NOEL PEARSON: Well, you know, I think that - I mean, I’ve been taking the stick quite a bit to progressives in relation to Aboriginal policy. People on the - people who have always professed a regard for Aboriginal people, and you know, there’s something mad going on from in the midst of many of our traditional supporters because they’re putting quibbling about politics and putting all kinds of objections in the road. For example, the suggestion that this is about land rights. You know, I’ve got as much objections as anybody to the ideological prejudices of the Howard Government in relation to land, but this question is not about a ‘land grab’. The Anderson Wild Report tells us about the scale of Aboriginal children’s neglect and abuse. This is what this is about. It’s an absolute alibi to try and characterise this debate as being about land grabs and so on. Who wants a land grab in main street Hopevale, for goodness sake?

…

You know, that’s the horrendous thing here. That the people who are nay saying any kind of intervention are people whose children, like my own, sleep safely at night. And I think that’s a terrible indulgence.

When our children sleep safely at night, we seek to put road blocks in the way and we wish failure, we wish failure upon any decisive action that’s going to deliver some relief of suffering to vulnerable children.

Howard it past master at misdirection.
He has taken the public agenda while we all ignored:-
1. The new Aust. ID Card Bill- traditionally opposed by Australians & passed without comment 6 hours before the end of the Winter Parliament Session.
Where has been the media coverage of this?
2. The Federal search for a Nuclear Dump in NT.
3. The new USA/Oz air base for big cargo planes in the NT.
(”We built it because we wanted to see if we could.” !?)
4. The tigtening of anti-terror laws (Laws which he promised to abolish about now)
5.?
“Trust me”-He (Bonsai/Howard) has another agenda

One of the reasons I actually read clubtroppo is that the debate is generally above a minumum level of civilisation. Even Tim D’s old roadtosurfdom became intolerable after a while.

And this is the civilised blog, Paul - you should see the terms they use over at LP and Catallaxy. But it’s alright, apparently vitriol is only in the eye of the beholder, according to Mark B.

All I can say is, Noel Pearson must have the patience of a saint to put up with the continual impugning of his motives.

I think the Government reaction here has gone a little over the top in its authoritarianism, but that seems just to be its natural bent. When people have had enough of such approaches, presumably they will vote someone else in, though I fear that in the ALP we only have another version of authoritarianism. But I think strong measures of some kind are warranted - I would just prefer that there be a stronger emphasis on capacity-building for the longer term.

One thing I have noticed is that most of the discussion has been around whether or not it is fair or appropriate for the government to infringe the rights of adults. Very few people seem willing to acknowledge that this is (certainly from Noel Pearson’s perspective and I hope from the government’s) about trying to safeguard the rights of children, not least to a future in which they can be functioning adults and bring up their own children to be functioning adults.

Now at last for the first time a few more people are talking about it: principally here. Let’s see if it makes a real difference.

Meanwhile the people most likely to be most involved seem to be largely in denial there is a problem, are long on negatives and absent on solutions.

What is the link/deal with pornography?
Have I gone to sleep and woken up in 1950?

Bonsai is buying 10 Billion$ in Boats
Where is the money coming for this?
Where are the trained staff for the NT intervention?
The doctors the police who know about aboriginal culture?
You can’t get doctors to work in the bush now so how?
You can’t get them for Sydney suburbs!
He has 40 NT police working for federal police on border control.

It would be good if all kids in Oz could have a free comprehensive medical/dental/optical/psychological check.
it would be good if abuse in the white society could be addressed
(See the new on-line British programme -very successful)

What is he going to do with the people he finds need medical attention?
Where are the NT drug /alcohol clinics?
Where are the teachers/ counsellors/ education resources/ trained specialist psychologists and social workers?
What is the $ budget for this exercise?
How much money will be spent on Travelling Allowance (TA) alone for the Army ?

I thought the Army was stretched to the limit?
What about long-term solutions for the WHOLE Australian community-not just one easily identifiable ghetto-group?
or
is the whole thing got some other agenda?
Why just the NT when he has the constitutional right to take over ALL states aboriginal affairs. Why are NT kid more at risk?

Does he need a new mine or nuclear dump on aboriginal NT land?
A new USA/OZ airfield/ base?

In the cross-fire between left and right commentators on this ; did anyone notice he slipped though the Australian ID card in the dying hours of the Winter Parliament session?.
+
a tightening of the sedition laws?
No? Perhaps that was the point?
Howard gets some ‘right wing’ and ‘bleeding heart’ brownie points for the election in 3 months time? by being “tough” on aborigines.

Give me a break!
This whole thing will be lucky to last 12 weeks and then go the way of his various other silly pronouncements on History and/or English teaching.

He is the master illusionist- “Watch here while I slip this one in over here”.
The press, as usual, follow like the sheep& goats they are;
and Bonsai is home free…

Bonsai AKA Howard AKA Jackboot Johnny
You have to admire his political astuteness.
He is so devious and Machiavellian ++
So clever!
He could teach Machiavelli a thing or two about dealing with the media and silencing dissent -within and without- his “Liberal” Party.
(Ask ex-PM Frazer what he thinks of Bonsai).

It is a great pity that Bonsai/Howard is also a humourless, authoritarian, anti-democratic, anti-human rights, power-hungry, amoral, dissembling, evil, socially divisive, racist, gouging, opportunist liar of the First Degree

There are ninety-seven recommendations in the report. The two that the news release announced, prohibition of alcohol and porn, were not in the report. Alcohol and porn only took up a small number of the recommendations too, and what was in the report was a liberal policy, not a conservative/paternalist one.

More tellingly Fred Chaney is quoted prior to the report with:

But I think governments persist in thinking you can direct from Canberra, you can direct from Perth or Sydney or Melbourne, that you can have programs that run out into communities that aren’t owned by those communities, that aren’t locally controlled and managed, and I think surely that is a thing we should know doesn’t work.

And if that isn’t sufficient; any announcement that has state of emergency or for the children in it, should be treated with political concern if not contempt. That language is designed to make reasonable people sound unreasonable. We have also seen a pattern of governance in the last five years where there is a big announcement of a problem, the determination from above that it is a ‘national emergency’ and the the centralisation of power along with prohibition of new kinds.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bigideas/

Robert,

“On the politics of this, it is astounding to read views as such from people who are completely at ease to support a “policy” or “action” which consists of making an announcement and then working out how to do it.”

with usually reasonable people like Ken ready to shout ‘racist’ and ‘Day of shame’ even when it concern minor policies that are likely not to have much impact at all and which are supported by the vast majority of the political spectrum, what do you expect Robert? Only a naive politician would engage truthfully on this issue, and then only once. The emotions on this issue are simply too strong to have a reasoned debate.

What happened to the days of working out how things can be done and then, if it is expertly considered to work, making the announcement?

A brilliantly edifying thing to read is the leading letter at SMH today, here, which in a few sentences from someone who knows spears a major plank of Howard’s brilliant “action” in the guts.

If only he’d asked her first. (For one example).

What governments do is to divide their expenditure into compartments called budget expenditures and then they spend it. I think it is politically more acceptable in the current climate to do some of the division on taxes on the reasons for much of the problem but I do not care how the money is allocated. I have no trouble with governments deciding how much goes into the compartments. Governments still divide the expenditures into compartments but they allow markets to be the mechanism for spending the money. The system we have at the moment is centralised planning with all the inefficiencies that that brings.

I would rather have a say in how money collected by taxes from me is spent in my community rather than some government bureaucrat deciding for me.

It is important to spend money on the problem but leaving it up to few bureaucrats to decide how the money is allocated and then how it is spent is asking too much of them and they will not do it very well as we have seen in the past.