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[AusPol] Howard has the most enormous sack
Salvation122
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OT, but to quote an Austrailian friend from another forum I read:re the AUsNT thing: Undecided. Freedom for all and whatnot, but I don't think either of us realise how bad things really are up there. You guys might be content with ignoring what goes on on your reservations, but I'm not sure that's the most responsible course of action. We fucked those people up but good and then dumped them in the desert. Maybe its time to fix that, and maybe it'll take some uncomfortable means. But no-one's being forced to stay out there.
Crazy Elf wrote:Ah, well that's a very very big issue at the moment, and one that the majority of the population really doesn't understand. Alcohol doesn't go well with Aboriginals, due to not having any access to it for around 40,000 years. Every other culture on the planet did have access in some form, but not the Aboriginals. As such, it affects them badly. Less reservations means more of a fallback onto violent behaviour. It's a problem.
The banning was long overdue, though. Some Aboriginal communities have been calling for the ban, and the alcohol suppliers told them, "No, we make money off of it." Hence it needed to be legislated.
As for the porn, child sex abuse has been a major issue in these communities as of late. I'll give you an example that I heard of. Three girls were playing by the water. Drunken Aboriginal guy takes one of the girls into the water, and starts sodomising her while pushing her head under the water. The two friends throw rocks at him to get him to stop, and he keeps going. Girl keeps struggling, yet drowns. Drowns while being sodomised.
That's not an extreme example, either. That's indicative of the sort of shit that was going on in these parts. If you really want, I can dig up the report, but it's probably better off that you don't know. It's horrifying stuff.
So, although I know that this started as a joke, context required me not to be funny. Sorry about that.
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That's pretty scary, because I'm going to be operating under the assumption that I'm not going to get anything out of social security. Throwing money down a hole and such.
Also, there is a fair amount of aversion (in theory) to planned market economics in the US, moreso on the economically conservative side. Of course the government is providing someone's gravy train they will be hard pressed to knock it. There was quite a bit of outrage when the SCOTUS poached the standards of emminent domain a few years back in favor of weaker property rights with respect to the government.
Actually, having read that story in the papers is one of the primary reasons I'm not immediately jumping in with the very valid points following:
1) Howard is getting thrashed to fucking death in the polls by Kevin Rudd
2) Its a truly gorgeous piece of wedge politics, because its impossible to oppose or even question the implementation without looking like you think child sex abuse is just the bomb
3) The guy has been in power for 11 years and only now decides there's a 'state of emergency'? These are long-running problems.
4) Tangential, but the day previous to announcing this, he'd announced the payrises for ministers. Nice deflection of attention there, and also a deflection of attention from several other issues, including a major problem with naval discipline among support workers.
I'm not entirely against the move, however, there are several things it doesn't take into account.
One: a lot of abuse is committed by non-aborigines out there, mostly mine workers, and the proposal involves removing any restrictions to their access to these communities. A parallel problem in the states is white assault on native american women, which your legal system makes much harder to combat than 'ordinary' rape. Also, most of the alcohol/porn/whatever suppliers aren't aboriginal. They're white, and they've made a lot of money off this misery with no censure. Shit, they used to sell flavoured metho to aborigines in Brisbane less than 20 years ago
Two: Child sex abuse is also endemic in the non-aboriginal population, and anyone who thinks things aren't just as bad is frankly nuts. Its just better hidden. If he wants to really tackle abuse, these measures need to be applied to the whole population, not just them darkies out in the sticks.
There's a decent thread going at a blog called Larvatus Prodeo if you want more info. I may wind up splitting this if there's enough attention.
That was sort of his point, though without knowing him I can understand why you'd read that the way you did.
Supposedly, Elf has relatives who straight-up motherfucking killed a child molestor ten or fifteen years ago. (Disclaimer: I very well may be misremembering this story. He might have used it as a hypothetical for something or other, given his typical rhetorical style. I dunno. There was something about his family and child molestors, or something.) He (and I) are well aware of the problems.
Two points I'd like to address in Sal's post above: Rumors of a white person whacking a molestor doesn't make child sexual abuse suddenly not a problem in non-aboriginal Australia. Also, aborigines aren't the only population group with alchohol tolerance problems stemming from straight-up biology. Both are tangential issues to the point of this thread however, which is to talk about the actual proposal John Howard has announced in the last day or so.
I'm usually exceedingly anti-censorship and anti-regulation, but given what the situation seems to be, I'm (reluctantly) okay with this.
On the Native American reservations, alchohol and lack of an economy have always fed on each-other to destroy quality of life. I'm pretty sure that most Native American groups had no pre-colonial drinking culture; in any event, spiritual/cultural leaders and/or groups like the American Indian Movement have generally advocated going sober as being absolutely necessary for any natives who want those horrid (some of them are really bad -- I know politicians don't exaggerate much when they call some in the Dakotas nearly third-world) reservations to become functioning, dignified communities. You'll often hear that easy alchohol is a weapon of the white man, and IMO that's not much of a stretch when the system has often been structured so that beer was easier to get than food.
Our government is usually a villain here. There's the obvious historical wrongs of putting natives on horrid land and then pushing them on to worse whenever something worth mining turns up, but I also think that direct government involvement (often through tribal councils which are not really pure-hearted, but I guess I don't need to write a thesis on this since it's all mildly OT), especially with the way welfare is handled, has very much obstructed the development of an economy. So I need to read more tommorrow, but my brief look at Google News raises two fears: one, that though getting alchohol out of these places would be good, you'll probably have a Prohibition effect, and two, that when your government takes control of these towns to improve housing it will prove either incompetent or outright malicious, because, man, there are parallels here and I don't get the impression that Australia has embraced its aborigines with love in its heart.
I don't even know where to start with this 50% direct control on welfare business. It sounds, uh, racist, and I can't see it working out too well.
Still, despite justified cynicism, theres no doubt this is initiative has merit and is overdue. The danger is that it will overly target the criminal symptoms and overlook root causes: the collapse of Aboriginal employment in remote communities, and the erosion of their services. It is, however, a start.
its fun when politicians get to that point where they don't give a shit about reelection.
[edit] Sorry if that's been addressed in the previous thread, but backtracking through threads to find where the quotes came from is a pain.
Glal, it's the "Are American's Biased Against Socialism?" thread.
Sort of like Howard's been doing for the last ten years?
The best example I heard of (this is anecdotal, but I've heard a number of Aussies mention it) is when the govt attemped to build houseing. The aboriginals weren't interested in living in a house, so they dismantled it for firewood. I've since heard people spout "you cant help them", "they dont want any assistance" and even "they are SO ungrateful". I just found it really interesting, and it speak volumes to the difficulties associated with any ongoing dealings.
The culture seems so different from the introduced "european" equivelant. I think this is also why there were so problems regarding adapting to things like alcohol, employment etc.
That is all I currently have to offer.
So... if they just had porn... they wouldn't abuse people?
I just dont see the connection, and fail to see how it will curb whatever pretty serious underlying problem exists.
Its like saying "If we'd just have given the Nazis Punching bags and a cuddle once and a while, they could have gotten all that hostility out of their system without killing anyone". Its like something a 4 year old child would suggest when asked "how would you stop bad people doing bad things?"
Seems horribly simplistic. I was quite happily "abusing myself" well before I ever saw any porn. If porn is a requirement here, then we have an entire people devoid of imagination. I know for a fact that isnt the case.
My bad. I even checked too... *sigh* I fail at spelling.
Are you arguing both ways? I mean -- no, I don't think that the pornography which they apparently have is really helping, but if removing it will do anything at all it seems to me that it would do harm. I don't understand why a ban would be a good idea. If they do not have porn, they will be able to purge themselves of impure thoughts and stop doing depraved things?
It's just weird. Anyhow, for myself, I'm more interested in the plans to improve housing. Are there details on that yet?
That may be the result. However I didnt cherry pick that one aspect. That was all that was presented to me in the post I was replying to.
I really don't buy the biological excuse for the alcohol problems. As Cat mentioned, other ethnicities have problems with tolerance (most notably asians) and if this were a root cause of the issue, I'd suspect China would be one giant bar. I think it's more likely the result of socio-economic type stuff.
Regarding the conditions on the reservations (at least here in the US - I'm not too familiar with things down under), as I mentioned in the other thread, while things got off to a bad start given the history of the way natives got fucked, corrupt leadership perpetuates the situation. Most tribes have or can operate casinos, which are basically licenses to print money.
I gurantee the chief of that attrocious reservation in the Dakota's has a house to rival anyone from Hollywood.
At any rate, I'm not sure telling people how to spend their free money is racist. The reason governments provide this money is to make sure these folks have food, clothing, and shelter. The operative term is "make sure". In other words, it's sorta part of the deal. You want some money for food? No problem, but I hope you don't mind if I watch you eat. I also favor offering counseling and other forms of assistance that could help folks get on their feet. But if someone is giving you money to eat and help your family, forgive me if your complaint about not being able to blow it as you see fit falls on deaf ears.
Tangental aside follows:
The other day there was a Honey Bunches of Oats truck parked in downtown Buffalo. They were handing out free samples to anyone who wanted. And not just boxes, they would actually server you up a bowl with milk, and even had tables at which you could sit. The homeless who drift about the area actually turned down the free food, but that didn't stop them from begging for money for "food" within 100 feet of free food.
Asia has rice wine and palm wine.
That being a simple revelation anyone could understand, I'm actually not 100% about what these settlements are. Are they trying to live in a western style community, with houses, shops etc.? Or is it a mish-mash of both Aboriginal and Western? I thought from what I saw that they were living in basically really run-down settlements strewn all over the place, something you'd see in a third world country. What I'm trying to get to is that I don't know where our cultures precisely collide.
It wasn't good from the start. They weren't interested, and even asked if we could give them money instead of building anything.
The only building that survived was the school (teacher lived in there with a shotgun, so they didn't annoy her) and the "pub" (was a community center, but they all just brought alcohol and drank there)
The rest of the buildings were either pulled down for firewood, or for the hell of it. One of the girls apparently tried to prostitute herself to one of our guys for a bottle of rum. According to him, she couldn't have been over 14.
Some communities already had bans in place, in fact what Im hearing from howard is basically stolen from the few successful communities, and the rules apply to everyone there, not just the aboriginals. They police it themselves, place an emphasis on education, and each successive generation gets better.
Of course the question remains, if the community DOESN'T want to go down this route, how can we force it? Hell we couldn't stop people burning down a doctors office and stealing all the drugs.
Papering over symptoms and ignoring root causes is part of a long and inglorious tradition of election-year politicking.
Come on though; ten guys? Covering an area the size of the NT? Sixty settlements? There are multiple hour drives between settlements. No-one's even going to bother calling for these guys, because they won't be able to respond fast enough to damn near anything. If they want a decent police presence, they're going to need a few people per settlement. And those people are going to need to be pretty tough. Its hard enough for social workers and teachers to cope with the isolation and shit pay and funding out there - the attrition rate is really really high. There was a piece on Hack about that a while back. I can't find the one I want, but here's a similar one that's worth a listen. The culture of shame among even tiny kids is just awful. They flat out refuse to do anything because for some reason not getting everything perfect the first time is viewed as some kind of horrible transgression
Speaking of hack who have done some great shows on indigenous issues:
An Interview with young australian of the year, Tania Major about her community in Cape York
An interview with Noel Pearson, director of the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership.
A piece on footie in the Tiwi Islands, highlights alot of problems for Aboriginal youth.
The problems with indigenous populations are huge, but in my mind stem down to three problems.
1. Health
2. Education
3. Child/Domestic Violence
Banning grog and porn in these areas is a nice little band aid but unless properly enforced and implemented will just lead to the creation of a new black market. The government needs to pour funding into improving health, education and law enforcement along with empowering community leaders. Likewise health and education workers need greater encouragement to work in these areas along with having the support/resources they need to avoid burnout. Easier said then done though
This SMH comic had an interesting take on it..