Aboriginal?

[rederob]

Julia,you`ll find that when the kids fill in their subject selection forms for further education,theres a section where you can be considered for a scholarship,on the basis of aboriginality,or if your family has been receiving welfare ect,you actually have to fill in the form and justify how as a welfare recipient or as an aborigine, you have missed out on a chance to do your best ,achieving the relevant score for the subject that you want to take up at tafe or university.Of course if you are aboriginal and on welfare the chances that you qualify are doubled.

Julia
I have been otherwise indisposed and not put the response here that I would have liked.
Nevertheless, the key issue here relates to "disadvantage" per se. If there are folk that post to this site and contended that Aboriginal Australians are not disadvantaged, then please present your case.
I am amused by people who tell everyone how good things are for our indegenous folk because they have incredible advantages over us???
Clearly, if they were so "advantaged" their wealth, power and influence would show up everywhere.
Regretably, all we see and hear are horror stories of poverty, neglect, abuse, and continuing disadvantage.

 

[Julia]

Julia
I have been otherwise indisposed and not put the response here that I would have liked.
Nevertheless, the key issue here relates to "disadvantage" per se. If there are folk that post to this site and contended that Aboriginal Australians are not disadvantaged, then please present your case.
I am amused by people who tell everyone how good things are for our indegenous folk because they have incredible advantages over us???
Clearly, if they were so "advantaged" their wealth, power and influence would show up everywhere.
Regretably, all we see and hear are horror stories of poverty, neglect, abuse, and continuing disadvantage.

Rederob

I think my question to you was not whether or not indigenous people are advantaged or disadvantaged, but rather - given your criticism of so many comments posted on this thread about aboriginal people, and your obvious familiarity with aboriginal communities and how they function - how you think some of the problems could be fixed, e.g. alcohol abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, unemployment etc etc etc.

Your comment above doesn't address this at all.

Regards

Julia

 

[rederob]

Rederob
I think my question to you was not whether or not indigenous people are advantaged or disadvantaged, but rather - given your criticism of so many comments posted on this thread about aboriginal people, and your obvious familiarity with aboriginal communities and how they function - how you think some of the problems could be fixed, e.g. alcohol abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, unemployment etc etc etc.
Your comment above doesn't address this at all.
Regards
Julia

Julia
It's not a tall order!
I have the solution somewhere, and am sure to find it soon.
But am off to earn another bob now and will keep this on the backburner.
Bye for now....

 

[nioka]

Some time ago on this thread when a similar claim was made about the extra privileges available to Aborigines, I asked the contributor (can't remember who it was now) just exactly what these extra privileges were. I asked because I simply don't know whether this often made suggestion is actually true or not. Perhaps they do get extra benefits. If so what are they?

And now again we have Mista repeating the suggestion. So, Mista, could you be specific as to just what you are referring to and then we might all be wiser. Or, alternatively, are you just perpetuating another myth?

Julia

How is this for fact. There is a "sacred" water hole at chinamens beach near Evans Head that is actually the water hole left behind by a sand mining dredge. The area is so sacred that it can only be viewedfrom a board walk. The mining was done in the 1950's. My step father dug the original hole using a dragline and the that hole was at the other end of the beach. The beach was mined with a barge and when the barge was removed the water hole was left. The area is restricted to "whiteys" as I was told once.

 

[rederob]

How is this for fact. There is a "sacred" water hole at chinamens beach near Evans Head that is actually the water hole left behind by a sand mining dredge. The area is so sacred that it can only be viewedfrom a board walk. The mining was done in the 1950's. My step father dug the original hole using a dragline and the that hole was at the other end of the beach. The beach was mined with a barge and when the barge was removed the water hole was left. The area is restricted to "whiteys" as I was told once.

I am sure there are other similar and "true" examples.
The problem is that very few "traditional owners" are now around to give a valid history, and there are always some folk who will "do a number" on the gullible "whiteys".
How dumb were we for not investigating how the hole got there in the first place?????
There is still a person trying to prevent "Coon's Cheese" from using that name, despite Edward Coon creating that cheese type 70 years ago!
I don't think there is a cure for stupidity, but maybe someone, someday, will find that gene swimming uselessly around in the big gene pool and drown it!

 

[Kauri]

From ABC August 17, 2006
APY Lands families 'hungry 3 days a week'

Families are allegedly going without food for three days a week in the far north of South Australia because of the extreme cost of food in the area.
The Federal Government is spending $48 million to restructure outback stores to be more like Coles and Woolworths to lower the cost of food.
John Tregenza, a consultant for the Nganampa Health Council who helps manage eight stores in the Anangu Pitjantjatjarra Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, says many stores are already doing what they can to reduce costs.
He says people just are not given enough money to buy food in the first place.
"In the APY lands we call those days 'May Weir days'. It's the days when you don't have any food," he said.
"In most communities, the vast majority of people have those days at least three days a week."
Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough says a typical family of six children gets about $1,000 a week.
"The reality is that money is being spent on alcohol and drugs," he said.
Fruit can cost up to $3 a piece in the APY lands.

What a load of misleading rubbish... do these consultants/politicians check the facts before before opening their mouths!!!!

 

[Julia]

What a load of misleading rubbish... do these consultants/politicians check the facts before before opening their mouths!!!!

Kauri

What exactly are you saying is a "load of misleading rubbish"?
i.e. the fact that the people "can't afford to buy food" or that "they receive around $1000 per week in social security payments"?

Julia

 

[Kauri]

Julia...
Families in the Pit lands and surrounding areas are indeed going without food but it has nothing to do with the extreme cost of food. $3 a piece of fruit, maybe he was buying bananas, typically an apple, orange, pear, etc costs 50c, as do spuds, onions etc, and only because those who run the stores charge in 50c increments for all items, (incidentally you won't see any scales in any store.)
$48 million to to make the stores more like Coles and Woolies will lower the cost of food....how? Nganampa Health now helps manage 10 community stores in the north of S.A, with a total population of around 2500-3000 people spread between them, so I guess you could say each store services on average 300 people. How is a Coles or Woolies setup going to lower prices. Throwing $48 million at the "perceived extreme cost" problem will do nothing. Get rid of the highly paid consultant, replace him with a purchasing officer, and use the bulk buying power of the 10 stores to purchase your food etc. Work out a deal with a trucking company, have them collect the stuff in the Alice or Adelaide and run it through to the communities, dry goods one week and freezer/chiller goods the next. That will help bring down prices, if you cross the border into W.A you will find the Ngaanyatjarra lands of the western desert do this, even to the extent of owning their own warehouse in Perth, incidentally their lands and distances dwarf those that the Nganampa Health are involved with, and with a smaller population to boot.
One of the main reasons Nganampa Health is getting involved is that most of the stores are running at a loss! The store, fully fitted out and ready to run is given to the community when it starts up (so no rent), being a community store their are no taxes,the store managers pay is met by an ATSIC grant and any of the mob who work there are paid from CDEP (so no wage bill), the only overheads are electricity and plant repairs/maintainence, and there is no competition within usually a couple of hundred of kilometres. All goods, food, TV's, clothes, fridges, you name it, are sold on a cost plus system, so how do they run at a loss? And no, the mob rarely run the stores themselves, store managers are hired from the city, the only qualifications you need are that you don't mind working in a community in the central deserts. Maybe instead of a consultant a forensic fraud accountant would be more relevant!
Money being spent on alcohol and drugs, alcohol is a big problem in the town camps around Alice, drugs... hardly a problem. But what has that got to do with what he is talking about, namely the problems in the communities many hundreds of kilometres away anyway???
And on a lighter note.... "May Weir days"??? .... Try Mayi Wiya
.. Mayi ..(My-e = food).
....Wiya ..(Wee-ah =no).

 

[macca]

Hi Kauri,

Interesting post.

Can we have more examples of how the situation can be improved from within and how do we, or the government expand the number of communities helping themselves.

 

[Happy]

August 18, 2006
Drug-runners target Indigenous communities

A new report shows sophisticated drug-running networks are making handsome profits by inundating remote Indigenous communities with cannabis.
A survey of remote communities in the Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia has found that cannabis supply and use has increased dramatically in the past three years.
Peter Veth from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies says it is alarming.
"People as young as 11 or 12 were actually engaging in mixing of alcohol, and binge cannabis smoking, so 20 cones or joints perhaps in one sitting," he said.
The Northern Territory's Assistant Police Commissioner Mark Payne says it is clear sophisticated drug-running networks are targeting remote communities.
"Certainly from what we're seeing on Aboriginal communities, it's a lot more organised than we thought it was," he said.
The report says drugs in remote communities fetch up to 50 times the going rate.

If there were no demand, supply would drop of too.

Cannabis is considered by general public as non-addictive recreational substance.
Years will be needed to change this perception.

 

[rederob]

If there were no demand, supply would drop of too.

Actually, if there was no SUPPLY there could be no demand.
As I am part of the general public, I don't know where you got the impression that I thought cannabis is considered as a "non-addictive recreational substance".
I regard it as a harmful drug that has serious impacts on long term users and, like alcohol, the potential to give users a false sense of their own faculties.
The fact that most drug users are affluent white people will mean nothing to you, will it, Happy?

 

[Julia]

Julia...
Families in the Pit lands and surrounding areas are indeed going without food but it has nothing to do with the extreme cost of food. $3 a piece of fruit, maybe he was buying bananas, typically an apple, orange, pear, etc costs 50c, as do spuds, onions etc, and only because those who run the stores charge in 50c increments for all items, (incidentally you won't see any scales in any store.)
$48 million to to make the stores more like Coles and Woolies will lower the cost of food....how? Nganampa Health now helps manage 10 community stores in the north of S.A, with a total population of around 2500-3000 people spread between them, so I guess you could say each store services on average 300 people. How is a Coles or Woolies setup going to lower prices. Throwing $48 million at the "perceived extreme cost" problem will do nothing. Get rid of the highly paid consultant, replace him with a purchasing officer, and use the bulk buying power of the 10 stores to purchase your food etc. Work out a deal with a trucking company, have them collect the stuff in the Alice or Adelaide and run it through to the communities, dry goods one week and freezer/chiller goods the next. That will help bring down prices, if you cross the border into W.A you will find the Ngaanyatjarra lands of the western desert do this, even to the extent of owning their own warehouse in Perth, incidentally their lands and distances dwarf those that the Nganampa Health are involved with, and with a smaller population to boot.
One of the main reasons Nganampa Health is getting involved is that most of the stores are running at a loss! The store, fully fitted out and ready to run is given to the community when it starts up (so no rent), being a community store their are no taxes,the store managers pay is met by an ATSIC grant and any of the mob who work there are paid from CDEP (so no wage bill), the only overheads are electricity and plant repairs/maintainence, and there is no competition within usually a couple of hundred of kilometres. All goods, food, TV's, clothes, fridges, you name it, are sold on a cost plus system, so how do they run at a loss? And no, the mob rarely run the stores themselves, store managers are hired from the city, the only qualifications you need are that you don't mind working in a community in the central deserts. Maybe instead of a consultant a forensic fraud accountant would be more relevant!
Money being spent on alcohol and drugs, alcohol is a big problem in the town camps around Alice, drugs... hardly a problem. But what has that got to do with what he is talking about, namely the problems in the communities many hundreds of kilometres away anyway???
And on a lighter note.... "May Weir days"??? .... Try Mayi Wiya
.. Mayi ..(My-e = food).
....Wiya ..(Wee-ah =no).

Thanks for explaining that, Kauri. Why am I not surprised? I just wasn't sure whether you were suggesting that $1000 p.w. in social security was "misleading rubbish" and was going to correct that! Lots of families on Centrelink benefits are in a healthier financial position than families where there's a working parent and I get pretty irritated about that.

Julia

 

[Julia]

If there were no demand, supply would drop of too.

Cannabis is considered by general public as non-addictive recreational substance.
Years will be needed to change this perception.

Happy

Can I suggest that you don't hold your breath while waiting for any perception of cannabis as being non-harmful to change.

Julia

 

[Duckman#72]

Cannabis is considered by general public as non-addictive recreational substance.

I think I know what you had for "breakie" Happy.

You must be talking about General Public, the comedian and pro-drugs campaigner.

 

[Kauri]

Hi Kauri,

Interesting post.

Can we have more examples of how the situation can be improved from within and how do we, or the government expand the number of communities helping themselves.

Hi Macca..
How the situation can be improved from within... well, for instance a lot of statements have been sprouted in the press about the social and health problems caused by petrol sniffing in remote communities, and a lot of calls made by support agencies for large chunks of funding for various studies and programmes to help address the problem.
Is sniffing a problem... yes, large gangs of sniffing youths are causing mayhem, and a lot of them are subsequently dying in their late 20's from the effects of years of sniffing.
Will funding for studies/programmes help...NO..not initially in many cases. (apart from providing work for a lot of social workers). First step, from within, don't sell petrol in the communities!!! Who can make this descision, only the communities themselves. Dollar cost involved. exactly none. By the way, if anyone has driven the Central road from Laverton (W.A) to the rock in the territory in a petrol car then from east of Laverton until you hit the border at Docker River you will have been running on non-sniffable avgas. Is sniffing a problem in these areas, yes, but nothing like what you see and hear about in the press. For some strange reason that seems to escape the people calling for study/programme funding, not having a 20,000 litre tank of sniffable petrol in the middle of the affected communities has an immediate affect that they would not be able to achieve before the next dreamtime.

By the way, I see another study that has been quoted in the press and posted here...

"The report says drugs in remote communities fetch up to 50 times the going rate".
Can some one explain to me how people who are on "sit-down money" (CDEP... really the dole with a component built in to allow for the costs of remote living... a smart political renaming move which slashed the official unemployment figures by many thousands overnight. ), how they afford to pay 50 times the going rate for drugs . (If the price of dope in the city went up 50 times can someone tell me how people on unemployment with no access to any other money would afford it?). I suspect that what he is referring to is the fact that some enterprising locals in communities where petrol is not available do make the run of hundreds of kilometres to where petrol is available and bring back a jerry can, which they then sell off in coke-bottle lots at around $20 a bottle. Is petrol a drug, I guess so, but the way this report is presented everyone draws the conclusion that dope is involved. But hey, let the press sensationalise it, let it run for a while and and we will willingly throw $48 million at fixing another perceived problem.
Palya.

 

[rederob]

Kauri
Julia has asked me to present my ideas on solving some of the problems that have been posted here.
I think your more hands on experience lends itself better to give answers than me.
The major impediment I see is that we, as a "governement", need to be seen as treating all its subjects equally.
So we give "sit down" money because there really are no jobs in these communities that the money is supposed to allow the job seeker to search for!
Then we call it CDEP and try to make some useful work for some part of the community, some of the time.
It's akin to trying to treat cancer with panadol; might reduce the pain, but not the suffering.

Here's a test for the great unwashed
Who is the federal Minister responsible for aboriginal matters?
Why do we not have a federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs?
Which body makes decisions for funding initiatives for the betterment of aboriginals?
How do aboriginals choose the NIC? (or, what is the NIC?)
Is it true that the NIC can only "provide advice"?
How many (of the 30) managers of Indigenous Coordination Centres (ICC) identify as indigenous?

 

[Julia]

Kauri
Julia has asked me to present my ideas on solving some of the problems that have been posted here.
I think your more hands on experience lends itself better to give answers than me.
The major impediment I see is that we, as a "governement", need to be seen as treating all its subjects equally.
So we give "sit down" money because there really are no jobs in these communities that the money is supposed to allow the job seeker to search for!
Then we call it CDEP and try to make some useful work for some part of the community, some of the time.
It's akin to trying to treat cancer with panadol; might reduce the pain, but not the suffering.

Here's a test for the great unwashed
Who is the federal Minister responsible for aboriginal matters?
Why do we not have a federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs?
Which body makes decisions for funding initiatives for the betterment of aboriginals?
How do aboriginals choose the NIC? (or, what is the NIC?)
Is it true that the NIC can only "provide advice"?
How many (of the 30) managers of Indigenous Coordination Centres (ICC) identify as indigenous?

What is Mal Brough's role if he is not Minister for Indigenous Affairs?

What is NIC?

Julia

 

[visual]

What is Mal Brough's role if he is not Minister for Indigenous Affairs?

What is NIC?

Julia

Julia,you why why I love Joe?
because he taught me how to do search and paste :
Anyway ,there it is,




http://www.oipc.gov.au/nic/default.asp

 

[rederob]

What is Mal Brough's role if he is not Minister for Indigenous Affairs?

What is NIC?

Julia

The Hon Mal Brough MP is the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs.
Portfolio overview
The Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs provides policies, income support and assistance for families and their children, senior citizens, people with disabilities, carers and community groups. The Office for Women provides policies and programs for women and the Office for Indigenous Policy Coordination coordinates a whole-of-government approach to programs and services for Indigenous Australians.

The Minister's latest Act is to turn aboriginals into fair dinkum mortgage holding citizens with loans that they will never pay off.
That's progress!

 

[Bobby]

The Hon Mal Brough MP is the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs.
Portfolio overview
The Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs provides policies, income support and assistance for families and their children, senior citizens, people with disabilities, carers and community groups. The Office for Women provides policies and programs for women and the Office for Indigenous Policy Coordination coordinates a whole-of-government approach to programs and services for Indigenous Australians.

The Minister's latest Act is to turn aboriginals into fair dinkum mortgage holding citizens with loans that they will never pay off.
That's progress!

Hey Rob it's me Bob,

Just need your opinion on this Whats the cut of point of white people calling themselves Aboriginals ? the topic of this thread !

If you don't know, thats ok as I don't also.

Bob.