Australia says SORRY to the Aborigenes

[Truth Bearer]

Even Al Jazeera picked up the story.....

Australia to fight Aboriginal abuse

Australia is planning to ban alcohol and pornography in Aboriginal communities across the country's vast Northern Territory to combat widespread sexual abuse of children.

John Howard, the Australian prime minister, described the plight of Aboriginal children as "a national emergency" as he announced the plan on Thursday.



There are about 470,000 Aborigines in Australia's population of 20 million

He said that the federal government was taking control of indigenous communities from the Northern Territory government because it had not addressed the problem.

The measures are a response to a report that found rampant child abuse fuelled by a "river of grog [alcohol]".






"This is a national emergency, there is no greater obligation this parliament has than caring for all the vulnerable and young in our community," Howard told parliament.



"We're dealing with a group of young Australians for whom the concept of childhood innocence has never been present. That's a sad and tragic event and exceptional measures are required to deal with an exceptionally tragic situation."



Howard said once the federal government took over the administration of Aboriginal communities it would enforce a six-month ban on the sale, possession and transportation of alcohol.

"This is a national emergency; there is no greater obligation this parliament has than caring for all the vulnerable and young in our community"

John Howard, Australian prime minister

Hardcore pornography would also be barred from the communities once they came under Canberra's control.



He said that up to 50 per cent of welfare payments would be earmarked for food and other essentials to ensure that the money was not spent on alcohol, with the payment of some benefits linked to children's attendance at school.

Police patrols

Police patrols in Aboriginal communities would be immediately stepped up and the Australian Medical Association (AMA) would carry out health checks on all children aged 16 or under.

Howard did not specify when the changes would take place but said that, if needed, he would recall parliament from an upcoming break to pass the necessary legislation.

Dan Nolan, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Sydney, said: "Alcohol is a major problem in Aboriginal communities ... many of these communities have self-imposed bans already and as a result of that have seen huge reductions in violence and suicide rates."



The Northern Territory has one of the highest concentrations of Aborigines in Australia, but Howard said the problems were nationwide.



He urged Western Australia, Queensland and New South Wales - where the federal government does not have the power to override local state legislatures - to introduce similar bans.



But Alan Carpenter, the prime minister of Western Australia, said his government was already addressing the issue of Aboriginal child abuse and questioned why Howard had only just declared it a national emergency after 11 years in office.



Sexual abuse





The report, carried out by the Northern Territory government, described widespread alcohol abuse and found that children in the impoverished and often overcrowded communities were often exposed to pornography at a young age then imitated what they had seen with each other.



The report cited evidence that children as young as five had contracted sexually transmitted diseases and girls were being prostituted for petrol, which is commonly sniffed by youths in Aboriginal communities.



It also detailed allegations non-indigenous paedophiles were targeting Aboriginal communities and said mine workers in some areas paid young indigenous girls for sex.



The sexual abuse often went unreported, but had harmed generations of indigenous youngsters, the report found.



There are about 470,000 Aborigines in Australia's 20 million population.



They are the country's most impoverished community, with life expectancy more than 17 years lower than their compatriots and higher rates of heart disease, infant mortality and domestic violence.


Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exer...56C0A3C29E.htm

[Truth Bearer]

Aboriginal leaders involved in abuse: Mundine

Posted Thu Jun 28, 2007 9:03am AEST
Updated Thu Jun 28, 2007 11:16am AEST

Indigenous leader and former ALP national president Warren Mundine has accused some Aboriginal leaders of being involved in child abuse in remote communities.

Mr Mundine made the claim as he slammed critics of the Commonwealth's plan to curb child abuse in the Northern Territory.

Mr Mundine says strong intervention is needed and he is not concerned about an apparent lack of consultation with Aboriginal leaders.

He says some Indigenous leaders speaking out against the plan are protecting their own interests.

"How do you think these people got away with it for years and years and years?" he asked.

"It's because some of these people in the leadership and some of these people in these communities are the perpetrators.

"So they've been protecting their arses for so long now ... we've got to be very mindful of that as well."


Troops on the ground

Meanwhile the Federal Government will be assessing more remote communities in central Australia today as it rolls out the first stage of its intervention.

Yesterday an assessment team made up of Norforce troops, police and public servants visited the Mutitjulu community near Uluru and held a meeting with community members.

Government representatives told those gathered the first step of the plan would be to make Mutitjulu safe.

They said community services would then be rolled out and medical teams would be brought in to provide health checks for children, with Norforce setting up temporary accommodation for any extra people.

The team will move onto other communities today.


'Use alcohol taxes'

In other developments, the co-author of the report on Aboriginal child sex abuse in the Northern Territory has suggested Federal alcohol taxes be used to pay for solutions to the problem.

Rex Wild QC has criticised the Federal Government's emergency response, saying it will get the backs of Aboriginal people up because it involves sending in teams of strangers to communities.

He has questioned the need for the generous contributions made by private benefactors to addressing the problems in Aboriginal communities, saying it is a government responsibility.

"The alcohol taxes that are received by the Federal Government amount to something like $6 billion a year," he told ABC TV's Lateline Business program.

"Now they spend a miserly portion of that in education, in alcohol reform programs. Why not give that $6 billion to the problem that we're now addressing?"

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...28/1964209.htm

[Truth Bearer]

So tell us Lakonian why should I apologize to these people?When the white man came here they had just worked out how to light a fire they had no civilisation no invention of the wheel why they could even work out how to build a hut for christ sake!!!They lived under trees with a leaf as protection against the conditions.Can I ask you lakonian have you ever been to Alice Springs,Darwin or Broome?They sleep on the couches at the airports in the middle of the roads in Alice after they get pissed with booze and glue.They wander all over the place in Broome in yr backyard they piss all over the plkace go talk to a local up there if you don't believe me mate.I know they're humans and yes the white man tried to CIVILIZE them and we know they don't want that all they want is money to go out and buy booze and drugs.I suppose that's the white mans fault too eh?Lakonian why don't you tell us about Redfern mate tell us what's happened to the houses the goverment built for them?
PLEASE NEVER EVER compare them to us Greeks as our people after all that's happened to us they picked up and moved on I don't see the Pontians or Karamanlides living off welfare or drugged out on glue just because the big bad Turk ethnic cleansed him.We are Hellenes our people have survived and progressed wherever they went.NO COMPARISON lad I'm sorry for maybe coming across bad but mate I grew up in the same beliefs as you as I was an idealist and really felt sorry for those "poor abused" aborigines from that bug bad white supremacist Anglosaxon Oustralian but after going up there and seeing it for myself and talikg to people who have lived up there well what can I say......
They do not deserve a sorry they should be gratefull that at least these ones have progressed and done well for themselves.The majority that stayed well you can see what's happened to them.

[Slayer]

What a great day for the History of Australia

TB sorry bud, I have never disagreed more in my life then I have after reading your post.

Lets get some facts straight..the apology was made by the government, on behalf of every previous parliament who were involved in acts of genocide against the indigenous people of Australia. The apology was not made on behalf of the Australian people. You need not feel any guilt, Prime Minister Rudd made sure it was entirely your choice to do so but guilt was attributed to the actions of past Governments.
The apology was for the actions of successive Australian governments for over 7 decades..The stolen generations suffered up until as recently as the 1970's.
TB, yes the articles of today show the abuse and mistreatment that Aborigines do to their own, but how can you not view the wider picture, do you not think of the causes? The Aborigines get drunk on what the white man introduced. The aborigines get high on what the white man introduced. The Aborigines were not a highly developed civilisation if you look through our eyes but as a hunting and gathering society they were very content before their home land was invaded..who cares if they didn't invent the wheel, who cares if they were poor compared to western standards..were they happy? shit yeah they were..were they spiritual? definitely!
Do not measure happiness and wealth through western eyes because I can guarantee that happiness and wealth can be obtained in many ways.
When successive Australian governments had one main aim, and that was to assimilate to eradicate a minority because it was the easy thing to do then we have a problem. That is defined as genocide and what Australians must acknowledge at the very least is that a systematic program was in place to wipe the Aborigines off the face of this land.
I hope people actually listened to the apology, it definitely sent a shiver down my spine.
I also suspect TB that you are letting your political allegiances skew your view on a topic that should be bi-partisan.

Hopefully, this is a new chapter in Australia's history.

[Truth Bearer]

Ok Slayer so let me get this right you are justifying the self abuse of these people?
You can condone illegal sexual practises that have been going on well before the white honkey came to down under?Can I please ask you Slayer have you ever been to Alice Springs,Darwin,Broome or Perth?No offence to both you and Lakonian but it seems typical of the rose coloured glasses the left seems to see in.......Can either of you as both are Sydney Hellenes please tell us the living conditions of Redfern?

[Truth Bearer]

Let me help you......REDFERN great example of Aboriginal civility.

Remove children from risk, says Brogden

February 21, 2004

Advertisement
The Opposition Leader, John Brogden, has signalled that he would support the removal of Aboriginal children from their parents if they were at risk at home from violence, alcohol or drugs.

Mr Brogden insisted he had both a compassionate and tough approach to indigenous affairs, arguing that his comments on Monday about bulldozing Redfern's Block did not mean he had no empathy for children who knew only poverty and despair.

He told ABC TV's Stateline last night that Aboriginal children with lives riven by violence, drugs and alcohol did not benefit from people "just turning a blind eye".

Asked if he would go as far as separating Aboriginal children from their parents, Mr Brogden said: "Look, if it came to it, if it came to a situation where a young Aboriginal child was at risk in their home because of the lack of support to their family, I would, I would prefer that child to be out of there."

Mr Brogden denied that foster care may be worse in some cases than a dysfunctional biological family but said it was important that "everything was done" to help such children break out of the cycle.

"I understand that Aden Ridgway, himself an Aboriginal man . . . said just yesterday that part of the problem is that for these kids, many of their parents are dead, they're alcoholics or drunks or they're in jail. That's why you've got almost a missing generation of parents with these young kids being looked after by their grandparents in many places," he said.

Paola Totaro

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/...072845519.html

[Truth Bearer]

Dress it up, knock it down, but Gadigal will always be the same
By Tony Stephens
February 17, 2004


A girl scrawls an accusation on Eveleigh Street yesterday.
Photo: Nick Moir

Bulldoze the Block, if you like, but Aboriginal Australians will still meet there. Turn Redfern into the Mayfair of Sydney, as developers once planned, but the first Australians will still go there.

Redfern is at the heart of the indigenous nation. You can't cut it out, no matter how scary, sad and hostile the place is right now. Every Aboriginal Australian has links to this place.

This is Gadigal country, part of the Eora nation. The first European settlers landed a few kilometres away and the owners of the country were devastated, mostly by disease.

By the time Dr William Redfern consolidated his land grant in 1816, the white settlers were more worried about escaped convicts than by Aborigines. Part of Redfern became Sydney's market garden.

Indigenous Australians, from many different communities, began to drift to Redfern during the Depression of the 1930s. One reason was its proximity to Central Station.

The drift became an influx in the 1950s, after modern farm machinery eliminated seasonal jobs in the bush.

Within a decade the then housing commission had replaced slum areas around Redfern with "bright, modern and multi-unit blocks" but an Aboriginal community grew up round the railway station.

After the 1967 referendum which allowed indigenous Australians to be counted in the census, Redfern was often seen as the birthplace of self-determination and at the centre of political struggle. Housing, legal, medical and child-care centres were controlled by the community.

The Whitlam government helped the Aboriginal Housing Co-operative buy Redfern property in 1973. The co-operative planned to turn ramshackle terrace houses into a black-run, black-owned commune - a model for future generations.

The community appeared strong, safe and cohesive. It had become one place in all of Australia where Aborigines could look for members of their extended families.

Prime minister Paul Keating went to Redfern Park in 1992 to make his historic statement accepting white responsibility for the dispossession and killing of Aborigines.

But black leadership has bickered and fallen apart. Drugs are devastating the young. Children don't go to school. Houses are derelict. Despair is everywhere. Repeated clean-up plans came to nothing.

The Block has only about 100 permanent residents now but its symbolism is powerful beyond the number.

Indigenous Australians still congregate there. They bring bright hopes and desperately sad endings, like a boy impaled on a fence.


This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/...779907676.html

[Truth Bearer]

Life on the Block,Redfern

February 16, 2004

Long before The Block became a hit renovation television show, a piece of prime real estate with the same name at Redfern was slated for a major overhaul.

But the aim of the makeover was not to make millions of dollars but to rid the stigmatised inner-Sydney suburb of drug dealers and other criminals and clear up the city's leading eyesore.

Redfern has been the traditional hub for Sydney's Aboriginal community - both before and after European settlement.

Two centuries ago, the high country had views across hunting grounds all the way to Parramatta and the area has been at the centre of modern Aboriginal culture and politics.

Police denied claims that parts of The Block were no-go zones for officers during the troubled late '90s - but cabbies and bus drivers had no qualms about detouring around the area after a spate of rock attacks.

Extra police were sent to Redfern and neighbouring Waterloo in November 2001 to protect 400 Sydney bus drivers who refused to service the route for two weeks because of stone-throwing youth gangs.

Attempts to arrest criminals in the area would often see police hunted out by residents arming themselves with rocks and bottles.

Many police have been injured and patrol cars have been damaged in the hotspot bounded by Eveleigh, Caroline, Louis and Vine streets.

A summit was held in 1997 after a string of attacks on police, and authorities decided to demolish derelict housing, set up a shopfront police station and draft more Aboriginal officers to the area.

Police came in for heavy criticism when the ABC aired the controversial documentary Cop It Sweet in which a police officer called first grade rugby league player Wes Patten "a coon".

The fly-on-the wall film showed how police singled him out for questioning on the basis of his race in July 1991.

But the police officer involved said the term "coon" was part of the culture of Redfern police and there was no offence intended by the comment which went to air the following year.

Patten won $25,000 for the insult through the Equal Opportunity Tribunal.

In a preceding conversation in the police car, attention was drawn to a group of Aborigines with one being identified as "Gundy's bloody sister" - a reference to David Gundy who was shot dead in a police raid in 1989.

Claims of entrenched racism were rekindled today by Aboriginal leaders after 17-year-old Thomas Hickey suffered fatal wounds when he fell from a bicycle in Redfern.

Police deny claims by family and friends that the teenager was being chased by officers and they were therefore responsible for the accident.

NSW Opposition Leader John Brogden today said it was time to call in the bulldozers.

But the Aboriginal Housing Company's project officer Peter Valilis said the bulldozers had already knocked down 70 properties in 1997 and it was time to rebuild.

One of the most circulated rumours before the Sydney Olympics was that the government was planning to evict Redfern's Aboriginal community and resettle them around the state.

But Mr Valilis said 43 of the 55 Aboriginal families chose to relocate out of Redfern, although about 100 Aboriginal people still remained.

The Aboriginal Housing Company says the rebuilding program has stalled because the agency has been starved of government funds and the land is lying vacant.

But to Aborigines, Redfern would always be their modern capital city.

The Aboriginal Legal Service is based there along with agencies taking charge of indigenous health and children's services.

"Redfern is the epicentre of Aboriginal culture," said Mr Valilis.

"At the moment it's been bastardised with drugs and crime and all of that, but Aboriginal people will come here whether the government or the locals like it or not.

"We have situations where grandmothers are selling drugs to grandkids. We have the worst of the worst - paedophiles, rapists who go unpunished here, it's all lawlessness down here," Mr Valilis said.

Hundreds of mainly rural-based Aborigines could find easy lodgings on The Block.

The Reverend Bill Crews from the Exodus Foundation said he spent a lot of time in Redfern and the people were "more demoralised than ever".

"In spite of all the money, all the services and all the so-called help, Redfern people make the long trek to Exodus at Ashfield to get the help they say they cannot find there," Mr Crews said.

AAP

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/...779904235.html

[Morphesau]

This was e-mailed to me.

SORRY

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.

We apologise for helping you to read and teaching you the English language and thus we opened up to you the entire European civilisation, thought and enterprise.

We feel that we must apologise for building hundreds of homes for you, which you have vandalised and destroyed.

We apologise for giving you law and order which has helped prevent you from slaughtering one another and using the unfortunate for food purposes.

We apologise for developing large farms and properties, which today feed you people, where before, you had the benefits of living off the land and starving during droughts.

We apologise for providing you with warm clothing made of fabric to replacethat animal skins you used before.

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 apologise for paying off your vehicle when you fail to pay the instalments.

We apologise for giving you free travel anywhere, whenever.

We apologise for giving each and every member of your family $100.00 and free travel to attend an aboriginal funeral.

We apologise for not charging you rent on any lands when white people have to pay.

We apologise for giving you interest free loans.

We apologise for developing oil wells and minerals, including gold and diamonds which you never used and had no idea of their value.

We apologise for developing Ayers rock and Kakadu, and handing them over to you so that you get all the money.

We apologise for allowing taxpayers money paid towards daughters? wedding ($8,000.00 each daughter)

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Truth Bearer]

Read that carefully lads and then maybe you will understand..........Well posted there Morphesau.
P.S pls I will never accept comparing us Hellenes with these s****es.They eat their own they abuse their own they have no pride as a people and rely strictly on welfare handouts by us Europeans.Hell if it wasn't for Cpt Cook they still would have lived a prehistoric lifestyle.The Negros huts in Africa were mansions compared to these simple people.