histories remind us how long First Nations people have waited for political recognition in this country – and that, compared to other former colonial sites, Australia is the exception, not the rule.
Disgraced war hero Ben Roberts-Smith waged an aggressive campaign to cover up his war crimes, invoking a special forces’ code of silence as well as smearing and threatening those he thought had revealed his misconduct.
Australia is suffering internally and is a Global embarrassment in the eyes of the rest of the world. The very call to a “No vote” is living proof of a level of racist politics sustained and actioned illegally and immorally for these past 240 years. Any demand for “No” is simply proof of an Inglorious past still living in the present and that makes us an exception on the planet among those nations where First Nations Peoples were colonized and their presence went less than recognized in the name of Empire. God didn’t give White Australia this Nation just as God didn’t give Jews Israel. However, Dutton thinks otherwise.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says he has HUNDREDS of Indigenous mates who think The Voice is total bullshit, but you probably wouldn’t know them because they live ages away in another suburb.
In a pathetic justification, Warren Mundine continues to try to insist the man he and Price falsely claim to be Lingiari’s grandson is, Mundine even in the face of his denials says “you don’t know Aboriginal culture”!! It seems Mundine knows more than the man himself. All in an effort to justify his misguided and false Fair Australia ad. The ad he and Price used in their vote “No” campaign. Mundine and Price are proof positive that not all Indigenous Australians represent or acknowledge the history of their peoples. They speak for themselves yes, but not for the First Nations of this country.
A Millwarparra man has said he did not know what the Voice to Parliament was when he was filmed reading anti-Voice sentiments that were written for him.
It’s time non-racists in Australia took a stand and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with those that have never been racists in their land but only victims of an inglorious historical past. One that’s been generationally ongoing.
Although I try to shield myself from the racist abuse I’m frequently subjected to, the fact it is out there poisons the air I breathe. Now I have had enough – so on Monday night I will present Q+A, then walk away. For how long? I don’t know, writes Stan Grant.
It’s clear, even to harbourside mansion dwellers, that there’s an accommodation crisis right around Australia. Not a shortfall, not a “blip”, a bloody crisis!
Two of Charles III’s key role models were prolific child sex offenders. Both Jimmy Savile and his friend, Charles’ great uncle Louis Mountbatten are deceased, but their respective and linked legacies of organised crime are emblematic of the ever-entitled British Empire, whose survival is owed largely to its supreme penchant for guiltless covert exploitation of children and other vulnerable, disempowered groups.
That conclusion is even more relevant today than it was at the time. Unfortunately, the window of opportunity to escape from our potentially fatal embrace with the United States is closing. This self-inflicted tragedy in the waiting would see a grim future for Australia…..
The one glimmer of hope that remains is that the path we are on can be averted, and averted in short order requiring only two resources: leadership and moral courage. All it would take is for the Prime Minister to publicly and forthrightly state that Australia will not participate in a war against China under any circumstances, other than as an act of self-defence in the improbable event that China was to attack Australia. This the Prime Minister could do tomorrow.
“Our clients were degraded, dehumanised and had their lives devalued over many years in the camps on Nauru and Manus Island. Their statements describe the horror of life in detention including physical and sexual violence, racism, discrimination and self-harm.”
Hydrogen, a fuel source, can be manufactured using energy from fossil fuels or renewable energy.
Green hydrogen, made from renewable energy, can play an important role in hard-to-abate industries such as ammonia and steel production.
Hydrogen produced using fossil fuel is called blue hydrogen by industry and dirty hydrogen by experts. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), natural gas is currently the primary source of hydrogen production, accounting for around three-quarters of the annual global dedicated hydrogen production of around 70 million tonnes.
This accounts for about 6% of global natural gas use. Gas is followed by coal, due to its dominant role in China, and a small fraction is produced from the use of oil and electricity.
According to Australian National University (ANU) researchers, dirty hydrogen is more polluting than simply using fossil fuels directly for energy.
We apparently live in, if not a perfect, an almost perfect world of “racial harmony” according to the Liberals. So why risk what began in 1788 with a no-vote referendum today? That in a nutshell is the ahistorical premise on which the Liberals base their argument against A Voice.
Their argument denies both 1) History and 2) the social reality in which we live. Theirs is a fiction that dates back 240 years, or even further. A fiction that maintains an Inglorious Imperial and colonial history. Primarily, it is a past that is based on the fact that nobody was here, and that if there were they weren’t a nation and therefore had no rights, a treaty or needed to be recognized like the First peoples of the rest of the world are today. The LNP attitude remains the exception on this planet shaming Australia while declaring us to be the best of all possible colonised worlds and a model for the planet. They remain the British-sponsored pirates of the East India Company in the 21rst Century today.
According to the LNP any problems Indigenous Australians face is largely of their own making due to their resistance to assimilate
The federal opposition has questioned the wisdom of holding a referendum on an Indigenous voice later this year, putting a dampener on hopes of bipartisan support for the landmark vote.
Hartcher in typical Conservative fashion takes us down the descriptive road of what should never have happened in the first place. His apparent neutrality is in fact the opposite. History shows Australia to be the only British settler colony that never bothered about a treaty with the first owners of this land. Treating what has happened as if was normal,not wrong and that the past is way too difficult to change.
Surely if the history of the damage done was rewritten and taught in schools as has been done in Germany post WW2 any changes to our Constitution would be easy and seen as a necessary conclusion rather than the “fait a accompli” Hartcher describes. But the Conservative’s primary goal is to not change Australian or even British history as we know it because with it comes guilt, shame and an Inglorious past.
It’s a brave prime minister who tries to change the constitution without the support of the opposition. No constitutional referendum in Australia’s history has succeeded without agreement of both major parties.
Former Prime Minister John Howard says he will combine the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq with Easter celebrations this year, with plans to run a special Easter egg hunt that contains imaginary eggs.
We simply do not have the luxury of time to look away, to stick our heads in the sand.
Those who go without meals, education and opportunity have no time at all. It’s happening right now, every day. Is that the Australia that we will be satisfied with? If so, all our self-congratulatory attempts, all our flag waving and claims to being a sovereign state become a moot point.
Turning Australia into America’s “Weapon in the Pacific” China militarised some very small South China Seas islands America weaponised a nation and made them pay for the privilege. The South China Seas islands are easy to take out dots in the ocean Australia is a nation being weaponised
“Our government doesn’t even know if they are bringing in nuclear weapons or not because, as Penny Wong admitted in a recent Senate Estimates committee meeting, the U.S. does not confirm or deny if its aircraft or ships are carrying nuclear weapons. So apparently, they don’t care whether they bring them in or not. They could be storing them at the moment in these facilities that are under U.S. control.”
“I understood this a few years ago. And my view became that we should understand that Australia is part of the United States. It is part of this English-speaking Christian empire, the centre of gravity of which is the United States, the second centre of which is the United Kingdom, and Australia is a suburb in that arrangement. Julian Assange
It doesn’t matter which country you’re in if America deems you’ve broken their law they can extradite you from anywhere or even as they once did have you rendered. They have done it to Australians already. Kidnapped and sent to locations like Egypt and then on to Guantanamo. Habib and Hicks are just two we know of. The fact you have an Australian passport means sweet FA, Assange and Duggan are current examples.
The increasingly shabby treatment of former US marine Daniel Edmund Duggan by Australian authorities in the service of their US masters has again shown that the Australian passport is not quite worth the material it’s printed on.
In January this year, Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court heard that Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus accepted a request from the US before Christmas to extradite Duggan. Duggan holds Australian citizenship, but Canberra has often regarded this as irrelevant when it comes to the US-Australian alliance.
Human Rights Abuse, Australia denies it’s own and Israel’s but accuses China.
Palestinian prisoners can be left in grim conditions in Israel’s prisons for years, without charge or trial — just one part of the repression they endure daily.
Wealthy and privileged public servants and politicians all collaborated to demonise the poor and destroy people’s lives with the Robodebt scheme, writes Dr Jennifer Wilson.
The Prime Minister’s commitment to implement the Uluru Statement From the Heart in full is in grave danger of being derailed by the shorthand title, ‘The Voice’ that we keep hearing about.
‘Questions which relate to the whole body of the people, to the purity of race, to the preservation of the racial character of the white population, are Commonwealth questions and should be so exclusively’.
Australia has a racist constitution. It gives the Federal Parliament power to make laws for ‘The people of any race, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws’. Deemed necessary, that is, by the Parliament itself.
Given the failure of the Morrison and earlier governments to improve Aboriginal welfare (‘Closing the Gap’ remains merely an aspiration) this is not a particularly appealing response. But the fact that Dutton keeps raising questions about the voice designed, it appears, to sabotage the referendum, suggest he will either avoid committing his party either way, or else reluctantly advocate a ‘yes’ vote, so that if the referendum fails he can blame the government’s strategy, tactics and general ineptitude.
We are in for an unedifying six or more months until we get to vote.
An Indigenous Nation is a Multicultural Inclusive Nation. Anti- Multiculturalism is anti-Australian and merely a White Colony intruding on Indigenous lands. Be and reflect what you are Australia your not a White Nation and never have been.
The wisdom of the saints for us as individuals also pertains to us as a nation. Wisdom is that, every day, we should ask ourselves this question: “Am I becoming a more loving person?”. Changing the date of Australia Day and embracing the referendum are opportunities to be a more loving nation. The heart has its own wisdom.
For decades it seems Australian politics, especially in NSW, has been dominated by three major entities – the two major political parties and the gambling industry.
Racism by White Australians. It can’t be denied it’s an integral but shameful fact in Australian culture.
“Did you grow up supporting the Australian cricket team?” asks Usman Khawaja, before nodding his head in understanding when I, a fellow Pakistani-born Australian, admitted that I didn’t.
Could one ever expected a Yes vote from Tony Abbott who preferred lies as his primary political strategy to gain power?
Facebook has rejected claims by Tony Abbott that it and other social media companies are trying to control how Australians think and vote because they declined to run ads for the ‘no’ side of the Indigenous Voice referendum.
The rescue of hundreds of Rohingya refugees by fishers and local authorities in Indonesia’s Aceh province was praised Tuesday as “an act of humanity” by United Nations officials, while relatives of around 180 Rohingya on another vessel that’s been missing for weeks feared that all aboard had perished
Tun Khin, a Rohingya activist and refugee who now heads the Burmese Rohingya Organization U.K., took aim at regional power Australia, which has been criticized for decades over its abuse of desperate seaborne asylum-seekers, nearly all of whom are sent to dirty, crowded offshore processing centers on Manus Island and Nauru to await their fate.
“Australia has too often set a shameful example for the region through its treatment of refugees,” he told the Morning Herald.
“These people are facing genocide in Burma,” Khin added, using the former official name of Myanmar. “It is a hopeless situation for them in Bangladesh, there is no dignity of life there.”
The distances between Australia’s cities have not grown, but the air fares to reach them this Christmas have, leaving many with a choice of either spending the holidays alone or out of pocket.
History forgotten, Losers in past conflict, Vietnam, Aghanistan, Iraq, Syria,
How do we explain that half the Australian community thinks we should go to war with China? After twenty years of conflict in the Middle East, will our addiction to war and our insouciance about its consequences finally catch up with us in an American war over Taiwan?
The secrecy surrounding Australian foreign and defence policy protects planners from the public that elected them. The war in Afghanistan offers ample evidence.
Australia is the spoilt offspring of an ultra-rich empire who gained wealth through exploitative, brutal means.
Just as the United States perpetuates its own destructive national myths, of exceptionalism and manifest destiny, Australia has its own. “The lucky country,”
Australians repeat to themselves. This book-title-turned-national-narrative is just as worthy of examination.
On the matter of the recent Lidia Thorpe controversy, I want to state a layperson perspective, one we won’t see much of amidst the swamp of Australian political opinion columns.
Here it is: I don’t give a shit if Lidia Thorpe dated an ex-bikie.
1975 saw the shameful death and cover-up of 5 Australian reporters shot and killed in Balibo.
Australia’s role during the Indonesian occupation itself is largely considered as one of passive acceptance, a “blind eye” to events to which it fails to respond.
In fact, as these documents and files clearly show, Australia played a very active role, encouraging the Indonesian intervention before it took place and acting as the Suharto regime’s key propagandist in the international arena while the worst of the atrocities were occurring.
Australian lobbing not only delayed a resolution of the East Timor independence issue, but also curtailed measures to highlight and alleviate the suffering, actions that undoubtedly cost many, many lives.
The active role that Australia took in supporting the attempted genocide of the Timorese people is still obscure to much of the Australian public. No true reconciliation nor compensation to the East Timorese nation is likely without a true appraisal of the unredacted facts.
Newly declassified files from the National Archives of Australia show how the Department of Foreign Affairs provided PR cover for Indonesia’s genocidal scorched-earth campaign in East Timor, Peter Job reports. By Peter Job Declassified Australia The photographs show a smiling Australian, in
It certainly didn’t start with Julia Gillard. Australia sat back and watched the slaughter that took place in the 60s when Indonesia killed some 1 million members of the PKI and attempted genocide of Chinese Indonesians at one and the same time. Meanwhile we sat back and watched and prepared for Vietnam Second Greatest Crime of the Century: The Bloodbath
Michael Pascoe, a few days ago, in the New Daily, in an article titled ‘Worried about Australian sovereignty? Don’t bother, it’s gone.’ drew together what Paul Keating, I and others have been saying recently about Australia becoming a proxy even a patsy for the United States.
The signs are ominous on numerous fronts.
Kishore Mahbubani from Singapore has pointed out that Australia looks like a spear-carrier for the United States.
North Australia is becoming a US military colony. It started with Julia Gillard agreeing with Barack Obama for the stationing of marines in Darwin. It followed last year with the Morrison government at a US/Australia Ministerial meeting committing us to ‘high end war- fighting and combined military operations in the region’ with the United States.
The enormously expensive AUKUS nuclear submarines are not to defend Australia but to be fused with the United States naval forces to contain Chinese submarines on the Chinese coast in the South China Sea. We are paying for a submarine to oblige the Americans rather than to defend Australia. We are choosing the wrong submarine.
The most “basic flaw in Australian nationalism was its view of race.” (Alomes, 1988:30).
Perhaps then, national identity was enshrined in the White Australia policy: Upon the very isolation of this vast island continent … a unique human experiment might be attempted. As with nowhere else upon the globe, here a distinct biological community might be established, maintained and nurtured within a single geographic entity. If the indigenous peoples continued their perceived decline towards extinction and other migrant races were excluded or expelled, a ‘pure race’ could logically result. From such a vision, the idea of a ‘White Australia’ was born – a society where national boundaries conformed to racial ones – and by the time of Federation, this was no longer so much a matter of debate as a nation-wide article of faith. (Cited in Evans et al, 1997, p 26).
The President of Mexico recently spoke out in support of Julian Assange as the WikiLeaks founder was honoured with the keys to Mexico City. Australia must do more to bring Assange home, writes Dr John Jiggens.
Ten years on from former Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s Misogyny Speech, has media representation of women really improved? Dr Victoria Fielding examines why not much has changed.
The Northern Territory police team involved in the shooting death of an Indigenous teenager weren’t authorised to carry out the arrest that led to the incident, a top-ranking officer says.
Constitutional recognition was first touted by John Howard prior to losing the 2007 election, then copied by Rudd, Gillard, Abbott (who swore to sweat blood for it) sponsored by Miners, the AFL and NRL under the banner of “Recognise” and now the new Labor Government is still pushing it, whilst keeping the republic as a separate issue, as if unrelated.
Whose land is this republic supposed to operate on? The King of Britain’s land, or Aboriginal Land?
Text messages described as repugnant and racist were sent by the officer who shot dead an Indigenous man in the Northern Territory.
Text messages described as repugnant and racist were sent by the officer who shot dead an Indigenous man in the Northern Territory.
The messages were retrieved from the phone of Constable Zachary Rolfe, who was initially charged with the murder of 19-year-old Kumanjayi Walker during an arrest attempt at Yuendumu in 2019.
Constable Rolfe was later acquitted on all charges after a Supreme Court trial.
At a coronial inquest into Mr Walker’s death on Wednesday, counsel assisting Peggy Dwyer read a number of messages sent some months before the shooting.
In one, Constable Rolfe wrote about being allowed to “towel locals up”.
In another, the officer made reference to a “c—s”, a term Sergeant Anne Jolley, the chief officer at Yuendumu, agreed at the inquest was blatantly racist.
Constable Rolfe also referred to “Neanderthals who drink too much alcohol”, which Sergeant Jolley accepted was disgusting and unacceptable.
Fossil fuel subsidies from major economies including Australia reached close to US$700 billion in 2021, almost doubling from 2020, according to new analysis by the International Energy Agency and OECD.
It is heartwarming to watch the stories of people embracing the Canadian nation which has worked so efficiently to grant them safe haven, to reunite them with their family, to make them part of community. As an Australian, it hurts to see our failures thrown into stark relief by the contrast.
We won’t let the Hazaras in Indonesia come here. Yet they have few other options. They certainly cannot go back.Worse, the Hazaras kept at our behest on the streets of Indonesia for a decade are still not obtaining solutions or even adequate day to day support from Australia.Rather than let them arrive and thrive, Australia flips thousands of taxpayer dollars per stranded refugee to IOM rather than bring them here. IOM in turn sell the refugees to the lowest cost service provider or contractor. After a while, these practices resemble people trafficking for profit.I spoke to a couple of Hazaras in Indonesia over the weekend.One, Ghaznavi, is a gorgeous young chap who turned his hand to baking bread and tiling, despite work bans and his very apparent higher education.
Our involvement in the Afghan war makes us accountable for the wellbeing of Afghans. It is no different from the accountability of allied troops for Jewish war orphans in occupied Europe, or those affected by the bombing of Japan, Korea or Vietnam*. The Allies used their homeland to settle scores rather than our own. Even a hardened warrior like Jim Molan should be able to comprehend that.
It is possible. So this is not just the “time to listen to the Voice and act”. It is the time to tell the powers-that-be what sort of Australia we want. We all have a lot to lose if we shirk this referendum and politicians and dissenters should be held to account if they intercede to prevent the emergence of a constitutionally enshrined Voice.
For tens of thousands of years, First Nations people have addressed changing weather on this continent and successfully applied their knowledges to land management. Their knowledge and contribution deserve full recognition.
olddogthoughts 