When you live in Darwin, the horrendous levels of violence in our indigenous community are impossible to ignore. Even more so when my wife Jenny has taught in a predominantly Aboriginal school for the last decade, and when I’ve spent almost 20 years doing legal work for a variety of Aboriginal communities.
That’s why, and not for the first time, I’m puzzled by the lack of attention the “chattering classes” devote to the issue. Compare the extraordinary level of blogosphere coverage of the seemingly interminable Windschuttle/Ryan debate about footnotes and fabrication of 19th century Tasmanian history with the coverage given to Mick Dodson’s important National Press Club speech yesterday. So far not a single mention on any blog that I can find. Is it because musing about historical white guilt is more comfortable for the finely-tuned politically correct conscience than wrestling with present day problems of violence by indigenous people against each other and their own children? Because the problem is so vast and depressing and the solutions not evident? Are Aboriginal people simply out of sight and therefore out of mind for most Australians?
Here’s a link to a transcript of Dodson’s NPC address. If you can’t be bothered reading it (and you should), here’s an extract from what yesterday’s Australian newspaper editiorial said about it:
Dr Dodson’s speech is the most unflinching and confronting recognition of the extent of the problem we have heard from an Aboriginal leader. Just as important, rather than pinning the blame on non-Aboriginal Australians, Dr Dodson cited a range of causes for the epidemic of violence that has shattered Aboriginal families and communities. He sees that the solution can only come through practical partnerships, not feel-good symbolic rituals designed to stroke middle-class white consciences.
Dr Dodson’s speech made harrowing listening. He spoke of patterns of violence so entrenched in Aboriginal communities that child victims of violence become perpetrators themselves before they reach adulthood. He said Aboriginal women experience violence at a rate that is 45 times that for non-Aboriginal women. And worst of all, he spoke of violence against children that “includes neglect, incest, assault by adult carers, pedophilia, and rape of infants by youths”.
While Aboriginal people are, as Prime Minister John Howard has acknowledged, the most systemically disadvantaged group in the community, Aboriginal children are the most vulnerable members of that group. As reported in The Australian today, the West Australian Government is setting up an inquiry into the high level of child deaths in the state Aboriginal children in Western Australia die at three times the rate of white kids. On Tuesday night, the West Australian parliament was told that in the notorious Swan Valley Nyungar Community camp in Perth, there is not a single female virgin aged older than 10, and that 60 per cent of boys are regularly sodomised.
Dodson honestly claims not to have any magic answers to this horrific situation. Nor do I, but I’m prepared to have a stab at teasing out a few factors. One very significant one is the lack of any meaningful role for Aboriginal males as hunter, protector or provider in modern quasi-traditional Aboriginal society. Instead, bored witless by waiting idly for the next dole cheque, they’ve become alcohol and drug-fuelled oppressors of their own families and communities. This idleness, frustration and despair flows directly from the lack of employment opportunities in most Aboriginal communities, and a culturally-maintained reluctance to take up whatever opportunities do exist.
A significant part of the reason for the lack of job opportunities lies in the failure of ATSIC’s enterprise development objectives. That failure in turn flows from the way ATSIC was set up in the first place. The ATSIC bureaucracy was created by a merger of the old Department of Aboriginal Affairs (DAA) and the Aboriginal Development Commission (ADC) in the late 1980s when Gerry Hand was Minister. In my experience, DAA was an almost complete waste of space, staffed with rare exceptions by lazy, incompetent bureaucrats, many of whom had been transferred sideways from other agencies to get rid of them. ADC, on the other hand, was mostly a quite effective organisation containing a good proportion of dedicated, highly professional staff. It had developed high level skills in evaluating applications for Aboriginal enterprise funding, and managing the unique problems of administering grants and monitoring prudential standards that the area necessarily involves.
When Gerry Hand first announced that ATSIC was to be created, more than a few senior DAA personnel, unconstrained by anything resembling dedication or professionalism, immediately downed tools and spent the next 12 months lobbying and intriguing to snare the plum executive jobs in ATSIC. They largely succeeded, and ADC staff almost to a man found themselves relegated to subordinate positions reporting to incompetent fools. Most of them soon voted with their feet, and ATSIC’s enterprise development functions have been in advanced disarray ever since.
The other key aspect of the problem, it seems to me, is cultural. This is where Rob Corr will label me “neo-racist”. So be it. There are significant aspects of modern quasi-traditional Aboriginal society that are simply ill-adapted to survival and prosperity within the dominant capitalist economy. Take “sorry business”, for instance. When a traditional Aboriginal person dies, sorry business may go on for a couple of weeks. For significant periods of that time, everyone downs tools and no work is done. Given the appalling mortality levels in most Aboriginal communities, it is impossible to operate any Aboriginal enterprise or community organisation in anything remotely resembling an efficient manner. As a result, it’s impossible for any Aboriginal enterprise to compete in the marketplace with its non-indigenous counterparts, without large ongoing government subsidies.
The lack of any social reinforcement or kudos in Aboriginal society for educational or workplace effort or achievement is also a major factor. The peer group doesn’t look up to a young Aboriginal man who goes to school, university or aspires to a real job. Quite the reverse. You’re seen as an “Uncle Tom” (or similar derogatory term). Moreover, even if you ignore the peer group pressures and get a job, kinship obligations will probably force you to share much of your paypacket with sundry unemployed relatives. Is it any wonder that most don’t bother?
When I worked for a well-known indigenous organisation out in Kakadu some years ago, one of my tasks was to insert employment preference clauses in the agreements between the organisation and companies that operated its various tourism enterprises (funded out of uranium royalties). The provisions were very well-drafted, even if I do say so myself, and the contractors all observed their obligations scrupulously. Yet during the years I was associated with this indigenous organisation, only one local Aboriginal person ever took up employment in one of “their” enterprises. The organisation later went into receivership following several years of corruption, nepotism and cronyism by the committee and rank incompetence by its white management. The story is sadly typical.
I’m not suggesting that the dominant white culture should impose a new age of assimilation or integration on indigenous Australians. What I am suggesting is that we all need to start confronting and discussing these issues bluntly and honestly, without fear of being labelled “neo-racist” by those with closed minds and authoritarian tendencies. Aboriginal people themselves should grapple with the problems, and perhaps take on board the proposition that merely because a particular cultural practice or attitude exists doesn’t mean it should be treated as immutable or sacrosanct. Human cultures are consciously-created artefacts, and they evolve over time by definition. In recent decades Aboriginal culture has evolved along paths that are largely pathological, and part of the reason for that has been misguided politically correct territorial assertions that critical discussion of such issues is “racist” and off-limits to non-indigenous people. That’s why I reacted so violently to Rob Corr’s “neo-racism” essay.
Update – Rob Corr has the latest on the closure today of the infamous Swan Valley Nyungar Community camp in Perth, as well as a clearer explanation of what he means by “neo-racism”.
For the record, Ken, I agree with you, and I don’t consider you a neo-racist.
There is nothing wrong with criticising cultures, or aspects of cultures (eg female genital mutilation). The problem arises when you imply that the culture is inherent in the race. You don’t do that. Some, like Ross Lightfoot and Keith Windschuttle, do. Perhaps I didn’t make that clear enough in my essay; if so, I apologise.
I’ve been meaning to write something about the Swan Valley Nyungah Community (which was closed this morning, I believe), and I’ll address some of your points in it.
Rob,
Fair enough. Let’s call a truce, then!! I actually admire much of your blogging, although those essays were fairly ordinary (but I do understand the pressures of an undergraduate student – although you’re still fortunate I’m not your marker!).
Well, yes, Ken, all sadly true, but if there was an easy solution it would have been tried a long time ago.
Mind you, no one is trying anything.
Your hero John Howard has been Prime Minister for over 7 years now (Christ! Has it been that long?!) and he isn’t constrained by politically correct nostrums about racism, and what has done to fix the problem, even a teensy-weensy bit? Sweet nothing.
Could it be, perhaps, that is suits him just fine for ATSIC to continue to be run corruptly and incompetently, so he can continue to give a nod and a wink to the white lumpenproletariat who are lack any empathy with Aboriginals and who bitterly resent their tax money being spent on undeserving boongs?
Not that the Labor Party is any better. They lost me on this issue when Richo got a 60 minutes crew to follow him around while he bemoaned the appalling state of Aboriginal health, which got him a lot of good publicity as a Deeply Concerned Health Minister, after which … nothing from him or his mates.
Dave,
If you think Howard is my hero, then either you haven’t been reading my stuff very carefully, or you’re simply stirring for the sake of it.
In any event, although the precise ramifications are not yet clear, Ruddock HAS recently moved to reform ATSIC. He’s stripped it of its administrative and practical fund allocation responsibilities, leaving it as purely an advisory body setting broad policy directions – analogous to a Board of Directors or, for that matter, a Parliament. And he’s transferred administrative responsibility to a brand new body whose title presently escapes me.
On the face of it those are all positive and well overdue initiatives. However, the devil will be in the detail. I don’t know whether or to what extent existing ATSIC bureaucrats will be simply shifted over to the new body permanently. Hopefully that won’t occur, and they’ll take great care to recruit purely on merit. However I’ll believe it when I see it.
Ken,
I didn’t know about these things Ruddock has done. All very necessary, but they don’t address the fundamental problems you identified.
And, yes, I was stirring, and, I must say, you took the bait magnificently.
For what it’s worth Ken, the Windschuttle stuff could maybe be seen as a kind of methadone substitute for “not going there” on the larger, and potentially much more toxic topic. Windschuttle’s central thesis is that some historians have been actively engaged in an agitprop revisionism of Australian history aimed at reframing the cataclysmic impact of European contact into a state planned and enacted genocide of Auschwitzian intent and proportion. His opponents claim that any attempt to deconstruct this picture – or even to see it in more complex or nuanced context – amounts to a racist denial of any of the “truths” they care to consider valid. Between these two immutably fixed poles lies the great gulf of Australian Silence. Squabbling about footnotes is simply manifest testament to our self-evident inability to go anywhere else.
I have enormous respect for Mick Dodson and his NPC speech was indeed powerful. Not least because he embodies, within his own community, the very qualities of manly presence – the perverted version of which – he principally identifies as “the problem.”
The fact that ATSIC is chaired by a swaggering, on-the-piss bully and his even more sleazoid deputy isn’t because Ruddock has “failed to act” – it’s because these sorts of profiles have considerable appeal for and with other indigenous men.
Violence – and the ability to “dish it” – is all too often the yardstick for admiration and respect.
Dodson’s citing of Peter Sutton was particularly brave because Sutton has rather indelicately identified exactly this as the core problem. Sutton’s research speaks of little aboriginal boys who routinely shout at and beat their mothers, and who are seen as admirable, feisty little bantam cocks by their prideful elders.
Having said that I have to say that Dodson’s appearance on Sally Loane’s ABC Radio show yesterday was disappointing. Loane asked him whether prohibiting alcohol mightn’t be an answer. Dodson sensibly – and patiently – pointed out that “dry communities” are the ones where nobody is around because they’re all over at the “wet community” getting pissed. Loane then asked him why aboriginal men were so violent. Dodson kind of ducked it. He told her that it was because of unemployment, oppression & etc. I don’t think that answers it at all. Nor does he. Nor, I think, does Loane. But it wasn’t challenged.
But, it’s a start anyway….
Geoff,
You’ve zeroed on the major problem with Dodson’s speech and, for that matter, the public approach of Noel Pearson. Neither is prepared to address the issue of culture and its ill-adapted aspects. I suspect both of them understand that it’s a big problem, but it’s still too much of a hot potato to mention. It might play into the hands of REAL white racists like Lightfoot and so on. Personally I think the risk must be taken, because without confronting the toxic effects of some aspects of culture nothing will change.
The whole tone of the above comments with the exception of Geoff’s points to the very reason for this sorry state of affairs. Summing up it is “What are we whiteys doing about it?”
I’m not arguing that we whiteys shouldn’t assist, but it is THEIR problem and THEY have to fix it. It is in fact deeply racist to imply that because of their race or culture they cannot do it. They are human beings with free will and nothing will change unless they as a community take reform upon themselves. Holding steadfast to their victim status might be a comfort but it’s pretty non-productive.
One of the depressing things about this issue is that people like Mick Dodson are not called to account for having contributed to the ‘Australian Silence’. Anthropologists and other researchers have been documenting the devastation for well over a decade, and certainly before Dodson’s time as ATSI Social Justice Commissioner. If their findings were actually published, they were ignored, and people who attempted to publicise them were denounced, unless they used them to decry the wickedness of non-Aboriginal society and culture. One of the papers Sutton cites in support for his suggestion about the link between traditionally-influenced child rearing practices and adult male aggression (‘Rape in Arnhem Land’) was written by a feminist anthropologist who could not get it published, even though it was a very sound piece of research, because other anthropologists who thought they were ‘friends of Aboriginal people’ condemned it.
While there can be no doubt that Aboriginal experiences at the hands of non-Aboriginal people and institutions over the past two hundred years have conditioned contemporary practices, there is a resolute refusal, particularly by whites, both on the romantic left and the romantic right, to take a critical look at traditional beliefs and practices. Ken is absolutely right on this. These people assimilate traditional Aboriginal cultures to their own fantasies and dissatisfactions with their own lives and Western culture in general.
If Dodson’s intervention can help to create a rigorous and unsentimental debate about causes and possible ways of ameliorating the devastation, then he will partly redeem himself for the nonsense he has been party to in the past. But Peter Sutton’s paper, which called for such a debate, has been around for over two years, with a number of people attempting to publicise it, and the white ‘friends of the Aboriginal people’ haven’t taken much notice so far. They would much rather denounce the likes of Roger Sandall for raising ‘indelicate’ questions because they think he is a conservative.
Ron (Mead),
I agree that merely saying “What is the government doing about it?” is missing the point. But so is suggesting that “It’s all their own fault”, which may be implicit in your response (then again I may be doing you an injustice). In fact, I’m sure more government action and redesigned programs and structures will be necessary to have any real positive effect. Structural reform of ATSIC is only a start.
Take, for instance, the town of Maningrida in Arhemland. It’s a community of some 2,500 – 3,000 people, but the total number of houses is around 160. Do the maths for yourself. It’s no coincidence that Maningrida also has high levels of TB and other diseases, and extraordinary levels of violence. See this
editorial from The Age a couple of years ago. Now, in the longer term, you would hope that community members will acquire skills and jobs, and be able to build their own houses like the wider community. But how do you break the cycle of poverty, violence, disease, dependency and despair in the first place?
Challenging toxic aspects of the evolved quasi-traditional culture is important, but it’s a long way from being a complete answer. I suspect that’s partly why quite a few people who have at least as realistic an understanding of the dimensions of the problem as I do (e.g. Mick Dodson) haven’t spoken out clearly before now. They fear it will play into the hands of those who would prefer to wash their hands of the issue.
Ken, If you re-read my post you will see that I steered well clear of assigning fault. Fault is all about the past, and the solution is about now and the future. The major effort must be from aboriginals themselves, with those with greater resources (whiteys) being called upon for specific assistance, which should be given unstintingly. But Noel Pearson’s right about the money thrown at welfare. It’s not only a waste but it’s making the problem worse, as you also acknowledged in your comment.
When you talk about “welfare”, I assume you mean transfer payments. Welfare in the form of community housing, health facilities, etc, is vitally important if things are to improve.
I think a couple of points raised by Geoff are worth exploring further:
1: “Loane asked him whether prohibiting alcohol mightn’t be an answer. Dodson sensibly – and patiently – pointed out that “dry communities” are the ones where nobody is around because they’re all over at the “wet community” getting pissed.
This is certainly a problem. Today the WA government closed down the Swan Valley Nyungah Community camp. When they arrived, the only people left at the site were Robert Bropho and a couple of his sidekicks. Everyone else had moved to another camp (or camps) run by Bropho’s brother. I’m not sure how you address this problem, though.
2: “Loane then asked him why aboriginal men were so violent. Dodson kind of ducked it. He told her that it was because of unemployment, oppression & etc. I don’t think that answers it at all. Nor does he. Nor, I think, does Loane.”
Nor do I.
Perhaps one of the most important reasons is that they get away with it. But this then raises another set of problems — how do you deal with the violence without forcing a(nother) generation of Aboriginal men into jails, etc?
“how do you deal with the violence without forcing a(nother) generation of Aboriginal men into jails, etc?”
Once again the implicit assumption is that it’s up to whitey to come up with the solution!
Perhaps, Ron, it’s more of a case of: (the specific communities are) Australian, are in need of some kind of help, and bleeding-heart lefties (and of course bleeding-heart centries) are kind of worried about it.
Supposing South Canberra suddenly began experiencing the same problems. No, wait, let’s pick somewhere where someone will care… um, you get the idea. A “white” community. Would you be advocating leaving it all alone, let them sort it out themselves?
Mark, I repeat as above “the major effort must be from aboriginals themselves, with those with greater resources (whiteys) being called upon for specific assistance, which should be given unstintingly.”
Nothing, repeat nothing, will be achieved until the aboriginal communities harness the will to help themselves. Your heart and wallet can bleed themselves to death and still achieve nothing unless this happens.
It depends Mark. If it was the South Canberra Lebanese community, we’d expect Lebanese-Australian input to be paramount. If it was the South Canberra diplomatic community that had the problem, we’d give the Dean of the Diplomatic Corps and DFAT a leading rein.
You can’t extol the virtues of a multicultural Australia on the one hand and then demand that an expedient “Australian” response take responsibility for that which we’ve already defined as specifically community-centric.
Having spent my early childhood in South Canberra – Forrest to be specific – I can’t imagine an Australian location less aligned to the exigencies of the topic under discussion.
Geoff,
“You can’t extol the virtues of a multicultural Australia on the one hand and then demand that an expedient “Australian” response…”
Um, I *haven’t*. But being left of centre, I’m wont to espouse the usual lefty platitudes of diversity and tolerance and all that being a Good Thing; indeed, I *believe* them. But multiculturalism — and I’m aware I may be working from a dodgy dictionary here — doesn’t mean that we don’t all end up being “Australian”. It just means that being “Australian” doesn’t involve assimilating into a giant monoculture.
I’m not saying Real Aussies (“whitey”, as Ron Mead says) should pitch in to help out Aboriginal communities due to some base idea like the old “White Man’s Burden”. No. I just want to know: what’s wrong with those Aussies with (as Ron put it) “greater resources” helping out other Aussies? (puts on akubra, chews straw, adopts folksy swagger, beings mentioning “battlers” repeatedly)
“Having spent my early childhood in South Canberra – Forrest to be specific – I can’t imagine an Australian location less aligned to the exigencies of the topic under discussion.”
And neither can I.
Ron, thanks for your clarification… well, repeat of things I happened to skim over unjustly before. Yes, fair enough.
Ron, it’s like a woman in an abusive marriage. She might want to leave, she might know she must leave, but it’s bloody hard to do it without outside help. I for one don’t want to stand back and watch her get beaten yet again.
When we discuss what might be done, it’s not all that unlike situations in which a youngster has endured terrible situations until he’s 16, and people sit around discussing ways to overcome the problem. Many of the ‘do gooders’ are in the position of having introduced approaches which have caused the problem — they don’t want to acknowledge that. Others might be benefitting personally from the problem — they don’t want the seriousness revealed. Still others may not have caused it; but they know how hard reform will be, so they keep quiet. The brave souls speak out, and are attacked for raising embarrassing points.
How much more difficult with the problems faced by MANY of the indigenous community?
People like Brunton are reviled for discussing the facts. For Dodson, who has been trying to raise issues for some time now, it’s even more dangerous. Of course he knows the situation is far worse than he’s prepared to speak frankly. He knows it because he’s neither as stupid or blinkered as the politically correct corroders over the years, of any attempt to come to grips with political reality.
Of course indigenous communities and individuals have suffered disadvantages. But for some, at least, the cure has proved worse than the disease. I’ve lived and worked among communities in Western NSW, where people of aboriginal descent made successes of their lives. No alcohol problems, no beating of women or kids. No higher education either; but many of them were earning better wages than some of the whites, and I never heard complaints about it.
It’s a different picture now, both in places where I worked, and other regions in which I spent leisure time. I’m not saying it was perfect. I found the attitudes of a small minority of whites loathesome; but I sometimes feel that there’s been an inverse relationship between the amount of propoganda churned out by the chattering classes, and the maintenace of good relationships between indigenous and non indigenous members of communities in which the pontificators don’t live.
It’s time the Dodsons and Bruntons of the world received support from those middle class snipers who currently do no more than bask in the glory of one another’s platitudes, and rejoice in their self appointed status of ‘progressives’.
But that would take guts.
Yes, Norman, Noel Pearson has been savagely critical of the so-called progressives for some time now. effectively Pearson has argued that substance abuse is the core of the problem and the attitudes of “progressives” over the last thirty years has made matters much worse. He makes the point that aboriginals have to find a place in the real economy by setting up and running their own businesses and generating employment among their communities. By taking part in capitalism in other words.
Nothing, repeat nothing, will be achieved until the aboriginal communities harness the will to help themselves. Your heart and wallet can bleed themselves to death and still achieve nothing unless this happens.
I think that’s an extraordinary thing to say, because it essentially confirms the structural pluralism which multiculturalism is designed to avoid. Australians are entitled to protection from domestic violence and membership of one community or another does not enter into it. Boys encouraged to beat their mothers and sisters are also victims of abuse and merit protection.
It does not have to mean another generation of Aboriginal men in gaol because there are alternative ways to deal with domestic violence. You could well argue that the prevalence of violence (if the governments do nothing) almost guarantees another generation of incarceration.
I’m also unpersuaded by the quasi-traditional culture argument. For that argument to succeed you’d need to show that the cultures of Native Americans or Maori, for example, is so similar to Australian Aboriginal culture that it causes similar levels of domestic violence.
If it’s not the quasi-traditional culture you’d need to look for something else common to the shared experience of indigenous peoples in Western nations.
I am not entirely convined that the non-indigenous community has exactly worked out solutions to the issue for domestic violence itself. I didn’t see the issue with the “big ugly secret” cover story but the letters that were published in response to it suggest that we white Australians haven’t reached the place of high moral ground
http://bulletin.ninemsn.com.au/bulletin/EdDesk.nsf/All/0B8F595258F62860CA256D390000736E
It is a complex problem and all Australians need to work at it.
Excellent post m’Ld. Ken.
I would add a couple of points.
The Aborignal birth rate is about 50% higher than the non-Aboriginal birth rate, reflecting the perverse high-breeding incentives of welfare-dependent single motherhood.
Thus we have:
males who can’t get sufficient productive work, and
females who have excessive reproductive work.
HOward has not done much for the Aboriginals, but he has made two important policy changes:
stopped focusing on the politics of symbolic gesture (sorry day) that feel good but do little pragmatic good
returned some financial control to the Minister, and away from ATSIC which is unaccountable.
In general, we need to move away from treating Aboriginals as a seperate bureaucratic class.
There should be just poor people and non-poor people. Poor people policy should be effects-based and results-oriented. Thus prohibiting alcohol and prescibing work will make them non-poor then so be it.
Evidently this policy is paternalistic and coercive.
So be it.
to Jack Strocchi
I’m Romanian,living in france from 16yrs,interested in Nyungars history & culture;I’d lived in Gabon,a french colony,for 3yrs;”poor people” &”not-poor people”?look Corsica,look Reunion island,look quebec(dominant white population-and they are well there, better than in their”ch
Where do i start?
You are all too sure about what you are saying. The problem in Australia is RACISM, and it probably will be forever. Aboriginal people wihtin our country have not be given the same chance at education or any other field as non Aboriginal people. It should not be about making it a level playing ground anyway, Aboriginal people should be given extra funding in relation to education, as the youth of Aboriginal people are going to make the difference in the society as we know it, and not helping them is only going to be disastrous. You might say, well my child doesn’t recieve that extra help, but remebering that your culture has not been ruined should be a clear indicator that there are huge problems with Aboriginal affairs. Education should also be given to all non Aboriginal people about the Aboriginal culture, and it should be compulsary!
There is some positives, the scknowlegement that there are problems and the willingness to try and help these people, as they have human rights just like any of us. The only way that Aboriginal people will change is by giving them the chance of Self Determination, or by having a seperate political party that monitors all Aboriginal affairs. Nationally there should be a teared structure in place as to see the problems at ground level then move them through the state and country. People fail to recognise that in Australia that Aboriginal people do NOT have the same basic human rights as non Aboriginal people and this needs to be addressed.
The removal of ATSIC should be seen as a positive as it was set up to fail. What happens to all of these huge companys where people are given access to huge amounts of money without being monitered, they fail!!!! Monitoring could be seen as a way of US taking away what is theirs again, there has to be a balance. The problems are the governments, the media, the people who are corrupted by these two things and US.
Some people say the answer is blowing in the wind, but it’s not. Just ask any Aboriginal person what should be done, and they will tell you! There’s the answer!
I hope one day our country can unite and be happy all together without the problems of racism and stereotype. We need people who care and feel for there people, not people worried about how much it’s going to cost!
Thanks.
Not neoracism…
Ken Parish has made an interesting post on violence in Aboriginal communities. The section on the creation of ATSIC was…