Incoming 
NSWALC leader Bev Manton said to The Sydney Morning Herald:
Please explain to the Australian people how an army of temporary volunteers is going to provide long-term solutions to the permanent shortfall of doctors, teachers and police in the NT.
Manton sees Noel Pearson’s acceptance of HoWARd’s draconian ‘intervention’ in the same way I do- Stockholm Syndrome, absolutely screaming.
“When I saw Noel Pearson’s extraordinary interview on Lateline last month I thought this man is drunk with power,” she said.
“I say to Noel Pearson: How dare you? How dare you run down Aboriginal people and their supporters for standing up to a botched last-minute rescue mission dreamt up by people with very questionable track records?
“Noel is not being the wise person that he has been known to be for many years.
“Like many Australians, I have held him in very high regard for a long time but he seems to have now shot himself in the foot.”
Ms Manton said she made her comments “mindful of the fact that the media loves nothing better than a black upon black verbal dust-up”.
How is it that HoWARd does nothing for 11 years about aboriginal health and welfare (other than dismantling ATSIC and replacing it with nothing) and when he does do something for aboriginal people, he gets it completely wrong? Bit of poll pressure there, Johnno?
HoWARd remains a true believer in the British Empire to this very day. The inconvenient natives of conquered lands who have stubbornly not died from easily preventable, treatable disease or poor nutrition are to be managed with a heavy paternal hand, firmly but benevolently of course…
Johnny must have his own Tardis. He’s frequently accused of living in the ’50s. Just so we’re clear, that’s the 1850s. HoWARd is a welded-on authoritarian; he believes in masters and serfs and keeping the conquered natives quiet- by any means necessary.
HoWARd contends that aboriginal people should function in the same way as Anglo Australians. HoWARd is demanding government sovereignty over traditional lands through 99 year leases. 99 years encompasses 3 generations when you consider the paltry average lifespan of aboriginals, all so whitefellas can make money selling houses- to aboriginal people who have essentially no financial resources to buy houses. Since the HoWARd government has done nothing about health, welfare, housing and infrastructure in aboriginal areas, no sane businessperson would ever locate any operation in areas where aboriginal people could be employed by them.
The grandchildren of the aboriginals suckered into these leases will not even know the land belongs to them, much less have any hope whatsoever of recovering control from the government. Manton is right- it’s a land grab that the government should abandon just as quickly as was the utterly ill-conceived idea of mandatory sexual health examinations of minor aged aboriginal children.
Johnny’s ridiculous, politically motivated 6-month ‘plan’ to solve a 200 year old problem is not just doomed to fail aborigines now but keep them powerless in perpetuity, guaranteeing the same social problems that exist for them now will be there in 99 years.
-weez
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The Bro’ seems just the man to look after aboriginal funding since they can’t be trusted. Check out this little story weez.
Comment by joe2 07.13.07 @ 12:29 pm“It is difficult to see how spending money on that Queensland festival was to or for the benefit of Aboriginal people in the NT,” [Jon Altman, director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University] told The Age.
(bold emphasis mine…)
Nah, Uncle Mal wouldn’t run Aboriginal finance like a little fiefdom, would he? I mean, all Aboriginals are Aboriginals, aren’t they? What difference does it make? NT, QLD, it’s all up north somewhere.
Comment by weez 07.13.07 @ 6:48 pmLeave a comment
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