verging_on_random

Aboriginal land rights

The Federal Court decision confirming that native title exists in some crown land around Perth might be a wonderful gift to the Howard Government next year. They can pull out all those old maps showing how the damn blackfellas want to take over all our land and put us out on the streets with the other homeless people. Unless of course we are saved by the Howard Government which has new native title laws ready to put to parliament, carefully drafted to ensure that Kim Beazley and company will tie themselves in knots trying to explain their position on the matter.
It will be interesting to see how the public reacts. Indigenous land rights and Aboriginal welfare have had their 15 minutes of fame. I suspect that many people’s attitude now will be “Jeez we walked across the Harbour Bridge for them …. what else are we supposed to do? Isn’t it time they did something for themselves and stopped trying to take our homes off us?” Howard has cleverly abolished ATSIC, the only body that could ever claim to speak on behalf of all indigenous people, and carefully groomed a handful of Aborigines like Noel Pearson who wear suits and ties instead of that bizarre stuff that people like the Dodsons get about in. I mean Noel doesn’t even have a beard. These are the ‘true’ leaders of the Aboriginal people according to the government, who by a happy coincidence also happen to support the government’s approach to Aboriginal issues.
Helping all this spin doctoring along is the government’s contemptible creation of the ‘pedophile ring in Aboriginal communities’ non-story, with the enthusiastic co-operation of a gullible media. If you missed how it started, an anonymous ‘Aboriginal welfare worker’ was interviewed doing the usual cloak and dagger face-blacked-out-cos-he-can’t-be-identified trick to make the story seem really dramatic. Turns out he was actually an adviser to the minister, who’s completely unapologetic about the deception because ‘the story is true anyway’.
Now we have proposals to wind back the last vestige of Aboriginal autonomy by removing their authority over who comes onto their land. I mean if tourists want to climb Ayres Rock (let’s call it by its proper name, not that foreign ‘Uluru’ gibberish) and carve their names in it so they can take a photo, why should we let a mob of primitive blacks stop them? Tourists bring a lot of money into the country.
Let’s face it, the whole idea of native title and indigenous autonomy was always inconsistent with the government’s obsession with economic growth and a free market (except in agriculture of course). It also affronts their whole obsession with their superior ‘values’, by which they mean a nasty mixture of British imperialist and American born-to-rule mentalities. Being deeply cynical, I think they’ve got themselves a nice hot election issue for next year that they can activate any time they want by introducing some new native title laws. Hey they’ve done brilliantly for 10 years by playing wedge politics, why would they stop now?