Officers discovered the 16-year-old at the troubled Unit 18 youth detention facility at Casuarina Prison in WA in the early hours of October 12 after he contacted them through the intercom.
Let’s set the record straight, please. Slavery and people trafficking was fine according to British thinking in the day. A Christian, God-given right and quite justifiable. So why does Jacinta Price for a moment think that Indigenous Australia was an exception to that belief? The thought that Indigenous blacks in Australia were considered differently to those elsewhere and benefited from colonisation?
Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s comment that: … she did not believe there are any ongoing impacts of colonisation, but in some cases, a “positive impact”. … begs to be disputed. There is zero positivity in the planned extermination of the world’s oldest culture. But that was the plan. However, in fairness to Senator Price she,…
Children were taken away under government policies of protection and assimilation aimed at having indigenous people adopt European culture and behaviour to the exclusion of their family and background. The assimilation policy presumed that, over time, indigenous people would die out or be so mixed with the European population they became indistinguishable (The Path to Reconciliation, 1997, p 24).
Yes, I would argue that the total extermination of Australia’s Indigenous people was deliberately intended. If not by the bullet, then by the policies of those governments that saw them as a stain on white purity. God favoured the white man and they set out to do His work.
We can start by supporting the Voice Referendum. Giving our First Nations people input into decisions that affect their lives is logical because we all know that imposing economic solutions hasn’t worked for over 200 years. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the next referendum was to revoke the Voice to Parliament because there was essentially equity in lifespans and opportunities between all who choose to live in this country?
We have the means and ability to help people rather than ideology on October 14 – don’t waste it.
A Voice to Parliament is “not treating the indigenous population better”, Åhrén says. Rather, “it’s providing equality by treating them differently, because they are different”.
John Howard voted against what 143 Nations voted for and shamed this nation
The 13th of September 2007 was an important day in the history of Australian diplomacy although few people have heard of it.
The 13th of September 2007 was an important day in the history of Australian diplomacy although few people have heard of it. That was the occasion when veteran Aboriginal activist Les Malezer addressed the U.N’s General Assembly as the Chair of the Global Indigenous Caucus and introduced the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People.
It was, he declared, a momentous and historic occasion for both the Indigenous Peoples and the United Nations. ‘It was a tool for peace and justice, based on mutual recognition and mutual respect.’ The Declaration passed with the support of 143 nations. Eleven nations abstained while Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States voted against it, a decision reversed by the incoming Rudd government in April 2009.
#TheVoice means so much to First Nations. They cannot control legislative powers of Parliament or the administrative powers of the Executive, but they may make representations which Parliament may consider, just like the Executive may consider and those representations will enlighten our federal system of government and help close the gap. #VoteYesAustralia
when I meet with the Voice for the first time, I will say: “bring me your ideas on how to stop our people from taking their own lives, bring me your ideas on how to help our kids go to school and thrive, bring me your ideas on how we make sure our mob live strong and healthy lives, how we ensure more people have jobs, how we support families better.” and I will LISTEN
Australia risks a “futility syndrome” among its Indigenous youth if it votes ‘no’ to the voice to parliament, leaving them without hope for their futures, former minister Ken Wyatt says.
So Canada, NZ, and South Africa are all Apartheid Nations according to Australians who refuse Indigenous recognition. Indigenous Australians were the first people here and were simply overrun, killed, enslaved, and regarded as worthless fauna. They weren’t Invaders, settlers, or colonisers. They weren’t immigrants. They were the people of this land. Recognition of that fact is a common element of all other Colonized nations on the planet except in Australia. Just as recognition of Climate change is common to most of the world’s nations except for Australia. Why is that?
What these exceptions have in common and the rest of the world doesn’t is the LNP is the antithesis to what the general population of Australia thinks. They alone are the cause of division in our Democracy, not multicultural diversity along with an economic class divide.. It is the LNP which prefers to divide rather than unite us as it serves them and the minority they represent well politically. Their ideal is of course cultural assimilation which they readily define by pointing out the differences between them and us. Culture, Color, and Religion are basic triggers of hate and Peter Dutton has never been shy to point out those that don’t belong.
The fatuous attempts to depict a simple, straightforward Voice to Parliament as analogous to apartheid is divisive scaremongering at best, or a clear rejection – yet again – of the presence and participation of First Nations Peoples in our society, at worst. And a rejection of recognition of the original inhabitants of this land from its primary founding document, is a vote for their continued exclusion based on race. And that, Senator Hanson, is apartheid.
Funding appeals for better community infrastructure to divert troubled kids in Alice Springs are going unheeded. Instead, NT bureaucrats suggest restricting alcohol is the solution to growing youth crime, writes Tom Tanuki.
Democracy in Action or wedging Dutton? ” Speak Up Peter” When Indigenous Australians ask Dutton for support they don’t and wont get it. As what they ask for isn’t Conservative policy,
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has also extended an olive branch to the Liberal leader, offering to come up with a constructive deal for constitutional reform in a private letter.
The letter, details of which were published in Nine newspapers, asked Mr Dutton for any “practical suggestions” he wished to contribute to the voice proposal.
Does the Constitution need changing is The referendum
What comes after Parliament determines and is elected. Is “a Voice TO not IN parliament a reasonable request?
Their demand for information on “what the Voice will be” is not entirely a red herring. The Labor Government’s statement that it’ll be decided by Parliament after the referendum succeeds, is not satisfying what a large number of people think they should know, before voting “Yes”. It is an added risk, that as soon as you give some plan, oppositionists will start debating the plan — attacking the main idea by attacking the example. But that might have to be the cost of shutting them up about providing “details”.
When Class systematically dissects even those that deserve attention the most it’s used to political advantage to put the brakes on recognition of injustice and halt progressive and just change
“It is important we bring respect to this. This should be a conversation we should be able to have,” he added.
Labor minister Bill Shorten told Nine Ms Burney had been a great advocate for First Nations Australians.
“The issue is about whether or not we put First Nations people on the nation’s birth certificate, the Constitution,” he said.
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd has launched a scathing rebuke of the emerging conservative campaign against a referendum on an Indigenous Voice to parliament, attacking his longtime rival Tony Abbott for suggesting the body would change Australia’s system of government.
Colonialism and Capitalism have worked hand in hand to capture Indigenous Identit once again for a sack of beans to a very very whiter than white LNP. Will they give the license they now own and proprietorship to Indigenous Australia? No effen way only the money earned for the time being to NIADOC. The right to fly the flag needs to be asked for and can be removed at the will of the Australian government. Maybe the Indigenous council of Australia ought to have thet same proprietory right over the Australian flag.
The Aboriginal flag will be transferred to public hands for the first time, freeing its use for Indigenous community groups and sporting codes after the Australian government reached a historic deal with its creator to permanently acquire copyright more than 50 years after it was first flown. The $20 million taxpayer-funded settlement will end a long-running legal controversy surrounding its use by allowing the ensign to be painted on sports grounds, used on apparel such as sports jerseys and shirts, on websites, in paintings and other artworks, digitally and in any other medium without having to ask for permission or pay a fee.
A referendum on the Voice offers another national opportunity for Australia to continue its journey of coming to terms with its past. A yes vote offers the opportunity to renovate the constitution from a document that is silent about the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history of this continent and which permits discrimination on the basis of race. As the Uluru statement from the heart says: In 1967, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people “were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard”.
All Aboriginal people suffer in every aspect of their lives from racism. The denial of self-determination is racist (12). Racism is evident in the education system, the legal system and the political structures of Australian society (13). It exists at the legislative and bureaucratic levels and weaves down into public opinion. Aboriginal people have had to contend with the European attitude of white supremacy. The issues I have discussed are all bound together with racism (14).
These major issues indicate that a history of racist views and policies began in Australia in 1788 and still manifests society today. History books account of the struggles of Europeans to claim this continent as their own, whereas a curtain of silence has shielded generations of students from recognising how European expansion swept away the land rights of the original inhabitants.
In the advancing colonisation the Aboriginal people were conveniently treated as part of the country’s past. ‘History,’ proclaimed an old uni lecturer of mine, ‘treated Aboriginal people as little more than impediments standing briefly in the way of inevitable white progress across the nation’ (15).
Who shoots someone and then doesn’t take them to a medical facility? (ODT)
Two officers had entered a home in the community, 266 kilometers northwest of Alice Springs, early Saturday evening to arrest Walker for alleged property-related offences, police said. After an altercation, Walker was shot and then taken to the police station instead of a medical facility. Family were told Sunday that he was dead.
The Liberal senator James McGrath and the former Liberal candidate Jacinta Price have fronted an Institute of Public Affairs advertisement attacking any proposal for an Indigenous voice to parliament, claiming it will divide Australians by race.
The inflammatory intervention comes just a day after the minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, launched a co-design process with Indigenous people on the voice to parliament.
The negative advertising suggests the rightwing thinktank and aligned Coalition conservatives will continue to campaign against a voice despite the government’s repeated efforts to signal that the First Nations representative body will be legislated rather than enshrined in the constitution.
Today, the licence to use the flag on items of clothing is held by WAM Clothing. This was granted by Thomas in October 2018.
One of the owners of WAM Clothing, Ben Wooster, is also the director of a company called Birubi Art. Last year, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission brought legal proceedings against Birubi for its production and sales of boomerang and other souvenir products featuring visual images and symbols of Aboriginal art, all of which were produced by artisans in Indonesia.
The Federal Court found that by representing these works as hand painted or made by Aboriginal Australians, Birubi had engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct. A hearing on the penalties and orders against the company will be held this Friday, but it is already in liquidation, which could limit the impact of any orders.
Andrew Bolt insists they are their own problem and is ready more harshly than history has treated them already. They certainly aren’t part of his culture or team that hasn’t changed substantially since 1788. (ODT)
The government decided to contribute funding to a Sky News show hosted by Warren Mundine after Mundine approached the office of Indigenous affairs minister Nigel Scullion, Senate Estimates heard on Friday afternoon. There was also no clear guideline to measure the show’s success when deciding to double the funding for a second season, to an overall total of $330,000.
BuzzFeed News revealed in January that the Coalition government gave Mundine’s company $220,000 in 2018 as a grant towards funding his show, Mundine Means Business, on the cable TV news network, following an earlier award of funding in 2017.
In Jan. 2019 Mundine was announced as the new Liberal candidate for the marginal NSW seat of Gilmore, replacing the previously pre-selected candidate Grant Schultz.
“You can see the problem, though, can’t you?” asked McAllister. “What has taken place is that a person who is known to be very close to the prime minister, is sitting on the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council, receives a direct grant which no other person was able to apply for, to develop a television program to raise his profile, and then that person nominates as a candidate for the Liberty party. I think the use of public resources in this way is totally unacceptable.”
As Linda Burney MP put it: “Leadership in an Aboriginal cultural context is not given or measured by how much media you get or if you earn big money. True Aboriginal leadership does not come from high-level appointments or board membership. It doesn’t come from and cannot be given by white constructs. Leadership is earned; it is given when you have proven you can deal with responsibility and you understand that responsibility’.”
Aboriginal people are not one homogenous mob and we must listen to different ideas but ignoring root causes and suggesting that Aboriginal culture itself is to blame is a cop out.
The preselection of Warren Mundine and Jacinta Price is a reward for their advocacy of “old white fella” policies.
They have chosen the comfort and support that comes from aligning yourself with those who hold and wield the power whilst seemingly blaming Aboriginal people for their own oppression.
Whilst they might speak about issues affecting Aboriginal communities like domestic violence and unemployment, I have yet to hear either of them offer any recognition of how the past has influenced the present let alone any positive suggestions on how to create change for the future.
Last year, 165 Indigenous Australians died as a result of suicide. Despite continued efforts to improve suicide prevention programs, there has been no no appreciable reduction in the suicide rate in ten years.
While suicide is the 14th leading cause of death for non-Indigenous Australians, it is ranked fifth for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
We often equate suicide with mental illness, but as a recent Senate inquiry report into rural mental health found:
… in too many cases, the causes of suicide for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is not mental illness, but despair caused by the history of dispossession combined with the social and economic conditions in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples live.
This statement should not be a surprise, but it is all too easily forgotten. A diagnosis of mental illness is only one of a number of risk factors for suicide.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion has once again defended giving almost $500,000 to powerful lobby groups from funding earmarked for Aboriginal disadvantage programs.
Mr Scullion approved grants of $150,000 to the NT Seafood Council, $170,000 to the NT Amateur Fishermen’s Association and $165,000 to the NT Cattlemen’s Association.
But the amateur fishing group revealed two weeks ago it received funding from the government without ever asking for it, as calls for a full investigation increased.
But the scheme has been criticised over how much funding goes towards Indigenous people, and a lack of transparency.
Indigenous groups are calling for a full investigation into Nigel Scullion’s “totally inappropriate use of Aboriginal-earmarked funds”, following revelations that as minister he approved grants to NT lobby groups to argue against land claims.
Former NT Indigenous affairs minister, Dr Jak Ah Kit, told Guardian Australia the decision to fund these groups with money set aside for addressing Indigenous disadvantage was “totally immoral and totally against the normal rules that apply”.
Tony Abbott special envoy says Education comes first change their Culture and the Economics will follow. Surely Jobs and economic opportunity come first when families are concerned? Social Welfare and Churches have spent generations removing children for “education” and have accomplished nothing but successfully destroyed families and culture leaving many indigenous without opportunity impoverished and fully aware they aren’t equal in Australian eyes. Sending the Mad Monk as special envoy is fraught with danger for the indigenous not Abbott. (ODT)
The Closing the Gap framework sought to halve the employment gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, among other targets. But the employment target expired unmet this year.
In remote parts of Australia, the gap has actually widened since 2011.
Governments have relied on a series of employment programs to tackle the employment gap, but these have not yielded positive outcomes. Before the new program starts in 2019 we need more evidence of what does and doesn’t work.
There has been no robust evaluation of the last two employment programs. Evidence of what does work might help us finally start closing the gap.
Insulting Indigenous Australia. If he’d been made special envoy to women there’d be an out cry. What about special envoy to the Muslim Community. What would that have done. This no step to Reconciliation at all. Let’s face it Indigenous Australia requested a special council established of their democratic choosing and were refused recognition. Instead they have been appointed Abbott. (ODT)
Labor’s shadow Indigenous affairs minister, Pat Dodson, said that Abbott had a track record that shows he is “ignorant, hopeless and frankly offensive” on Indigenous issues.
“The suggestion that Tony Abbott could act as some kind of messenger or representative for First Nations people is condescending to the overwhelming number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who support the calls for a voice to parliament and a Makarrata commission to oversee truth-telling and agreement-making – both of which Mr Abbott has not supported.”
‘Correctional Services’ is a euphemism often used in Australia. Don Dale Youth Centre revealed itself in time as a place of torture. The Centre had been built in 1991 to detain young male and female offenders from across the Northern Territory. It provided ‘medium and high level’ detention, usually in single cells.
Facing electoral annihilation and media pressure, the Howard Government launched an unprecedented assault on Aboriginal rights and communities. A decade on, Senator Rachel Siewert says the federal government is still hiding behind its failures. I’ll never forget the day the Government announced the Northern Territory Intervention. It was a decade ago and I had beenMore
The Federal Government’s remote work-for-the-dole scheme is devastating Indigenous communities, with financial penalties causing insurmountable debt and social division, a report finds.
When I read this week that Tony Abbott and John Howard will hear no talk of a Treaty with Aboriginal Australia, my first thought was ‘Who listens to these blokes from ancient political history?’ Abbott conceded that it is important to recognise Indigenous Australians were here first, ‘But once it goes beyond that I think you open up all sorts of other things.’ That is true, and those other things to be opened up are incredibly legally exciting and relevant to our times. By Bronwyn Lay
Stan Grant strides towards me. It is easy to see why the television camera so loves his face. We meet at the plush Sofitel Hotel in Melbourne, where tea is poured from an elegant pot. Halfway through our conversation, the NSW honorary consul for Mongolia comes up for a chat. He seems in awe of Grant and tells him that his children are great fans: they’ve watched his speeches on YouTube. He thanks Grant for appearing on TV with him once. “Give my regards to President Elbegdorj,” Grant tells him.
Indigenous delegates walked out of a Constitutional recognition summit yesterday. Natalie Cromb expains why.
Facing electoral annihilation and media pressure, the Howard Government launched an unprecedented assault on Aboriginal rights and communities. A decade on, Senator Rachel Siewert says the federal government is still hiding behind its failures. I’ll never forget the day the Government announced the Northern Territory Intervention. It was a decade ago and I had beenMore
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