Racist?

[fluffmonster]

well hell Dran, we got it all wrong. Yer right, and in fact we should start packing those people up and putting them in re-education camps. Those never should have been closed in the first place, y'all just didn't go far enough with 'em. Cuz, ya see, I didn't realize this but I guess its ok to pick people out solely because of their ethnicity and treat 'em different. Like you say, they're not like us, they need our help. They just can't handle individual freedoms like we can, so no need to protect individual rights. We can treat 'em all the same, all guilty of social deficiency and deviancy until proven innocent.

[NickD]

Oh noes! Where racist now! Big deal, if this in anyway helps to curb the dozens of problems that these communitys cause (Rape, violence, robberies, vandalisum, to name a few) then good on the government.

Honnestly, if this was done to a white community no one would call it racist. There would be a big kerfuffle over it yes, but no one would call it racist.

That's the thing though - it wouldn't be done to a white community. If it was done to a white community, it would be a state wide or country wide law. If banning alcohol and pornography wipes out child abuse completely, why not make it a state wide law? Aborigines hardly have a monopoly on child abuse after all.

And I think that making welfare dependant on your children attending school, although it has a potential to backfire badly, is generally a very good idea. But again, why just the aborigines? Why not make it a condition for everyone?

Oh and NickD before posting on such matter perhaps you should look into the background. Theres usualy a pritty damn good reasion for such a sweeping policy to be made. Oh and maybe check out more then one source *shrugs*, just a suggestion.

What's wrong with my source? Does it present any of the facts incorrectly? In fact, I believe my first link was an editorial supporting the idea.

[Joos]

That's the thing though - it wouldn't be done to a white community.

Well, its their culture that is having problems adapting to exist alongside our culture. We don't really need the extreme measures, since the problems are not as rampant, even though they are evidently here.

And, I am sure there are lots of people here in australia who would applaud a continent wide ban on pr0n and alcohol. But you know how silly such a proposal is and how utterly it will fail if implemented. I and many others like me want our pr0n and lagers readily available when we feel like leachering over naked flesh and have an ale or two. And since me and most others have a healthy relationship with both naked flesh and ethanol bewerages, and are not particularly willing or happy to relinquish these pleasures because a few can't handle freedom of choice, it is here to stay.

So to start making these communities adapt their current culture and values to live alongside ours, they need help because we are here to stay.

[Lusipher]

thats fucking idiotic. Thats kinda what the first settlers did to the indians here in America. Its kinda what some want for immigrants to do when they come to America now. Mexicans and Middle eastern folks should give up their traditions and do as we americans do because their in our country now...

I believe those that do come into a country should try and adapt as best as possible to the country they come too and the country shouldnt have to include all kinda of things like ex. footbaths for Islamic followers. What the problem is, though, in Australia is that they are doing it to folks who were there from the beginning. Before even you aussies showed up. If your gonna do it to one race or group then do it to all of them. Fuck what you want, Joos. Its not right to impose it one group and not all.

[Joos]

Well, if you didn't know, the settlers here in Australia were the same kind that settled in America. Only here, they didn't fight back as ferociously.

Its a little bit too late for being politicly correct since the atrocities has been ongoing for a couple of hundred years now. The problems are already here and there are no easy sollutions. They have to adapt to us, since we are in power. Our culture set the rules for what is good and what is bad. Same way we impose our rule over immigrants.

Unless of course, you suggest that we of our culture, a couple of million people, should go out in the outback and starts chucking spears at cangaroo's?

[Grand Fromage]

Of course, this is all resting on the utterly ridiculous assertion that booze and porn causes child abuse.

[Joos]

Are you saying that there are no relations between alcohol consumption and abusive behaviour?

I never said that the method of choice of the old twat Howard was a good one. However, he is taking steps to show that Australia as a nation has a responsibility to their indigonous population and that they have tremendous problems which they need help overcoming.

[mxlm]

Have these people never heard of the Prohibition or The War on Drugs?

Morons.

[MorbidKate]

Well, its their culture that is having problems adapting to exist alongside our culture. We don't really need the extreme measures, since the problems are not as rampant, even though they are evidently here.

Adapting? Co-exist?? Hard to do when you used to be hunted and shot for sport in a country that used to have an all-white immigration policy and no vote until 1967 for "Abos, Coons and N*ggers" as they are commonly referred to. Oh yeah, can't forget being renamed with Christian names and beaten if you spoke your native language. Bloody lovely that.

I had the chance to travel throughout Australia while I was working out of Melbourne and had many opportunities to see first-hand how they're treated and how the policies do little but help them get out of the rut that is daily life for most of them.

Casinos are always placed near the populations that can afford it the least and I'm not just talking about Australia. Just try to place a casino in a rich part of town and watch them mobilize to protest it and get it relocated to a poor area. Of course, booze is always a problem with any low income people as they'll usually buy it and smokes before they buy food for themselves. Life's priorities change when your life truly sucks.

Anyway, it's not about making these communities adapt because you're a couple hundred years too late for that. What's needed are better policies to help educate them so they can have better job opportunities as well as some better laws to protect their special place in your history. You must look at the "whys" to come up with solutions that work.

In Canada our native populations have access to free university and pay no taxes among other perks to help make up for how shitty we treated them. It's not perfect and we still have problems in remote regions but there's no comparison between how poorly their treated down under. Sadly, that's the way most aboriginals have been treated in colonized regions of the world since most of the "newcomers" see them as lazy and a nuisance.

Find a way to enable them and you'll be farther ahead.

Kate

[Joos]

In Canada our native populations have access to free university and pay no taxes among other perks to help make up for how shitty we treated them.

Brilliant! Very good! Gold star for you! Now please explain how free university education will help the alcoholics and the prostituted children of Australias indiginous population?

Apparantly Canada has gotten much further in their integration of indigionous population process than Australia, which as you stated so eloquently above, hasn't gotten very far.

What's needed are better policies to help educate them so they can have better job opportunities as well as some better laws to protect their special place in your history.

If that isn't adapting a society, then I don't know what is. Of course, it is all about giving them a chance to get a better shot at life. How to do that, I don't know, Mr Howard certainly doesn't know, but I am sure that there are a lot of realistic smart people out there who could help the australian government to make the right decisions. And, these arguably poor decisions made by PM Howard at least shows and hopefully sets the direction of Australias future government, that they have a responsibilty to help rather than hide away their "Abbo's".

[mxlm]

So Howie had good intentions.

I seem to recall those being used to make pavement.

[idoru]

I think what Joos et al fail to grasp is that the problem is the generalisation - that aboriginals as a group should be treated differently because they have more of a given problem behaviour. This is profoundly unfair to any member of the group who isn't guilty of the behaviour. In the case of child abuse, it is rare even in the worst places, so you're effectively messing with a very large number of innocents to get at a few potential perpetrators.

Let's take some examples of other problem groups in society, and how we might target them specifically:

I would be very worried for men everywhere. We are responsible for something like 90-95 % of all violent crime. Perhaps what's needed is laws forbidding men from playing violent video games and watching action movies? I imagine lots of this violence happens at night, so perhaps a curfew for men would be appropriate?

Or how about driving. Young males have way more accidents than other groups (at least here in Sweden). Should we have specific speed limits for young men, perhaps a more difficult driving test?

Middle- and upper-class white collar workers are over-represented when it comes to economic crime. Perhaps we should have a specific government agency that monitors the economic transactions of anyone who works in an office and earns over a given salary?

Finally, one from personal experience: it's well known that Swedish people are far more likely than any other nationality to act like drunken arses when on holiday. Would it be reasonable for Greece or the Canary Isles to institute a special wrist-band that all Swedes must wear, so potential troublemakers can be identified easily?

[MorbidKate]

Brilliant! Very good! Gold star for you! Now please explain how free university education will help the alcoholics and the prostituted children of Australias indiginous population?

Hmm, higher education... access to better jobs and life's opportunities is the foundation on which to build. If the poor have to jobs, no opportunities and no hope they resort to drinking, crime and all that jazz. What you're describing is a symptom of a greater problem.

Apparantly Canada has gotten much further in their integration of indigionous population process than Australia, which as you stated so eloquently above, hasn't gotten very far.

Oh it's gotten very far. In fact I'd match the benefits, rights and protection given our "Abos" against any other country. Native tribes have become quite powerful and influential in Canada so yeah, they've come a long long way from the abuse and mistreatment they received right up until the 1930s. Providing a full and free education has gone a long way towards enabling them to do better for themselves as has tax breaks.

In my time in Australia the one thing I wasn't expecting to see was the level of racism towards non-whites which was far more noticeable than from Aussies I've met overseas. Of course it exists in all countries but I suspect some of it has a lot to do with the all-white immigration policy Australia had up until the mid 1970s.

Kate

[Joos]

dbl post.

[Joos]

Ok, so it is a problem handing out restrictions to a specific demographic, I agree. It is crude and will make that certain part of the population feel isolated and unwanted.

However, if one looks to the specific case, rather than making sweeping liberal generalisations (of which I am certainly guilty of myself), you can see that the group in question is already alienated from society. This is a measure to try to bring them in.

For examples wherer this has actually worked, we need not look terribly hard. Sweden in the late 1800, early 1900's is a decent example, where alcoholism was rampant and employers frequently payed jobbers partly in alcohol was the norm. In those circomstances, drastic measures were needed and taken. Alcoholism is still a major problem in swedish society, but definetly not to the same extent.

Mind you, the swedish government at the time worked on the whole population, not a specific group, even though it mostly targeted miners, railway workers etc. So I agree with you Idoru, any functional group in a society's demographic should not be treated any differently from any other.

However, the aboriginal demographic in northern territories targeted by these pr0n and alcohol bans are not functional parts of society. They are a legacy of the terrible injustices of colonial times. It takes a long time to heal those wounds, and you don't accomplish that by treating them like everyone else. They won't care if I get an alcohol and pr0n ban, because a lot of them don't even care about themselves. They need to be treated separete from society because they are not in it. And the best way to get someone into society is to work from the ground up, with education. And as far as I've read, the aim is to get the kids into the schools.

However, reading the news of today, it is becoming more and more apparant that the chosen method (standard australian style) of punitive measures and big brother methods is going to backlash badly and propably only increase the misery for the abouriginees in NT.