bubble will burst and the U.S is going to burst it. Most of us are living of land that does not belong to us and the clever monkeys who want to make money out of nothing, the Allan Greenspans live of us. The share markets and comodity markets are just Pyramid games and it can't last for ever. Once we stop borrowing to consume and the Tax Payer this Mythical Person we all think is us, runs out of cash to give away, its going to collapse, has to. Nothing for Nothing.
There is no point of turning Coal into steel if nobody can afford to buy the steel etc. Most Nations were printing money for the TAX PAYER and building Armaments, acting in a threatening manner and eventualy guess what. We fixed the problem 150 million no longer needing to be fed, they were dead, as long as it was Europeans who payed the price the Yanks didn't care. All we did is crawl up their asses for safe keeping, Australia the Bully Boy hanging around with shit, hoping we will get an invite.

jackal01
Posted Monday, July 9, 2012 - 06:04

We should know that the entire system is shot when you got people who think that their Tax Payers and that they Pay for it all, when they in fact pay for nothing, they can't pay their own wage let alone somebody elses and you have a whole bunch of Retailers trying to get reach of those same people who have no real income only Tax Payer funded handouts in the form of wages for building infastructure and providing services that nobody wants to pay for but everybody wants to get rich of and needs to do their so called business.

Wankers. White man and his Fairytails. We have turned lying into an art form and we are so good at it we don't even know when we are lying anymore.

Tax Payers, ha ha! Recyclers and thieves of somebody elses belongings more like.

And then their is the lie, "this planet belongs to all of us", accept when we think it belongs to us, or the guy with the biggest gun. Then MIght makes Right. ISM as in Comunism, Capitalism stands for Inetligent Selfseerving Man in chase of women who like diamonds for a leg splitters when alcahol no longer does it for them.

SSSsssssh. Hurts doesn't it, but is it a Fact!

fightmumma
Posted Monday, July 9, 2012 - 13:53

How many people are actually truly INFORMED and educated about the history of Indigenous people after "settlement"? I wasn't til uni this time around. I have been all through the education system and hold Post Graduate level qualifications - still no insight into our apalling history with our first peoples. It is a true eye-opener to hear the real story. The truth is important as it helps us understand a situation such as Toomelah.

One aspect I find intriguing is the concept of "missions" and Indigenous people's continuing connection to missions. Government policies changed Indigenous communities initially by forcefully placing them on missions. Two of the most significant elements of Indigenous cultures are family/kinship and connection to the land. BOTH irreversibly changed by government policy (absent of Indigenous people's civil rights to participate in the government processes impacting on them too).

You can read many stories about people's experiences of missions. From my perspective it mostly sounded very authoritarian, like a dictatorship under the guise of "helping,"(When really gov't meant, making "them" more like "us" - because status quo is threatened by "difference"). There was little opportunity for self-determination (even little self-management), mostly conditioned dependence, inferiority and apathy.

Regardless of the positives and negatives of missions, many people have a mission as their only tie to a place, to their history, to their heritage. Perhaps a mission somewhat replaced what under normal circumstances would be their tribal lands? Gov't made that happen. So people at Toomelah have this mission as part of their legacy, a heritage enforced by other very ineffective and racist, "uncivilised," undemocractic policies.

The problem with what has occerred at Toomelah seems to be, that is WAS working very successfully and after policy "reforms" and government/public servant interference - now it is NOT a successful community. Gov't seems to have the attitude that it is not good enough for an Indigenous community to be managing and determining its own future, infrastructure, processes etc - it must do it the way some bunch of bureaucrats in a far away place, time and culture think they should do it.

It doesn't seem much different to attitudes of assimliation to just demand these people, once again, just "move on", don't have any ounce of diversity, individuality, pride or ideas of self determination...just move to a city, live off the dole or get a job (of course to some drone bureaucrat, what job or where, how you maintain family ties, health and wellbeing - well none of that matters, so maybe go work in a dirty big mine somewhere). But whatever you do - don't have ideas on how to improve your own lives or communties...this is only white middle to upper class people's entitlement...

jackal01
Posted Monday, July 9, 2012 - 20:33

fightmumma, you certainly know how to come first in your English class.
I wish I had your talent, but never mind you do very well and I agree with everything you said.

fightmumma
Posted Monday, July 9, 2012 - 20:49

thank you jackal.
we all live with the cards we are dealt hey? (don't worry - I suck at a few others things - I couldn't pass a maths test to save myself!!)
i firmly believe everyone has a talent - it is just a tragedy when schools and teachers and parents don't allow children to see, use and find them...

gregdickson
Posted Tuesday, July 10, 2012 - 13:54

Great article. Thank you for telling this story.

I've seen CDEP programs working well and they're great. I've seen them working badly too but always attributed that to the management of the program, not the program itself.

Although being a CDEP worker isn't terribly prestigious, you feel a lot better about yourself being on CDEP rather than being in the Centrelink system (e.g. Work For The Dole).

The dismantling of CDEP programs is disgraceful. Okay, they cost money, but the benefits that well-run CDEP programs bring to struggling communities are substantial.

jonnyboy55
Posted Tuesday, July 10, 2012 - 14:14

CDEP may have been working in Toomelah - but it does not work that way everywhere. That is why CDEP is known widely as "sit down" money. This could well be a case of a one-size fits all solution that has disadvantaged one community, but the very existence of CDEP is a continuing wedge between white and black people.

As long as there as "different" programs for "different" people, those "people" will remain different - in most people's eyes. CDEP, Aboriginal Medical Services, Aboriginal emloyment programs, land rights, mining royalties, special funding for aboriginal education, permits to visit traditional lands, not allowed to own land, not allowed to apply for first-home-owner grants, the list goes on .... these are all examples of APARTHEID.

Positive discrimination is ... discrimination.

Until we are all treated equally, we will never be equal.

fightmumma
Posted Tuesday, July 10, 2012 - 15:24

gregd - thanls for sharing your perspective

jonnyboy - what you say interests me...so you seem to put up to the table the idea of diveristy and difference, one-size-fits-all and then treating everyone equally. Can I ask you, HOW do you treat people who are diverse "equally"?

You sound as though you feel a bit threatened by the idea of giving others the freedom and space to "be different"? You sound as though you want to prevent the "different"? Are you saying the objective should be to remove this difference? Do you know how many Aboriginal nations there are in Australia? There's a few hundred. Or communities and regions, each is different. Treating people according to their diverse characteristics, needs, interests and spirit, is not discriminatory or aparteid, it is demonstrating inclusion, acceptance and people's right for self determination and being free moral agents.

I have 2 children, they are different and I parent them differently. To treat them the same and expect/force them to BE the same is not appropriate. To use the same parenting approaches, rewards, communication styles, or problem solving on each child would NOT be successful.

@landrights4all
Posted Tuesday, July 10, 2012 - 15:31

So jonnyboy55
Take the discrimination out of the equation .... change the Centrelink Activity Test for all so as to recognise & reward participation (see http://on.fb.me/Azrz9F)

Second, provide a supportive structure for productivity, grass roots decision making & security see http://bit.ly/fAWRjc

DrGideonPolya
Posted Friday, July 13, 2012 - 13:31

Excellent article by Chris Graham who has an outstanding record of bringing the Awful Truth about the Aboriginal Genocide and Aboriginal Ethnocide afflicting Indigenous Australia before the public (see "Aboriginal Genocide": https://sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/ ).

Australia has a secret genocide history involving complicity in over 20 genocidal atrocities of which some are continuing e.g. (refugees and deaths from violence or imposed deprivation in parenthesis) the Palestinian Genocide (7 million refugees, 2 million invasion-related deaths since 1936), the Iraqi Genocide (5-6 million refugees, 4.6 million war-related deaths since 1990), the Afghan Genocide (3-4 million refugees, 5.6 million war-related deaths since 2001) and the Aboriginal Genocide (2 million untimely deaths since 1788, 9,000 avoidable deaths annually out of an Indigenous population of 0.5 million, the highest avoidable death rate in the world) (see "Open Letter Exposes Censorship And Lying By ABC ( Australia 's BBC) ", Countercurrents, 4 July 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya040712.htm .

Decent people will vote 1 Green and put Labor last until it reverts to the values of the Whitlam Labor Government that passed the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act that is now so grossly violated by the new neocon, racist, Zionist-subverted and Zionist-inspired ALP (aka the Apartheid Labor Party, the Apartheid Israel-supporting Labor Party, Aborigine-betraying Labor Party, American Lackey Party, Another Liberal Party, the Alternative Liberal Party, the Australian Laboral Party, the Australian Lying Party).

Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.

jackal01
Posted Sunday, July 15, 2012 - 20:46

aussiegreg
You still haven't told me how you can take out of the Tax Purse, the Government spending thats so TERIBLE, 100% keep 67% hand back 33% and then say that your a Tax Payer who pays for everything and has a right to whinge.

We have moved into Donald Trumps House and we are living real well off his belongings/Property. And Donald has the cheek to say that we are ripping him off, what arrogance.

Its about the same isn't it, but we wouldn't get away with that.

This user is a New Matilda supporter. aussiegreg
Posted Monday, July 16, 2012 - 01:34

Sorry, @jackal01, I stopped reading when I copped your first blast of anti-semitism -- your favourite flavour of racism seemed more than usually offensive in the context of a discussion of Aboriginal rights.

I was one of the few people in Australia who really did pay tax out of real wealth I had actually created, first by growing crops on my farm, then by building and equipping a factory to process those crops, and then by building warehouses to distribute those products in Australia and overseas. And not only did the company pay several different taxes and charges, local and state and federal, I personally paid income tax, as did the company's many employees (and you can repeat that for our suppliers and their suppliers etc etc).

Oddly enough, when all those taxes sent me broke (and put all those people out of work), the government didn't rush to rebuild the business at public expense. It seems you have to be a vandal to qualify for that.

I'm sure the land used could not have been subject to any valid claim by any Aborigine, so if any blackfella had moved in on the Donald Trump principle they would indeed have been ripping me off.

jackal01
Posted Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - 20:04

aussiegreg, "your first blast of anti-semitism", thats a bit cheap.

"In the 1930 America needed cash, they had millions living in tents. The Jew, Roosevelt, got into power because he said he was going to get the money from the Europeans because they owed America for WW1
In the end we slaughtered 150 million to fix the problem because nothing Roosevelt did including confiscating everybodies gold fixed the problem." is that what you call anti-semitism, you brain dead little snot.

My Mothers entire family were mostly proudly Prussian Jews just like Monash Australias greatest General. She was born to Jewish/Catholic Family background her entire Jewish side was wiped out near Dresden by Allied Bombs and my mother became an Atheist for good reason so don't you go around calling me, anti-semetic you brain dead little shit.

Read up on what PART Samuel Untermeyer played to create that mess that became WW2, 51 million dead so that WE could live like kings and keep enjoying exports to that crappy little Island and one of the most brutal Empires known to modern History, so don't play your innocent little Hero bullshit game, Only 6 Million were Jewish what have you got to say for the other 45 million you pathetic little man.
They had a right to life too. The entire war was a crime against humanity and if you stand on two legs with an arse pointing to the ground you were just as responsible as the rest, its what we have been doing for 12000 years over land, food and water.

Their were too many idiots from all sides jocking for favour and financial/economic advantage.

The big four were at each others throats because they had control of 85% of the worlds production and wealth, England was going backwards, loosing the struggle, WW1 almost broke the joined. Thats what it was and until you can front up like a MAN and admit that you as a human were just as stupid as the rest don't give me this Meelee mouthed garbage about anti-semitism, its a cop out. You are a Human Being first and Jewish or what ever second, it is just a mutual admiration society that claims to have some connection with God in History, they all do, so does the Monarchy. Just in case you have not noticed I can't stand any religions, period, their is a purpose, but thats for narrow minded cowards who need to hide behind something larger then them, safety in numbers. I can understand, but that does not mean I need to like it. Until you have aerials coming out of your head, your human, a human with a needs, desires and fears but still human.

WW1 and 2 should not have happened it was greed and the economic struggle between competitors that led to it, thats it, end of story.
And until we admit that, its just going to happen again.
What do you think Australian Potestants and Catholics have been doing for the last 200 years, kissing each other on the forehead, they hated each other too. Stupid German Catholics and American Catholics killed each other, Adolf had 500 thousand Jews in his Army, the SS Divisions were mostly none Germans, people who believed in the Nazi ideals, no different to Commo's or Capitalist's. People were fed up with the norms which had failed them, they were searching for a way to escape poverty and starvation everywhere, all of Europe was effected. If your a Jew then accept it, for your sake not mine, you need religion more then me, your obviously a weaker man then me. I can live with that because it makes no difference to me, until you step on my toes, then look out.

I can accept that some humans need, if you have a need to be Jewish or Catholic or what ever and it floats your boat then good I'm happy for you, but don't expect me to kiss your pimply arse because it makes you feel uncomfortable because of some stupidity in the middle east or eslewhere, your an Australian, accept it and lets clean up our own mess before we get involved in everybody elses.

My entire argument is and always was that their were reasons for what happened and we were ALL guilty. Australia got involved for economic survival reasons, it was natural for Australia to side with England, why shouldn't we. But Hero's, no way, Freedom and Democracy, No way.

We need the truth because without that you can't fix anything.
No human can point fingers at another, especial from the big four. We merely crawled up somebodies arse, we chose England, thats the way it went, but we don't have to lie about it.

jackal01
Posted Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - 20:25

Sorry Mate. I can appreciate why your sore.

"I was one of the few people in Australia who really did pay tax out of real wealth I had actually created, first by growing crops on my farm, then by building and equipping a factory to process those crops, and then by building warehouses to distribute those products in Australia and overseas. And not only did the company pay several different taxes and charges, local and state and federal, I personally paid income tax, as did the company’s many employees (and you can repeat that for our suppliers and their suppliers etc etc)."

Have you ever thought that the Cargyle Corporation, that Aristocratic investment vehicle that controls something like 85% of the worlds food and is about 100 years old didn't like your Competition.

Lord Snowdon brought Allan Bond down from his lofty heights despite the fact that Allan had an Economics Profesor from Bond Uni on his side.

Farming unless your Landed Gentry is always a dodgy investment decision.

But you tried, you had a go and I take my hat off to anyone who has/had a go. But don't expect me to kiss your ass.
The Capitalist Highway to stardom is littered with the wrecks of yesterdays hero's. Spare a thought for Mr HIH another working class knob who out lived his usefulness and had to go, they certainly stitched him up.

Curious, how many years did you last, liquidity problems?

WGAR - Working ...
Posted Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - 08:22

WGAR News: The plan to undermine the Land Rights Act: Ian Viner, Respect and Listen

https://indymedia.org.au/2014/12/02/wgar-news-the-plan-to-undermine-the-land-rights-act-ian-viner-respect-and-listen

Contents:

* Analysis / Opinion: Ian Viner, Respect and Listen: The plan to undermine the Land Rights Act
* Audio Interview: Chris Komorek & Jennie Lenman, Radio Adelaide: Move to privatise Aboriginal land [Featuring Ian Viner]
* Audio Interview: Waleed Aly, Dr Rebecca Huntley, Erica Vowles & Claudette Werden, RN Drive, ABC RN: Land Rights Act "undermined" by leases [Featuring Ian Viner]
* Overview: Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning: No to Township Leases
* Audio: Rhianna Patrick & Ursula Raymond, Awaye!, ABC RN: The Walk-Off Project
* News: Bob Gosford, Crikey: The Gurindji people farewell that "jangkarni marlaka"
* Analysis / Opinion: Murray Garde, 'concerned Australians':The Importance of Engaging Experienced of Cross-Cultural Interpreters for all Negotiations with Indigenous Communities ...
* Compilation: Respect and Listen: Land Rights under attack
* Background: Respect and Listen: Dismantling the Land Rights Act - 99 year leases
* Background: WGAR: Background to Dismantling the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (NT) - 99 year leases