Noel Pearson gave a talk this evening, actually yesterday, sponsored by the dreaded rightwing think tank The Centre for Independent Studies. The venue was a rather unlikely location, a bunker under the Sydney Stock Exchange, an interesting place to talk about relieving the conditions of outack Aborigines.
Anyway the big fella put on a star turn. He wants all interested and caring parties to maintain a full court press on the Government to let Aboriginal communities opt out of the current welfare arrangements and try something different, in case it works. Look out for the full text of this address. For dummies who don’t know anything about basketball, a full court press is a concerted forward movement by the whole team. That includes you.
Actually, a full court press is a defensive strategy. Rather than retreating to the key, the defending time tries to tackle opposing players and preventing them from moving the ball forward. Impressive when it works, but vulnerable to a pass to an open player.
Thanks John, call me a dummy! I knew it meant going forward but I didn’t realise it was done while the opposition had the ball. That is actually a repeat of a mistake that I used to make as a young person, loth to stop reading and consult a dictionary for the meaning of a new word I relied on picking it up from the context. Mostly I got it right but sometimes I got it spectacularly wrong. The really silly thing was that sometimes when my parents tried to correct me I would stick with my own definition anyway. What would they know?
I’m not detracting from Noel in the least, I respect and encourage his efforts greatly, but he’s said it before and everyone applauds and says “yeah – great let’s do it” – NOTHING HAPPENS; then 10 years later, and 10 years later still, the rhetoric crops up yet again!! My heart weeps for these people – and I would class myself as a pragmatic RWDB.
I dont recall this being said ten years ago by people who were regarded as credible in polite society. How long ago was it that Pauline Hanson was branded a racist and had the full bucket tipped on her for talking commonsense about this issue? It was my impression that Noel came to notice after that, but this impression could be wrong. How time flies….
^Rafe
I’ll admit to being somewhat poetical in my reference to 10+10 etc, but Noel has been trying to get some positive outcomes for his people for a long time. He has tempered his language over the years, and probably achieved more as a result, but it was certainly the mid 90’s when he labelled the Howard goverment “racist scum”. In the ’70’s the desert women marched in Alice Springs to get welfare payments delivered in some way other than cash, to no avail – “restriction of civil liberties” was the cry at the time. I wasn’t specifically referring to Noel with my 10 year comment, but rather that he was part of a long line of people pointing out that some things had to change; and the sooner the better. Even the most optimistic commentator would be hard pressed to find any more than a few positive outcomes in all this time.
Rafe, please be assured that I’m not being pedantic but time does indeed fly. Although he’s only about 40, Pearson is a person that I’ve followed, as he echoes my own thoughts on these matters. I’m not sure how to post a link here, so if all else fails, I’m afraid you’ll have to copy and paste: http://150.theage.com.au/view_bestofarticle.asp?straction=update&inttype=1&intid=1117
Regards,
Readers with an interest in this topic may like to read this paper on which the CIS talk was apparently based.
Ooops on the code, but ya get the idea anyway :-O