Thread: Rudds apology

johnnie's absence note.jpg

Originally Posted by RonMcGr

Ali,
To make it worse, alcohol is not part of aboriginal culture, and never has been. Therefore it has drastic effects on their liver and kidneys.
Cheers,

That's interesting. Do you know where I could find the formal research on that ?

Originally Posted by waynep

<snip>but what is the solution ? Some boost in self respect is probably a good way to start, and from the lift in spirts I saw yesterday, the apology was probably a good way to start.

just MO, listening to Noel Pearson and some other leaders like him would be a further step. Unfortunately people like Michael Mansell get general media play as they are controversial, (much like Harold Scruby re 4WD's) and so the public gets a skewed view of (supposed) Aboriginal leaders.

Noel comes across as a very smart man who is able to cut through to the root causes to problems and proffer some solutions.

Originally Posted by waynep

That's interesting. Do you know where I could find the formal research on that ?

Unfortunately I've lost the original reference to that.
However, if you read the history of who they lived, you'll notice that the Aboriginals were hunters and gatherers.
They did not stay in one place too long, carried very simple tools, did not plant crops, etc.

Aborigines

Another interesting read on the Australian Aboriginal diet:

Australian Aborigines--Living Off the Fat of the Land

They were once healthy, happy people.

Cheers

Originally Posted by 87County

johnnie's absence note.jpg

Love it, mate.

PS - Ron McGr - we're having a flat earth society meeting next week - would you be interested?

This
E LAW | British Child Migration to Australia: History, Senate Inquiry and Responsibilities
as a reference as to "our" thinking during the era--

Originally Posted by Reads90

when i drove around Australia it opened my eyes alot to the state of the aboriginals.
we first came across aboriginals in S/A and that was the drunk one in the middle of the high street and asking you for money , fags and other stuff.
Then we were told by serveral travels (Nomads , and truck drivers) not to stop for Aboriginals and to hit them if they step in front of your car. This was a great shock to me , and thought a bit much and the beer talking or taking the **** out of the pom.
It was not untill i came to Leonora police station (where i went to pick up my Aboriginal permit to drive the track) I was asked what car i had and if i had a bull bar . I was then told (By a what look like mixed Aboriginal race Copper) that if any aboriginal jump out in front of me or stood in the road then hit them with the bull bar. The lastest trick was to have woman with a baby stand in the road for you to stop. They said if this happens then hit them too. If you hit someone then report it at the police station at Ayres rock. This shocked the hell out of me . They told me that 3 weeks earlyer a road train had stopped for a woman with a bady and 6 aboriginals came from a bush and beat the driver and then left him 500 k's from anywhere and took his truck .
As you drive down the track to Ayres rock there is loads and loads of burn't out cars on the side of the road. We stopped counting at 250 , in 150k. Then you know when you are getting to an Aboriginal township as the crap on the side of the road starts to build up and up , and i am talking about used nappies, Beer cans and anything else. It is disgusting.

Then in Alice springs there are Aboriginals drunk all over town and in the river bed, plus the march of the Aboriginals up to the bottle shop at 2pm..Also you come upon them in the supermarket and the smell of bozze and everyhting else is beyond belief. And that is not just one but alot of them .

You also see a newish land cruser 100 seris full of about 13 aboriginals. The police told me they can't arrest them for over loading a car. These cars are wrecked, the insides are just covered in crap (fesses) Saw loads and loads of these cars

driving to W/A you see some little townships where there are really nice house, ones i would be proud to own. You see new ones to show you what they were like and then most of them are burn't , smashed and in a state of diss repair.

Up on the way to the cape , we came across a Nissan about 6 months old that two Aboriginals drove into 2 m of ater with no snorkle. Whne the truck stopped they swam out and left it. And walked off. It was still there a month after. After all i was told this is because they don't have to pay for it

And i have not mentioned the restriction on petrol and achol all around Australia.

This is not me being rasict, but what i saw as a pom who came to Australia and traveled around. I have heard alot more stories but these are the things i saw with my own eyes. I have seen alot more but what i have put on here is enough
My Sister in law works for the goverment in Sydney and is always going on about how hard the aboriginals are trreated by the Australian goverment . After one time i nearly bought her a ticket to Alice springs, as she has never been to the outback and the only Aboriginal she has seen have been in the towns. And to show her how much the goverment spend on helping them
I argee with people who say how far do you go. After all does the UK goverment say sorry to all the convicts that were sent over here. Separteted for their wifes and familes for just nicking a loaf of bread.

Just my thoughts
Ali

Originally Posted by waynep

Anyone who has travelled in Outback Australia would have seen and heard similar. It's sad and very concerning, but I don't see what it's got to do with offering an apology for the wrongs of the past. In fact those wrongs may just be part of the reason for the problems we see today.
If youl isten to the speeches from yesterday, you'll see that no compensation was offered or implied. Instead the money will go towards improving the situation you decribe above. Hopefully better managed than in past times where it seems the money was just thrown out without proper control or accountability.
You describe the problem well, but what is the solution ? Some boost in self respect is probably a good way to start, and from the lift in spirts I saw yesterday, the apology was probably a good way to start.

Its a bit different to what I saw

I have just done the Central Australia tour in October '06. The places that we stayed at included Port Augusta, Coober Pedy, Uluru, King Canyon, Glen Helen, Alice Springs and we had no problems with anyone. Ok, these may be tourist spots but we also travelled through Maryvale, Wallace Rockhole, Arltunga and many other places where there are aboriginal communities. We actually took a wrong turn at Maryvale and went into the town instead of heading towards Chambers Pillar. The town looked a little rundown but I stopped beside a couple of locals and asked Where to from here? They gave me the right directions with no trouble at all and we were on our way.

The only real problem we had was on the last night at 2am in Alice where one bloke was standing in the middle of the street yelling and screaming whilst another was doing a little circle work to the point of blown tyres in his car. My concern was when was the car going to launch itself through the caravan park and into us!! But this type of behavour happens in my street in Melbourne and you don't have to be at an aboriginal community to see this.

I have no problems going back and mixing with aboriginals or anyone. I watched the AFL Grand Final from the Arltunga pub and had a great time

"AUSTRALIAN APOLOGY TO THE ABORIGINAL POPULATION
We apologise for giving you doctors and free medical care, which allows you
to survive and multiply so that you can demand apologies.
*Never mind how you survived so long without us. Of course, the doctors and free medical care are sporadic at best, and usually needed because of the bad housing, diet, dislocation and other results of white culture, but all this is a bit much for simple-minded racist whingers to grasp.

We apologise for helping you to read and teaching you the English language,
thus opening up to you the entire European civilisation, thought and
enterprise.
*Sorry we had to wipe out your culture and language to do this.

We feel that we must apologise for building hundreds of homes for you,
which you have vandalised and destroyed.
*Never mind how the houses were built out of dangerous materials such as asbestos, badly designed, not maintained and, ultimately, only needed because we kicked you off you land and stuck you in crowded refugee camps.

We apologise for giving you law and order which has helped prevent you from
slaughtering one another and using the unfortunate for food purposes.
*Now, let's not let the fact that this isn't how people used to live get in the way of a good racist whinge.

We apologise for developing large farms and properties, which today feed
you, where before, you had the benefits of living off the land and starving
during droughts.
*Oops! Sorry we had to kill lots of you and run the rest off your land so that we could farm it.

We apologise for providing you with warm clothing made of fabric to replace
the animal skins you used before.
*They're not needed in most of the country most of the time, but hey, you can now look just like an American rapper.

We apologise for building roads and railway tracks between cities and
building cars so that you no longer have to walk over harsh terrain.
*We're also sorry we managed to wreck many of your sacred sites while we did so. We probably should have asked first.

We apologise for paying off your vehicles when you fail to pay the
instalments.
*This doesn't really happen, but sounds good to racists.

We apologise for giving you free travel anywhere, whenever.
*This also doesn't really happen, even though we displaced you so that you were a long way away from your home.

We apologise for giving each and every member of your family $100.00 and
free travel to attend an aboriginal funeral.
*This is usually paid from a collective savings called a "chuck-in", which comes from a community's own money.

We apologise for not charging you rent on any lands when white people have
to pay.
*Oh. It's your land. Sorry about that. Funny that lots of black people have to pay rent anyway, too.

We apologise for giving you interest free loans.
*Money is a white person's way of saying sorry.

We apologise for developing oil wells and minerals, including gold and
diamonds which you never used and had no idea of their value.
*We also apologise for destroying huge amounts of cultural material, (we have no idea of their value), and taking all the profits for years and years and years.

We apologise for developing Ayers rock and Kakadu, and handing them over to
you so that you get all the money.
*We're also sorry that you didn't really get the land back, don't actually get much money, and still aren't allowed to live on it as you choose instead of being left on the fringes.

We apologise for allowing taxpayers money to be paid towards a daughters'
wedding ($8,000.00 each daughter).
*We're sorry for spreading all these strange lies but they make some of us feel better.

We apologise for giving you $1.7 billion per year for your 250,000 people,
which is $48,000.00 per aboriginal man, woman and child.
*And we're sorry that somehow we've managed to funnel almost all of that money to civil servants, consultants, trades, non-government organisations, and other white-created systems full of white people that only exist for a profit.

We apologise for working hard to pay taxes that finance your welfare,
medical care, education, etc to the tune of $1.2 billion each year.
*After the big mess we made, it's the least we can do. Really.

We apologise for you having to approach the aboriginal affairs department
to verify the above figures. For the trouble you will have identifying the
"uncle toms" in your own community who are getting richer and leaving some
of you living in squalor and poverty.
*It's really the government departments handing out money and not checking where it goes that's caused this, so sorry about that, too.

We do apologise. We really do. We humbly beg your forgiveness for all the above sins. We are only too happy to take back all the above and return you to the paradise of the "outback", whenever you are ready.
*If only we really could make it right. We do really apologise for all the racist losers we have. But ignorance and not being bothered to think about things is always easier.

*Oh, and the proper apologies with the asterisk were written by a white guy, too."

I got the above somewhere by email.

This is supposed to be a Land-Rover forum but I have to say I just wish some of you could get some experience before you start shooting off your mouths. Try living and working with Aboriginal people for a while - not just living near them - and then see if you can go up to some old woman and tell her to her face all those things you've written and how you're not at all sorry that someone took her kids decades ago.

Or maybe you could say that to my boss, who isn't that old but his family is still affected by what happened. Just come up here, sit down with him, and say all that. See if you feel so big then.

So it isn't quite as simple as you may think.

If any of you watched The 7:30 Report you would have seen a minister say that the government isn't looking at compensation because they feel that money is better spent on improvements. No doubt there will be some claims, but that isn't the point of it.

I've been to Alice Springs and other places and been hassled and been bailed up by kids near Perth and all of that but it's like judging Australia by all the drunken backpackers overseas. It certainly does happen, but it's only one part of the whole situation.

Up here I've come across idiots and heroes and that hasn't much to do with race or culture. There are people here who don't like anyone who is black, and then people who think Aboriginals are all wonderful. Obviously either viewpoint is a bit naive. I learned very quickly not to judge people by colour but by behaviour and you can get some real surprises when you start to do that!

No matter where you go, people are just people.

I just felt the need to point that out. A little compassion isn't going to hurt anyone and nobody is too old to learn something new, either. Now I'll get back to concentrating on Land-Rover stuff . . . which is more interesting, anyway!