HOW MANY MORE SUICIDES WILL IT TAKE?

by Gerry Georgatos September 20th, 2013

Image – www.cameronreilly.com

Two years ago, as part of my academic research into the prevalence of suicides in Australia, particularly among Aboriginal youth, to my horror I discovered that Aboriginal youth suicides are tragically at record high levels – that spates of Aboriginal youth suicides are proportionately the world’s highest rates. Aboriginal youth is suiciding at the world’s highest rates.
I should not be shocked but I was despite my first-hand knowledge of the continuous neglect by Australian Governments – State, Territory and Federal – of Aboriginal peoples. 671,000 Australians identify as Aboriginal but if we standalone the poorest 150,000 of our Aboriginal peoples, a significant proportion of them are living in third-world akin conditions in the world’s 12^th largest economy. Per capita Australia has the world’s highest median wages and once again per capita Australia is the second wealthiest nation in the world. These statistics underwrite research I have titled “The Aboriginal Clock.”
Since releasing my findings that Aboriginal youth are dying at the world’s highest rates it was sad to note that it did not make an impact on the Australian consciousness. The chronic neglect and maltreatment of Aboriginal peoples are matter-of-fact in Australia. We accept much with very little outcry; the news media and Governments despite highlighting chronic problems do not prioritise Aboriginal peoples and the underlying issues. Racism has many veils and layers.
Thirty years ago Aboriginal youth was not killing itself at the rates we have today, nor was this the case twenty years ago, and ten years ago the suicide rates were much lower than today. The suicide rates are on the rise, the median ages of suicides are getting younger – this evidences the sense of hopelessness felt by many. Much of the hope of previous generations invested in the Black Power movements, in the Land Rights movements, in the striving for Treaty and equality has dissipated for many Aboriginal peoples who have waited and nothing positive has eventuated for them, and for many the belief is that they have less now than they did two decades ago. I have interviewed more than 100 Territorian Aboriginal Elders, and similarly more than 100 Aboriginal Western Australian Elders for research titled “Climate of Death” and “People are not the Property of People; the Northern Territory is a prison built brick by brick by the Commonwealth” and the overwhelming majority described beliefs that all that they or their parents struggled for two and three decades ago has now vanished. They despair at being effectively forced into surrendering culture, their homelands, their right to their historical identity. They were prepared for integration and the best of both worlds but they reject assimilation. No other cultures in Australia despite the various xenophobia that prevails contemporaneously have been so harangued as Aboriginal peoples are to let go of their historical and cultural identities – that is beyond the insulting tokenism we are prepared to allow.
They have no trust in ministries of Aboriginal Affairs or in a Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs, they do not believe any longer in the presumption these perceivably affirmative actions will deliver what is now long overdue. The majority of those I have spoken with, hundreds, inherently fear these ministries which they believe are responsible for corralling them and extinguishing many of their rights and freedoms. They see these ministries, as I do too, as covert, whether inadvertent or not, social engineering attempts by Governments and their bureaucracies, and that the colonialist attitudes continue.
The majority of Aboriginal peoples, especially those among the poorest 150,000, and which my cluster surveys clearly indicate, are all for a Treaty, and without a Treaty they do not believe they will be rightly respected as Aboriginal peoples and allowed to be free in their own Country.
The majority have said that rather than ministries of Aboriginal Affairs they would prefer Aboriginal peoples in parliament. In New Zealand seven of the 70 parliamentary seats are reserved for Maoris. The majority of those whom I have interviewed, once again in the hundreds, would prefer for instance 7 or 8 of the 76 Senate seats for Aboriginal people. They also want to see all major political parties ensure Aboriginal representation. This would be inspiring electoral reform, something to which I too, for more than a decade, have been calling for. However the resistance will be huge but it can be achieved. In one University I worked at, I was on their peak academic planning council and also on the University Senate (the Board of the University) and in 2008 I lobbied quite hard to introduce a unit of compulsory Aboriginal studies to all undergraduate students. It was met with huge resistance and from those I least expected. In the end I managed to secure the fifth recommendation, substantive Aboriginal studies by Aboriginal scholars as a component of the introductory unit to all undergraduate students – an Australia-first.
Seven years ago during the second of my two Masters, both which studied the veils and layers of racism, and the ways forward, I was shocked by the discovery from comparative global data research that Australia jails Aboriginal adult males at more than five times the rate apartheid South Africa jails its Black adult males. Then I found that Australia imprisons its Aboriginal adult males marginally higher than the mother of all jailers, the USA, of its own most incarcerated peoples, African-American adult males. This upset me so much that I skewed my Master’s thesis into a study of this comparative data and the Australian consciousness. My findings explored racialised imprisonment, because indeed this is what is occurring in Australia. But once again other than affected Aboriginal peoples and grassroots supporters upset by these findings the rest of Australia barely gave it a mention, and just coldly accepted my mantras that we incarcerate Aboriginal peoples at rates higher than apartheid South Africa, as is the case once again that we accept without too much fuss that Aboriginal youth are suiciding at the world’s highest rates. I write that we accept all this because the fact is few, if anyone with capacity, are responding with sincere acknowledgment and remedy. My research and investigations have surprisingly come up with very little evidence of Government funding, next to nothing in the scheme of things, to address the unparalleled tragedy of Aboriginal youth suicide, nor the rising incarceration rates that now see one in every 70 Aboriginal persons in this nation in jail on any given day. Let us not even tinker at this time with the shocking statistics in Western Australia and the Northern Territory, which make the national averages look good!
In the Kimberley, one of the regional hot spots for Aboriginal youth suicide, Aboriginal homelessness, high arrest rates, rates and levels of impoverishment, one of its communities hosted a ‘March for Life’ last week, an event organised to advocate for unity on proactive approaches to suicide prevention. The Kimberley has a regional population of 42,000, of which one-third, 14,000 are Aboriginal peoples. The Kimberley records one of the world’s highest rates of homelessness – seven per cent of its population is homeless, with 90 per cent of that homelessness comprised of Aboriginal peoples. Yet the wealthiest State in the nation has allowed this to continue. The fact is this is because they are Aboriginal peoples, and the State and Federal Governments can say what they like, but they do not care enough, because indeed Aboriginal peoples do not matter to them as much as do non-Aboriginal peoples. The colonial past is still recent, and origins-of-thinking that led to the apartheid and eugenics imposed upon Aboriginal peoples have permeated inter-generationally. Ninety per cent of our parliamentarians are Anglo-Celtic, with 90 per cent of them with at least a century of familial history in Australia, one that has its origins in the recent colonial past.

Mary Victor – O’Reeri, Josie Farrer, Stephen Victor

Josie Farrer is the Member for the Kimberley, elected in March, she is a Kija woman and like most Aboriginal families she has endured loss from suicide – not long ago she lost her 16 year old grandchild. Ms Farrer attended the Beagle Bay event and was a guest speaker.
“Changes need to be made. The Government needs to assist by investing more resources and funding into preventative support programs, especially into remote communities.”
Remote communities are enduring higher rates of youth suicide than in big towns and metropolises, though Aboriginal suicide rates are disproportionately high Australia-wide. But the Kimberley has been host to recent spates of suicides that initially shocked right minded Australians – the multiplier rates reaching more than 100 times the national average. Kimberley communities like Mowanjum, Balgo and towns like Wyndham and Derby have become known for the first time to many Australians because of the horrific rates of Aboriginal youth suicide. In the weeks ahead I will unfold a number of news stories on how little Governments have done to try to address these suicide rates.
Employment, education, health and community infrastructure are invaluable to reducing both imprisonment and suicide rates but with suicides it is not just underlying issues related to impoverishment – my research and investigations have found that disempowerment is a major contributor. Despite the majority of Aboriginal youth suiciding or attempting suicide who are unemployed and dejected by the sense of hopelessness, far too many despite not being the majority were indeed employed but they too reported a sense of hopelessness or crippling dejection – the situational trauma of ones cultural identity rubbished by the majority of Australia, by do-gooder bureaucratic programs, by the forces of assimilation, by the impost that they should leave forever their homelands is soul destroying. Cognitively, all this generates situational trauma, and degenerates into a continuing traumas and stress disorders and disempowers far too many into a sense that their historical and contemporary identities are a liability.

Beagle Bay Community members

Beagle Bay community does not have any out of school activities such as AusKick, youth services or a swimming pool but it is also not supported by Government funded respect for cultural identity and its highlighting, for bilingual education, for the documenting and disseminating of its history and nor is there any funding to ensure access to Country. The young grow up watching their Elders struggle for the right to express their identity, they grow up watching few non-Aboriginal peoples respect their cultural identity, and watch far too many patronise what little of their cultural identity they allow them to express.

A symbolic baton carved by local Dunba Nunju from a special medicine tree, a tree considered to have healing qualities for the local people was handed to Ms Farrer – ‘the baton of life’.

Elder Mary Victor-O’Reeri who handed over the baton said, “I humbly ask you, during your time as the Member for the Kimberley that you do the honour in continuing the movement in saving lives and bring with you the ‘baton of life’ to the people so that they too can bring together their own communities to ‘March for Life.’ Please help us to save the save lives of our Kimberley children, our mob, black and white.”
The community requested of Ms Farrer that she take the baton to every community, every town, to Parliament House, to the world, to continue what had been started in Beagle Bay last Tuesday – a movement to save lives – young Aboriginal children are now dying at the world’s highest rates.
“How many suicides, how many more deaths will it take to open our eyes, and open our ears to the silent screaming that is coming from the hearts, and souls of those who are gone, and of those who grieve and keep screaming, ‘Help’…” said Bishop Christopher Saunders in closing the Beagle Bay gathering.

The writer of this article, Gerry Georgatos, has completed two Masters on what constitutes racism, on Aboriginal imprisonment rates, on racialised imprisonment and he has produced papers and reports on Aboriginal suicides. He is a PhD researcher on Australian Custodial Systems and Australian Deaths in Custody. Gerry’s journalism on Aboriginal youth suicides has been recognised with a number of journalistic prizes including most recently Best Coverage of Indigenous Affairs at the National Multicultural and Indigenous Media Awards, where he also picked up for the second time Best Investigative Reporting and the Journalist of the Year awards.

http://thestringer.com.au/how-many-more-suicides-will-it-take-how-many-more-deaths/#.Uj-4g7zW4Xx 

 

WHITEFELLAS FAIL TO GRASP REALITY

Lindy Edwards Published: November 21, 2012

AS TONY Abbott dug himself in deeper trying to escape his remarks about ''authentic Aborigines'' last week, his comments were revealing. The way he described Aboriginality had a significance that went beyond rudeness or violating political correctness.
White settlers have described Aboriginal people in a variety of ways over the years, and it has always served a political purpose. Aboriginal people were described as ''dangerous savages'' when a rationale was needed to shoot them to clear them off the land. On the other hand, they were described as ''passive natives'' who had quietly given up their lands and died out due to disease when we needed to justify their decimated numbers to the rest of the world.
The various theories of race have been just as politically loaded. One theory argued that each race came from a different genus, and they were engaged in a Darwinian struggle for survival. The superior races would survive, while the vanquished would be condemned to history. In this logic it was deemed merciful for Australian government policy to ''smooth the pillow of the dying race'' and help along Aboriginal extinction.
Other theories of race argued we all had the same genus, but different races were at different points on a continuum of evolution. The Aboriginal race was deemed to be languishing at the bottom while the white race was at the top having evolved closer to God. It was argued Aboriginal people were being ''liberated'' when they were forcibly assimilated into the ''higher'' white culture.
Contemporary understandings of Aboriginality are just as political. We have moved on from describing race in terms of biology and now we cast it in terms of culture. In the past we argued it was Aborigines' biology that caused their dismal state, and now we argue it is their culture. The common argument goes that Aboriginal culture is ancient and primitive, and cannot be reconciled with modern Western culture.
It is an argument that again lays the blame for the condition of Aboriginal people as being Aboriginality itself. As colonisers we argue that the conditions of the people we defeated are due to the internal flaws of the victims.
Even more poignantly, in this framing, if a person gets educated and becomes professionally successful in white terms, they lose their Aboriginality. They are seen as moving away from the traditional way of life and culture. You can be successful in the white world, or you can be Aboriginal. You can't be both.
It is a line of argument that has been used to delegitimise Aboriginal leaders. Anyone who gains the skills required to be an effective Aboriginal advocate immediately has their authenticity questioned.
So what is the right way for a whitefella to talk about Aboriginality? First, we need to acknowledge the diversity of the experience. There were 500 Aboriginal nations with their own different cultures before European settlers turned up. Different Aboriginal families have then had very different pathways through the colonising experience.
Second, we need to understand it is not our place to describe what Aboriginality is. Each Aboriginal person will come up with their own way of understanding it, and it is likely there will be as many understandings as there are people who tick the box on the forms.
For whitefellas, Aboriginality is perhaps most usefully understood as people whose families went through the experience of dispossession.
That might seem like a small thing, or something that happened a long time ago, but that is not the reality. The frontier wars that took a form of guerilla warfare lasted about 70 years from the 1790s through to the 1860s.
From the 1870s through to the 1960s most Australian states operated a form of apartheid, where Aboriginal people were wards of the state. Many were rounded up on reserves where they lost the right to own property, hold a job, or marry without permission. Their children were not their own and could be removed.
Many outside the reserves were caught in a no man's land, not allowed on the reserves but locked out of the towns by colour bars. Their wages were a fraction of white wages, they had no access to government payments, and their children were not allowed into schools. They were forced to set up slums on the outskirts of towns.
About eight generations lived through these hardships before things started to get better.
If we need a way of thinking about Aboriginality, we need to start by acknowledging that people are just people. Then we need to realise that some of our fellow Australians have had this experience in their families.
Perhaps if we understand Aboriginality that way, things might just start improving.
Dr Lindy Edwards is a political scientist at the University of New South Wales and author of The Passion of Politics: the Role of Ideology and Political Theory in Australia.
Follow the National Times on Twitter

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/whitefellas-fail-to-grasp-reality-20121120-29o13.html

ABC MINISTER SLAMS INDIGENOUS CULTURE OF DEPENDENCY

By Anthea Kissel, ABC Updated November 2, 2012,

ABC © Enlarge photo

Northern Territory Indigenous Advancement Minister Alison Anderson says many remote Aboriginal communities have become welfare traps.
Ms Anderson has told parliament the Government should not be responsible for providing everything in these communities.
She says it is common to hear endless complaints during conversations with Indigenous people in isolated areas.
"There are the conversations where a person offers to do nothing for themselves, and just demands that everything be done for them," she said.
She says the Territory Government must focus on improving education and getting people into jobs, but government does not have the resources to fix all of the problems in Aboriginal communities. 
"Somewhere along the way from poverty ... we took a side-road and got stuck in a hell from which there seems to be no escape," she said.
"I admit that sometimes I despair at the reluctance of some Indigenous people to take the jobs that are already there."
Ms Anderson says she plans to ask many questions of Aboriginal people during an upcoming listening tour of remote communities.
"The rest of the world is looking; it is wondering why so many Indigenous people have this sense of entitlement," she said.
She says if government puts Aboriginal children at the forefront of its decision making, it can't go far wrong.
Opposition Indigenous Policy Spokeswoman Lynne Walker says the minister's statement lacks detail.
She says many Indigenous people are unable to secure jobs that are available in the mining sector.
"They don't have the literacy to be able to work in these places," she said.

So the upshot is that one side of the criminal elitist politician table says that the Original people of this land are lazy, the other says that they are stupid. Both claim that the Original people and custodians of this land must abandon their own lore and life plans and become a good little slave in a job that makes rich people like Gina Reinhart richer.

This is despite the fact that BOTH of these parties have continually been working against the interests of ALL people on this land who are not of their elitist class. It is called divide and conquer. 
Yet, the question needs to be asked; Is being an intolerant racist elitist criminal pig a pre-requisite to being Indigenous Advancement Minister? 
http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/latest/15282365/minister-slams-indigenous-culture-of-dependency/

TRUE COLOURS

Karl Quinn September 29, 2011

A terrible day for free speech in Australia, or just a terrible day for Andrew Bolt and bad journalism?

STANDING outside the Federal Court on the corner of William and La Trobe streets in Melbourne yesterday, Andrew Bolt pronounced it a black day for the press.

''This is a terrible day for free speech in this country,'' he said, reading from the notes he had written in courtroom No. 1 after losing the case brought against him by a group of fair-skinned Aborigines under the Racial Discrimination Act (1975).

''It is particularly a restriction on the freedom of all Australians to discuss multiculturalism and how people identify themselves,'' he continued. ''I argued then and I argue now that we should not insist on the differences between us but focus instead on what unites us as human beings. Thank you.''

With that, he strode off, declining to respond to the questions about whether he intended to apologise or appeal. But perhaps the bigger question is this: Was the judgment a terrible day for free speech in this country, as Bolt claimed, or merely a terrible day for Bolt and his employer?

Certainly it was a magnificent day for activist Pat Eatock and the eight others who sued Bolt and the Herald and Weekly Times (publisher of the Herald Sun) over two articles he wrote for the paper and two blog posts on the paper's website in 2009.

As the verdict was delivered, a smattering of applause rippled through the courtroom; in the corridors and meeting rooms outside, the mood was a mix of disbelief and unbridled joy.

''It was never about free speech, it has always been a question of professionalism, and the reality is that the original articles were not professional journalism,'' said Eatock, a 72-year-old Aboriginal activist.

''The sword of justice has struck, and cut off the head of the serpent,'' said former ATSIC chairman Geoff Clark. ''Let's hope it doesn't grow two heads.''

The nine applicants contended that Bolt had implied in the articles and blogs under consideration that they had ''chosen'' to identify as Aboriginal because of the financial, political or career benefits such a choice conferred.

They argued that Bolt had contended that as lighter-skinned individuals of mixed background, they had more than one source of ethnic identity to ''choose'' from, and that by extension their identification as Aboriginal was unjustified.

What's more, they claimed he argued that in so doing they gained access to privileges and assistance that would have been better directed at more needy Aborigines.

The nine claimed that these imputations had offended, insulted, humiliated and/or intimidated them. They claimed the articles and blogs would have been reasonably likely to have the same effect upon any ''ordinary or reasonable'' person from a similar background.

Addressing a packed courtroom yesterday, Justice Mordecai Bromberg stated his agreement with much of that argument.

"I am satisfied that fair-skinned Aboriginal people, or some of them, were reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to have been offended, insulted, humiliated or intimidated by the imputations conveyed by the newspaper articles,'' he said as he delivered a summary of his findings that stood, in its 25-minute brevity, in stark contrast to the eight days of arguments in which both sides had put their cases in late March and early April.

In his rather more wordy 143-page written judgment, arrived at after some 175 days of deliberation, Justice Bromberg made frequent reference to ''the mocking or derisive tone'' of Bolt's writings.

He wrote that Bolt's use of language and structure ''is highly suggestive and designed to excite''. His style was ''not careful, precise or exact'' and the language ''not moderate or temperate but often strong and emphatic''.

''There is a liberal use of sarcasm and mockery,'' he wrote. ''Language of that kind has a heightened capacity to convey implications beyond the literal meaning of the words utilised. It is language which invites the reader to not only read the lines, but to also read between the lines.''

Any reader doing just that would have had a reasonable chance of coming to the conclusion that ''people who are not really Aboriginal are taking benefits that were intended for 'real' Aboriginal people'', that their motivation was ''political or to facilitate career-based opportunities'', and that their choice was ''divisive and racist'', in Justice Bromberg's view.

In sum, these imputations amounted to a breach of Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

That section states that: ''It is unlawful for a person to do an act, otherwise than in private, if: (a) the act is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people; and (b) the act is done because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the other person or of some or all of the people in the group.''

The point of Section 18C, he explained, was to protect ''both individuals and society from the ills of the dissemination of racial prejudice''.

Having established that there was a breach of Section 18C, Justice Bromberg then had to consider whether that breach was balanced by the protection of free speech in the exemptions enshrined in Section 18D of the act.

The relevant exemptions cited by Bolt's defence team were around statements made for ''any genuine purpose in the public interest'' and ''fair comment'' that was an ''expression of a genuine belief held by the person making the comment''.

Justice Bromberg found that while Bolt appeared to genuinely hold the views he expressed, his writings were matters merely of public interest, rather than in the public interest.

More damningly, he found they failed the fair comment test on the basis of some shoddy journalism.

''The statements in question appear in an opinion piece,'' Justice Bromberg writes in paragraph 377 of his judgment, ''but they appear to be presented … as facts … The facts in question have not been proven to be true. To the contrary, in relation to most of the individuals concerned, the facts … have been substantially proven to be untrue.''

In paragraph 384, Justice Bromberg writes: ''The deficiencies to which I have referred so far are material and constitute a significant distortion of the facts.''

And in paragraph 405: ''It would have been highly inconvenient [for Bolt's argument] … to have set out facts.''

Justice Bromberg found against Bolt and the Herald and Weekly Times with regard to the two articles, but not the two blog posts - not because of a lack of offence, rather because the offence was to an individual rather than a group. He claimed to have been mindful of the ramifications on the implied right to free speech (Australia has no enshrined right). 

''In finding against I have taken into account the value of freedom of expression and the silencing consequences of a finding of contravention against Mr Bolt and HWT,'' he wrote. ''Given the seriousness of the conduct involved, the silencing consequence appears to me to be justified.

''The intrusion into freedom of expression is of no greater magnitude than that which would have been imposed by the law of defamation.

''Additionally, I take into account that the conduct was directed at an expression of identity. An expression of identity is itself an expression that freedom of expression serves to protect. That expression also deserves to be considered and valued.''

Back in April, Bolt's lawyer, Neil Young, QC, flagged his intention to lodge an appeal in the event that this case was lost. Now that prospect has become reality, Bolt's publisher is taking a more circumspect approach.

''[HWT] is disappointed with today's Federal Court decision on the representative action by Pat Eatock,'' the company said in a statement issued late yesterday. ''We maintain that the articles were published as part of an important discussion on a matter of public interest. We defended the action because we believe that all Australians ought to have the right to express their opinions freely, even where their opinions are controversial or unpopular.

''We will review the judgment and then consider whether or not to appeal the decision.''

Others have already taken up cudgels on Bolt's behalf.

Liberal Party think tank Menzies House had by mid-afternoon yesterday established a website, supportbolt.com, that called for actions (and donations) in language similar to that used by Bolt outside court.

''Freedom of speech in Australia is under threat,'' the website exhorted. ''We need your help to stand up for our rights before it is too late. What has happened today is disgusting, but can be stopped with your help.

''Today the Federal Court just ruled that freedom of speech no longer exists in our country. That's right, they ruled that Andrew Bolt was guilty for daring to speak the truth about entitlements. And he can voice his opinion no more.''

That last assertion is certainly untrue. While Eatock had sought a gag clause on Bolt that would have prevented him from airing similar views again, that was not granted.

It is important, wrote Justice Bromberg, that ''on social and political issues in particular, people should be able to express their opinions'' even if ''those opinions will at times be ill-considered''.

The ''fair'' in fair comment, he added, ''does not mean objectively reasonable''.

Spencer Zifcak, president of Liberty Victoria, says he is less concerned by the ruling than he had anticipated.

The case is important, he says, ''because it required the judge to weigh in the balance the right to be free of racial intolerance and discrimination on the one hand, and freedom of expression on the other''.

Justice Bromberg came down on the side of freedom from racial discrimination, Zifcak says, ''because of the degree of hurt experienced by the applicants''. On that basis, he says, the conclusion is justified.

''Having said that, Liberty's view has always been that the relevant section of the RDA is drafted too widely.''

Causing offence and insult, Zifcak argues, should be too low a hurdle for the protections of the Act to be triggered.

''The question as to whether Section 18 may transgress the constitution's protection of freedom of public and political communication has not yet been tested in the High Court,'' Zifcak says. ''Bolt is likely to take it there.''

He says it is fair to assume Justice Bromberg wrote his judgment in the full expectation that it would be appealed. And it's equally fair to suspect this issue may not have run its race just yet.

BILLIONS SPENT BUT ABORIGINIES LITTLE BETTER OFF, SAYS REPORT

Phillip Coorey August 8, 2011

THE circumstances of most indigenous Australians are hardly any better today than they were 40 years ago, despite governments having spent tens of billions of dollars, a scathing internal report to federal cabinet says.

The Strategic Review of Indigenous Expenditure, prepared by the federal Department of Finance, finds that despite efforts by successive Commonwealth, state and territory governments, progress against Aboriginal disadvantage has been ''mixed at best''. Outcomes have varied between ''disappointing'' and ''appalling''.

The federal government spends $3.5 billion a year on indigenous programs but the report finds this ''major investment, maintained over many years, has yielded dismally poor returns''. The report was submitted in February 2010 when Kevin Rudd was prime minister.

Its contents were publicised last night by Channel Seven after the network fought a long freedom-of-information battle.

The document offers no joy for either main party and contains criticism of the Northern Territory intervention, started by the Howard government, and the Closing the Gap strategy of Labor.

''The history of Commonwealth policy for indigenous Australians over the past 40 years is largely a story of good intentions, flawed policies, unrealistic assumptions, poor implementation, unintended consequences and dashed hopes,'' it says.

''Strong policy commitments and large investments of government funding have too often produced outcomes which have been disappointing at best and appalling at worst. Individual success stories notwithstanding, the circumstances and prospects on many indigenous Australians are little better in 2010, relative to other Australians, than those which faced their counterparts in 1970.''

It says co-ordination between levels of government and agencies is poor, money is still being wasted and greater rigour is needed when assessing programs, especially the intervention, which Labor has continued.

The Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, said the review was commissioned because the government wanted to improve the lives of indigenous Australians. ''Before the significant reform and investment agenda put in place by the government, services and infrastructure for indigenous Australians had faced decades of under-investment and neglect.''

The shadow treasurer, Joe Hockey, said governments of both persuasions had not applied the same rigour to indigenous programs as other areas but said it was worse under the current one.

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/national/billions-spent-but-aborigines-little-better-off-says-report-20110807-1ihqq.html

ABORIGINAL MASSACRE IN AUSTRALIA THREE RIVERS

GILLARD HANDS BACK NT LAND TO OWNERS

AAP June 07, 201
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard has capped off the first day of her Northern Territory tour by handing a large parcel of Aboriginal land back to its traditional owners.

Two of the four land parcels - Finke Gorge National Park and Simpson Desert stage 4 - were some of the earliest claims lodged under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976.

Ms Gillard gave the deeds, including two belonging to land parcels in the Hermannsburg area, back to their traditional owners at a ceremony in Alice Springs on Tuesday.

The Finke Gorge National Park will be leased back to the Northern Territory for 99 years for use as a national park.

"Traditional owners will have a strong voice in the future management and operation of the park," Ms Gillard said.

"The Central Land Council and traditional owners are working to design community development projects that can be supported with the income received under park leasing arrangements."

Earlier in the day, the prime minister visited a town camp that was slowly being revitalised with new homes and infrastructure.

Ms Gillard acknowledged town camps had become run down.

"(There has been) decades of under-supply, under-investment, overcrowding, squalor and neglect," she told reporters.

"We are seeing the difference around us but there is more to do."

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott encouraged Ms Gillard to get away from sanitised town camps and visit those that remained decrepit.

"I do hope that while she is there, she won't just confine herself to official openings and to visiting town camps that may well have been cleaned up especially for her visit," he said from Brisbane.

"I think it's important that she sees the downside of government policy as well as the upside of government policy."

Ms Gillard said she wanted to talk with local elders in Alice Springs about what could be done about reducing the harm caused by alcohol.

Dr John Boffa, spokesman for the People's Alcohol Action Coalition and a medical officer with the Central Australian Aboriginal Health Congress, said raising the price of cheap wine so it was the same as beer could reduce child neglect and indigenous violence.

"We want it (cheap wine) set at the price of beer, which is about $1.20 a standard drink," he told ABC Radio.

"If we can get rid of cheap wine and shift all the heavy drinkers, particularly young people, to beer, that will make a very big difference."

Ms Gillard heads to the Gove Peninsula, in the northeastern corner of Arnhem Land, tomorrow.

'MESSIAH-LIKE FIGURE' IS DOING OWN HARVESTING

January 15, 2011 - 3:00AM

Advertisement

HE targets the most vulnerable - people fighting custody disputes and bankruptcy proceedings - as well as Aboriginal communities pushing land rights claims.

David Wynn Miller, an American, rakes in hundreds of thousands of dollars in just a few weeks teaching his ''truth language'' or ''syntax language'' at seminars across Australia.

He has disrupted several court cases in NSW, including one recently in Lismore in which a man was about to go on trial in the NSW District Court on serious child sexual assault charges.

While a jury waited to be empanelled in November, the accused, John Jarrett, repeatedly told the court, on Miller's advice, that the indictment was ''not written in the correct sentence structure communication syntax language'' and thus the case should be struck out.

Lawyers from the Aboriginal Legal Service stepped in but several hours later Jarrett was ordered to undergo psychiatric testing. The trial is yet to proceed.

The 30-odd ''law students'' with Miller in the public gallery - all of whom had been at his six-day, $1400 course on the Gold Coast - hailed it a victory. Lawyers present, including the barrister Jarrett had sacked, were stunned.

''The impression I got is [Miller is] doing it all the time … he's creating a great following,'' the barrister, Sam Di Carlo, says. ''This guy should be reported.''

Miller, 62, a retired tool and die welder, is based in Milwaukee and claims to have invented his own language in 1988, based on mathematics and maritime law. He calls the English language a ''fiction''. He writes in capital letters, with an abundance of punctuation, and calls himself the ''king of Hawaii''.

The Los Angeles Times reported this week that Jared Lee Loughner, the man charged after last weekend's shootings in Tucson, Arizona, was believed to have been inspired by Miller's teachings because of a recent series of YouTube rants he filmed about governments using grammar to control the population. Miller says this is ''ridiculous''.

Authorities have been dealing with Miller's courtroom antics in Canada and the US for more than a decade but he has more recently set his sights on Australia and New Zealand.

In 2001, the Miami Herald reported that Miller had been banned from entering Canada for two years after several cases in which judges had jailed people for contempt of court after they had attempted to use his ''truth language'' to defend tax evasion charges.

Last July and August he toured 10 Australian cities and regional centres including Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Perth and Brisbane.

He barged into a Family Court matter in Sydney last year in which a couple were fighting the Department of Community Services for custody of several of their children, and attempted to file 40 pages of gobbledegook.

The couple had spent more than $2000 to fly their barrister from Brisbane to Sydney for a session with Miller. ''They were convinced that Wynn Miller had all the magic solutions,'' said the barrister, who did not want to be named. ''[Miller's teaching] was the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life.''

When DOCS returned the children to the parents two weeks later, Miller's followers lauded him.

The NSW Land and Environment Court last April endured almost two hours of Miller's ravings on grammar and maritime law.

''I'll give you a little secret,'' he told Justice Malcolm Craig. ''Every word that starts in the English language with a vowel, a, e, i, o and u, and followed by two consonants is a word that means no contract … All paper is a vessel in sea of space …''

Miller was representing an engineer, Masood Falamaki, whose long property battle with Wollongong City Council has left him bankrupt.

In December 2009, Miller unsuccessfully applied to the Federal Magistrates Court to appear as an expert witness on ''syntax fraud'' for Falamaki.

The Federal Magistrate Michael Lloyd-Jones dismissed Miller and his supporters as a ''linguistic cult''.

Falamaki is reported to have paid Miller $5000 and says ''people like David Wynn Miller are challenging the judiciary'.

No other people are brave enough to do that.''

Gary Jackson, 52, says the Gold Coast seminar he attended was ''probably the best money I've ever spent''. He says the class of about 40 consisted of people who had travelled from Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and North Queensland, including about six who had lost their houses.

Jackson, who turned to Miller after his house was repossessed last year, says Miller is helping him prepare a breach of contract case in the Queensland Supreme Court using ''syntax language''.

''I would back David Wynn Miller any day rather than one of those snaky solicitors,'' he said.

There are concerns, however, within the Aboriginal community about Miller's influence.

''He's trying to suck us into this quantum language stuff as well because he's going around the place and representing people in court,'' says the veteran Aboriginal rights campaigner Michael Eckford.

One activist, Mark McMurtrie, is listed on court documents as also representing Falamaki.

McMurtrie told the Herald: ''I am neither a student nor supporter of [Miller's] language and law. As a sovereign tribal man of this continent I view his ramblings as relevant to my people.''

Colleen Lloyd, an American who was a partner of Miller's for five years, told the Herald she came under his spell ''during a vulnerable time when I was suffering mercury poisoning and extreme poverty''.

She says people followed him like a ''messiah-like figure''.

Miller's response to several questions via email was mostly incomprehensible. When asked about his Brisbane course next month, which costs $1800 for six days, he wrote (in capital letters): ''When people ask questions on the 'deed of trust' as the trustee and cross-subject-questions, I give them the operational-answers that may help for them to do their own 'learning-search'.

When asked if he had ever been refused a visa to Australia, he wrote: ''No, I hold casino cards and gamble all over the country.'' Regarding the Aboriginal community, he said he was helping ''originees'' to claim back land.

The flyer for the Brisbane course says: ''If you learn how to syntax your contracts you will learn self security. Protect yourself from being harvested.''

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/world/messiahlike-figure-is-doing-own-harvesting-20110114-19r9v.html