3 February gets busier with indigenous protest piled on.

Sounds like a good day to keep clear of the Parliamentary Triange

Always thought the intervention was about removing state/territory rights and replacing them with mineral rights while the boom was on.

And to the point about the toys over Christmas, if 50% of your welfare is quarantined could you not pay for those items with cash?

When we say “working with them” what exactly do we mean? It’s a throwaway line that makes people feel good, but doesn’t really mean a thing. If alcohol is available, most alcoholics will drink it. And it’s not like there’s a lot of jobs in many of these communities for people to show up to. As such, they sit around all day on the grog, paid for by our taxes.

I agree that maybe the intervention that was implemented wasn’t perfect, but surely some action is better than no action. And just how bad are things in these communities? Bloody terrible in some. It’s awfully easy to be morally outraged without providing anything that even looks like a viable alternative.

I think ‘racism’ simply confuses the issue. This isn’t about skin colour, it’s about whether or not you lie around drinking all day on the dole while neglecting and harming your kids. And there’s people of all colours who do that.

Work with them? What do they want to stop the buggery, beatings and petrol sniffing?

sepi said :

In any case – the govt has so far only introduced payment quarantining to 1/3 of black people – why is this if it is so successful?

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Because racism isn’t the intent of the policy.

I wonder how you would feel if the control of money were applied to you, especially over Christmas. Imagine going Christmas shopping for your children, and finding a toy.

I imagine it would annoy me. Not to the point of getting some qualifications and a job, obviously.

It is a misnomer that only something like a military-style top-down intervention can achieve control of alcohol in troubled communities – as Tennant Creek proved in the 1990s with its self-imposed alcohol bans. An early work by Alexis Wright, who won the Miles Franklin award last year, plots this, and its broad community support. It’s called “Grog War”, and is an eye-opener.

Is it any wonder that people are coming to protest?

I wonder how you would feel if the control of money were applied to you, especially over Christmas. Imagine going Christmas shopping for your children, and finding a toy. Not being able to pay cash, you have to bear the indignity of getting a shop attendant to write a receipt for it, then trek over to the nearest Centrelink – which may be many, many kilometres away – hand over the receipt, and some stranger then decides whether or not that is permissibly spending. Even at this stage they do not give you money, but deposit money at the toy store, and then – finally – eventually – you can go and pick up the Christmas present.

Imagine this going on in every area of your life, especially if you are one of the vast majority of the population who do not even drink, let alone abuse your children.

No wonder people of the North are coming to Canberra to say “enough”. Many of them have worked for years to try to implement at a ground level practical changes for which there was never any public funding – until the Howard government, in its last gasp for electoral popularism sent the army in and quarantined their welfare and dole payments.

When is Australia going to stop punishing its Indigenous peoples and start working with them?

Almost noone on welfare is able to save money – I realise that, but telling people they are too stupid to spend their own money can only contribute to their lack of a future.

In any case – the govt has so far only introduced payment quarantining to 1/3 of black people – why is this if it is so successful?

I believe some form of intervention has been warranted for a very long time. But I don’t think the intervention we got is worth the paper it was written on.

sepi said :

I dunno, but just on these food welfare payments alone it would be cheaper to hand out food vouchers on top of existing payments than it is to quarantine half of people’s payments and then give them food vouchers.
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Except that much of the point of the quarantining is to help curtail excessive alcohol use . Food vouchers on top of welfare payments would worsen the problems. There have been some positive reactions to the quarantining in communities. One thing it does is help women avoid ‘humbugging’. Without naively trusting bureaucrat-generated statistics, I believe the intervention was warranted. Only the other day, children at Hall’s Creek put ‘please ban alcohol’ as their top wish didn’t they? Sepi, as for ‘saving money for a rainy day’ – that’s simply non-existent across the communities.

Sorry BerraBoy, I’m booked up for the other one!

Right, I’m going to go and protest about their being too many protests. Who’s with me?

I dunno, but just on these food welfare payments alone it would be cheaper to hand out food vouchers on top of existing payments than it is to quarantine half of people’s payments and then give them food vouchers.

So you are essentially employing extra public servants, to take money away from black people on welfare – for their own good of course.

If it was on Yes Minister it would be too far fetched.

So what is the answer to these un-sustainable communities? Move of their reservations then? Heard that before.

Paying half of people’s income to the local shop is a pathetic band-aid solution, and does nothing to eliminate alcohol from communities.

Instead it just introduces more problems.

It means people can’t leave their local area, they have to shop in one shop, even if they don’t get on with the owner, the owner can charge what they like, people can’t save their money for a rainy day, if the shop is closed or goes bust noone eats and the system was introduced so hastily and is so piecemeal Centrelink is prone to stuffing it up.

Oh and it is incredibly patronising, and discriminatory to do this to people of a certain race.

And it costs us a fortune to administer. It makes no sense at all to spend a fortune, in order to take money away from those who have little to start with.

It just makes me so angry to start thinking about it. This is not what I want them to waste my taxes on.

The Black Fellas are turning Green? I’d like to see that!

Should read; All well and good except that the ACT Human Rights Legislation and role of the Commissioner does not work that way.

From the SMH article:
“When we are in Canberra we will be demanding our human rights and demanding all our money is paid to us in cash,” said Barbara Shaw, resident of Mt Nancy Town Camp and member of the Intervention Rollback Action Group.

While she stayed in the capital, Ms Shaw said she would be forced to negotiate with Centrelink to have 50 per cent of her entitlements distributed as storecards, or deposited as credit in local shops.

She said the measures breached legislative protections against discrimination that exist in the ACT.

Protesters had sent a letter to the ACT Human Rights Commission, requesting support and legal advice.

All well and good except that the ACT Human Rights Legislation and role of the Commissioner does work that way. The ACT Human Rights legislative framework is only applicable to legislation passed passed by the ACT Legislative Assembly. Centrelink payments are made under jurisdiction of Federal legislation.

“…they’re trying to drag the ACT Human Rights Commissioner into the debate.”

This, from News.com
“Children of the troubled Kimberley town of Halls Creek have unanimously nominated an alcohol ban as their No1 wish, ahead of a local cinema and an international airport.

More than 100 children aged 10 to 14 at the school in Halls Creek told youth facilitator Michael O’Meara that, more than anything else, they wanted alcohol eliminated from their town and wanted help for their parents and other adults in Halls Creek to get sober.”

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24900565-421,00.html

Sure, alcohol is abused all over Australia by all walks of life. But if you gathered a 100 kids together in Canberra or Cooma how many would have an alcohol ban as their number one wish?.

Bugger the phony ‘human rights’ BS, and good on those kids for speaking the truth.

And some people thought Green Left were making it up!

Can we skip the more overt racism this time round?