The contentious issue

/ MR

I’ve posted about this before, and since then have grown more convinced that my opinion is sound ..

The voice to Parliament. Please read this indisputably informed article.

I wasn’t enthusiastic about it originally, and now I’m positively anti.

Our First Nation people are divided, and don’t let anyone tell you differently: there are those who have the ear of government; there are those who live the same way as we ‘whiteys’ do; and there are those living in absolute poverty all over the country.

It’s the first group driving the voice to Parliament.

It’s the last group to whom the voice will make not the slightest difference.

STOP PRESS: I feel obliged to insert also this article sent to The Australian by the historian Geoffrey Blainey (probably because we used one of his  as a textbook when I was at school !) ..

 

20 thoughts on “The contentious issue”

  1. Our son lives in the Territory and is continually talking about the growing fear people up there have for their lives. This article mirrors what he keeps saying. The answer to the problem is certainly blowing in the wind somewhere. Whilst we have remote community’s where there are no work opportunities and little education opportunities the problems will continue to escalate. Yet if the communities get shut down where do the people get moved to, and what problems would come with them. Dare I say it – was Pauline Hanson on the right track, should we all only qualify for government handouts equally. And again dare I say it – but could we go back to stealing a generation (from the problem areas) but doing it right, without abuse and brutality. I know some will want to hang draw and quarter me for saying this, but unless we get a coming generation into an environment that nurtures possibilities for them, the escalating problems will sky rocket. We made mistakes in the past, but the ideas were right, just the implementation was wrong.

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  2. If we still had the equivalent of your Outback, I’m sure it would look like yours. Not that American Indians are faring much better in “modern” America. Many, if not most, still live in abject poverty, and we’re still breaking treaties, the latest regarding a claim to some water in our drought-stricken Southwest.

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    • If it fails, Sue, then the First Nation people who are already in positions of privilege will continue therein and those in poverty will continue to be there. It will be up to we the people to elect a government who can work it out for themselves what to do, rather than relying on advice from the “insiders”. Did you read that article ? What did you think of it ?

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      • For me, it only told the negatives. There are successes in the NT too. The Voice will not be the answer on its own, it will not solve entrenched issues overnight or on its own, but it will be the start of something formal and I would like to think enduring.

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        • I feel that the writer was overwhelmed by those negatives and couldn’t see the successes of which you speak. We need people who live in the NT for at least a year writing their success stories, obviously ..

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          • The writer is also a conservative politician. Such people are not, by definition, my go-tos for views on progress and change.

            I went to the 2023 ANU Reconciliation Lecture given by Tom Calma, who is, yes, an educated well-off First Nations person, but my sense is that like many successful-in-Western-terms First Nations people, it is part of his culture to support and help his people.

            Here are some of the things he said:

            Re the Voice being “powerless” or “advisory” only, he said there are many such bodies in our federal system like the Ombudsman, the National Audit Office. The existence of such bodies are, he said, how democracy works.

            Re what First Nations people want, he said that they have been wanting a voice since colonisation started, but have been actively working towards having something formal for 65 years.

            Conservative commentators throw up hypotheticals about what the Voice means First Nations people want or try to do which are extreme and not founded in reality. We’ve all heard those, but I don’t think they are the sorts of things that you are concerned about.

            I am concerned that those First Nations people who argue against it because it’s not enough are shooting themselves in the foot. I have not yet heard or read anything that tells me voting Yes will do harm. And for me that’s the only reason why I wouldn’t vote Yes. It may not, on its own, do the the wondrous good needed to improve conditions and close the gap, but I don’t believe it will do harm.

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  4. Thank you Whispering Gums. You are a calm, rational voice. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your beautifully reasoned writing.

    Thank you.

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  7. I don’t have much to add except to say that I think we should hang our “collective heads” in shame for what we have failed to do in caring for our Indigenous populations. I surely cannot pass any judgment on what occurs outside the United States. I feel like my country has a tremendously ugly history that is still perpetuated today. I am so horrified at what is going on in the United States with organized efforts to deny anything on our historical record that makes someone “feel bad.” I won’t say more…once I get started, I can’t stop. That, and I fear my hair will catch on fire!

    All to say, I did “enjoy,” if that’s the word to use, the articles. you’ve shared.

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    • I love your anxiety about your hair catching on fire, Deb !! – it’s a wonderful mental image, my beautiful friend.
      I admit readily that here the issue has been turned into an idealogical one (crapped on by the right and enthused about by the left) and that gives me the shits bigtime .. because I am most definitely LEFT: I haven’t voted anything but Labor since the early ’70s ! My opinion has nothing to do with politics; but it’s always pointed out that it’s one promulgated by the conservatives. Nothing I can do about that: I’m just stating how I feel, not how I think I should. Sighh ..

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Go on - you can say it. :)