Chief Minister finds another way to defy the federales

Hey, if tribal law is okay, why isn’t the good ole “she’s me wife so I can hit her/force her to have sex with me whenever I like” defence okay anymore then?

Every day, stanhope gets loonier and loonier.

It won’t be long before he becomes as loopy as john brogden…

Sonic in attempting to do a tap-dance and some arm waving will not wash with the bogans who are facing school closures.

A big shout out to any Cranleigh’s out there (while we’re on the topic of unique Canberra expressions)

The thing about customary law that I don’t understand is what good does it do the aboriginal people? My ancestral people used to practice customary law until a few decades ago and it was all shit. My sister has a co-worker with a big spear hole in his leg for committing adultery! Cultural identity is the stuff of dances and costumes, everything else is a scam by someone trying to establish power or avoid it.

so can we clarify this please

lurkergal is a bogan

or

lurkergal is a booner

which is correct ? both ?

Thumper – now I need to know. What is a Yonnie or a Chonk?

THere is life here, LG – great big, abounding, vibrant life. People create life no matter where the hell they are.

If you don’t like where you are, fine. But don’t blame the place, blame yourself. And make the place better.

Sorry, that’s my “anti-Canberra’s boring” rant out of the way…

Not a hope ferret. Canberra is too transient. Most people who live here weren’t born here, and didn’t grow up here, but came here from somewhere else. And those who have only lived in Canberra all there lives really do need to get away for a while and experience some life.

“Okay, if you’re a bogan from Kambah….”

Thumper – can I pull you up for a second on this.

How long has the word bogan been in use in Canberra? When i grew up, we had Booners, aka Westies. A Booners thick checked flannie was a Booner Doona. A Booner lived in Kambah or Charnwood, wore black jeans, desert boots, a Metallica/Megadeth t-shirt and smoked winniebloos.

Bogans were what my cousins in Melbourne called their version of booners.

Can we keep what few Canberra-specific terms alive??? 😉

Just heard that Kiera Knightley could do with some nourishment:

http://gofugyourself.typepad.com/go_…_the.html#more

ooops, sorry didn’t mean to distract anyone…

Damm. I was kind of looking forward to the removal of the statutory set of words “I acknowledge that this is the traditional land of…” crap from the start of every govt speach.

Link doesn’t seem to work now. “%3Cbr%20/%3E” was added after the .pdf (sorry to post such a long link initially)

[link]

Worth a read if you didn’t see it in CT.

Duck and weave, duck and weave.

It’s always been hardset to hit a moving target.

The mayor can’t help himself in attempting to be the world statesman and it also distracts from the poor fiscal management of the ACT

And the burning down of a large chunk of it while he was too busy having coffee to fulfill his responsibilities as acting minister for emergency services.

“I smell distraction all over this one…”

Yeah, maybe it has something to do with the Bushfire Inquest recommencing this week?

Nailed it Indi – or at least part of it.

The mayor can’t help himself in attempting to be the world statesman and it also distracts from the poor fiscal management of the ACT

I smell distraction all over this one…

As usual, the regular cacophony of shit-bags have come out to demonstrate their misunderstanding of the way the judiciary use things like customary lore in sentencing so there’s no real point pursuing further conversation on that point.

On the other hand Thumper has provided the opportunity to take the thread in an interesting on-topic direction with:

“It also may help if he read up on his Indigenous history of the area because he will find that the people that lived in, or around this area were extremely transient and that customary lore was somewhat not set in stone due in the main to the fact the peoples only ever met here at certain times of the year before disappearing off to their own lands again.”

Whilst the Aboriginal people of the Canberra area – the Ngunnawal and Wolgal – participated in a hunter-gatherer economy, it would be misguided to believe that implied some form of seasonal movement away from the Monaro. Not insignificant numbers of Aboriginal people lived here throughout the year. Furthermore, traditional Indigenous cultural structures in fact tend to be extremely rigid rather than the other way around – law/lore is the one unchanging (and unchangeable) constant – controlling both spiritual and secular Aboriginal life.

Flood makes no assertion in ‘The Moth Hunters’ regarding extreme transience nor does she draw a relationship between hunter-gatherer economic strategies and customary lore other than noting the breakdown in both with the arrival of white settlers. Not in the 1980 edition of her book, nor in her 1973 PhD thesis upon which the book is based.

i dont think were ‘taking them on’ or attacking anyone (except the druggies).

theres a very jeffersonian streak in canberra which is at odds with the way in which proposals for our liberties are on one hand reined in (drug driving tests) and expanded (customary law to be used to mitigate sentencing) depending on which special interest group the alp wish to curry favour with.

I love this website….
In just a week we have been able to take on people with a mental illness, people with a drug dependence and now indigenous australians.

Look forward to the next group of people I can feel justified in hating

Big Al, the problem is where do you draw the line? Tribal law is being used to protect some bastards from being properly prosecuted for murder, paedophilia and rape, and this is not at all acceptable to most forward thinking people.

One law for all Australians.

Some cultures now living in Australia also think that female circumcision is perfectly acceptable too, so should we turn a blind eye to that because it’s a cultural thing too?

youre forgetting tribal alp law.

One set of laws for all is the only way to go. Anything else is trouble.

As far as removing judges ability to consider things goes, I think the less leeway they have the better. The current approach seems to be that they look at the maximum sentence then find a range a of factors that makes the sentence less severe, often resulting in penalties perceived by the community as less than sufficient. Giving them yet another excuse will not help this situation.

Bugger tribal law.

The reality is that the Feds are beating up some sort of story on the customary law thing to try and look like they’re doing somthing. The danger in accepting the Feds position (appart from surrendering a right that you have no need to surrender) is that by removing a judges ability to consider the fullest range of issues in sentencing is inherantly bad law – whether its Aboriginal customary law or anything else that they look at when deciding on a sentence.

The Aboriginal groups around here don’t practice customary law.

Is it being used as an excuse in ACT courts?