The one thing those wretched reactionaries revel in is in how 'soft' and 'pc' the Left is. This might be true of your upstanding social democrat type who's a member of the union and votes for Labor Right but over on the fringes where the dear ol' anarchists play methinks it's a different story.
For one thing, we don't buy into the idea of 'the native whose way of life was perfectly attuned to nature until the evil whiteman came along' Any more than a cursory examination of tribal customs will reveal that they can be shockingly sexist, ridiculously superstitious and tragically unjust. Which is no more reason to discriminate against them than it is for another racial group to pick on us for having stupid and dangerous ideas like 'a woman should keep silent in Church' or 'thou shall not suffer a witch to live'(I'm paraphrasing but not by much).
In the case of our own indigenous population, I find it wonderfully ironic that after the rather paternalistic attitude of our pater, my sister should end up marrying a Pitjanjarra man. So we're related by blood.
Which gives me a - tenuous - right to comment as follows:
For once I am in agreement with the Liberal government: ATSIC was so horribly corrupt that it had to be shut down. You could argue that there needed to be changes made at the top. No doubt. But wasn't it then a responsibility of the Aborigines themselves to express dissatisfaction with their leadership and seek a replacement?
Secondly: the recent Redfern riots. I lived in Redfern and it was no fun. I had an inventive time working out detours so I wouldn't be constantly badgered for handouts; especially, paradoxically, on pension day.
The reason there is such a police presence? Because the police are inherently racist or because there is more than your usual level of trouble and potential crime? Who has examined this in any kind of critical light without immediately taking one position or the other?
And, yes, you can make a very good, and valid, case for why a disenfranchised people would turn to crime and drunken disorderliness but, nonetheless, if you're to protect those potentially on the receiving end of this disaffectation then you need cops, right?
A kid panics (why? had he done something wrong?) when he sees a cop car, hurtles off on his pushbike and loses control flipping onto a spiked fence. Horrible yes. But what was the cause of the riot? One community commentator stated that 'the cops pushed TJ onto the fence', which is ludicrous in the extreme. So a sector of the Redfern aboriginal population ripped up pavement and did their usual job of defacing the place, threw rocks at people, endangering their lives, and SET FIRE TO REDFERN RAILWAY STATION because a kid panicked at seeing a cop car and came off his bike.
Makes sense to me.
Posted by berko_wills
at 4:04 PM NZT
Updated: Monday, 10 May 2004 4:13 PM NZT