2020 Tokens, Tracks And Tossers

Leonard Colquhoun

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 18th century Noble Savage has been updated to Herbert Cole Coombs’ 21st century Eco-custodian. Both are fantasies of people in nice houses in leafy surrounds; both see the objects of their dreams as items in a collective, not as individuals or gatherings of individuals. Mrs Thatcher was right – “There is no such thing as Society. There are individual men and women, and there are families”. We can add “and other gatherings of individuals”, and unless individual indigenous women and men are enabled to freely make individual decisions about their own lives, no amount of PR hype will spin all their troubles away. Another Thatcherism is relevant here: “No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions. He had money as well”, and money doesn’t grow from 2020 chatfests. They do, however, use up a lot of it, and recommend ways to waste it, both old and new.

“Change will not come any time soon unless we cast aside failed ideologies of the past and programs that cannot demonstrate measurable improvements. Community-level solutions are required to address substance abuse, improve education and enhance economic participation. It may well be that some form of representation is necessary if it is connected to community-level solutions, but let’s not have the tail wag the dog; the last thing we need is a reinvention of Aborigines Talking Shit In Canberra (ATSIC).”

Vatican II with accompanying aggiornamento it wasn’t, not even a re-run of Mao’s call about Letting a Hundred Flowers Blossom and a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend. Lu Kewen’s 2020 chatfest, unlike the Roman Church’s equivalent four decades ago, did not open any windows to invigorating breezes of new ideas; rather, it was more like re-opening a door on a long-sealed cellar and inhaling its stale and foetid air.

The usual line-up was there, of course – it was never going to be anything but a coven of the faithful: the bridge-walkers, the sorry-sayers, culturally approved celebs (no Britney or Kylie types, thanks), the unscholarly credentialled, the herd-thinking academics, would-be philosopher-queens who’d lead us bogans, ‘burbanites and bushwhackers along the Yellow Brick Road out of the Kansas of the last 11 years.

The expected dress-up and spin was applied, too, although not as mortally as to those poor, deluded Tall Poppies who briefly bloomed and contended 50 years ago in China. The facilitators did very well: almost no idea survived which failed to accord with Lu’s latte set; there were reports that some of the pronunciamentos failed to express what was actually discussed, but rather what was expected: Mandy Rice-Davies’ famous dictum once again: “Well, [they] would, wouldn’t [they]”.

If the overall effect of Lu’s Acolytes Talking Shit in Canberra was just a bit of wasted space in print and some ephemeral multi-media photo ops, not much harm would’ve been done – harm-minimisation working for all of us. But if authorities, legislators, regulators, and, worst of all, self-important judicial big-wigs, start acting on this stuff, we’re in for PC Ground Hog Decade. Practical stuff hardly got a mention, which is hardly surprising, as few of the attenders looked as if they know which end of monkey wrench to hold. Plastic bags, alcopops and ATSIC typify the zeitgeist.

Ban, or tax (Let’s be honest here, ‘levy’ is spin for ‘tax’) plastic carry bags, especially from supermarkets. There were calls for Coles and Woolworths to be made to pay for them out of their profits – as if. Calls for them to be replaced by the sorts of brown paper bags seen in US film and TV, or nostalgic reminders of how granny used to wrap up the kitchen garbage in newspaper, and put it in the dustbin, ignoring that putting highly recyclable paper products into landfill is simply stupid. What was recycled, of course, was the now much-debunked canard about how plastic bags kill millions of maritime animals, especially in Canada; at least the State governments had the electoral nous, or even the common sense, to reject this homage-to-Gaia fantasy.

Shock !! the young are getting drunk !! They’re bingeing on alcopops, not even having the good taste to take their C2H5OH as subtly-nosed chardonnay or a sunny-side-of-the-slope red. No, and how disgusting this is, it’s ocker bogan drinks like Bundy ‘n’ Coke, or, worse still, poison from the Great Satan such as Jack Daniels and Wild Turkey, or the latest fizzies. Lu, fresh from so cleverly spinmeistering his Summit, leapt into ever-so-decisive action doubling of the kiddies’ drink tax rate in the dead of night (Clever, eh ?) – that’ll stop ‘em !! Again, as if, says anyone with any knowledge of the young, such as, say, parents and teachers. Sound bites masquerading once more as sound policy. BTW, never mind that there is reported evidence that adolescent alcohol intake is stable, if not declining.

But these two examples of Spin over Substance are minor compared with what the bien pensants called for in matters indigenous. More sceptically prescient observers had already picked them: Treaty and ATSIC V2.0 (or Mk II in the old language). The glaringly obvious deficiencies in the old policy and practice of the last three decades are to be redressed by – more of the old policy and practice, probably re-badged, in the way government ministries get new names to cover up their tired old incompetence.

A Treaty looks good in safe, comfortable and conformist academia, those herd-thinkers whose tenured positions insulate them from worry about the next meal, or how far away it is. Big capital city bureaucrats, including many Aboriginals not living in dirt shanties 1000 km from the nearest medical clinic, like the idea – it gives them a warm inner glow, saving them from having to come up with workable solutions to day-to-day problems. But no matter how well spun a Treaty is, it will not put food into infant mouths, save children from incestual molestation, teach school pupils (assuming that teachers and schools exist) literacy and numeracy, provide actual jobs in a real economy. Getting your placards ready for the next Sorry Day, or working out which bridge to stroll over this year (Last year’s bridge didn’t have much of view, did it ?) are not among the solutions, but perpetuating the problems. But you and I know that already, don’t we ?

Finally, ATSIC: both Version I and the proposed Version II are unworkable, for the most ideologically-approved of reasons.

You’re a Catholic, a Collingwood supporter, a postmodernist, an ecologist, a Greenie, a pillager ‘n’ raper of forests because of something you do or believe. You’re None of the Above solely because of your epidermal pigmentation. It would be legally and practicably possible to set up an elected Commission for Each of the Above, because the definitive criterion for each group is quite clear.

Not so with ATSIC, because there is no definitive criterion for voting or being voted for. The question, “What is an Aboriginal ?” is unanswerable. Or, is answerable only by applying a criterion awfully similar to the former South African apartheid arrangements or the persisting Indian caste hierarchies:

Race.

And don’t be fooled by the rather dumb attempts at side-stepping this awkward point by the “If you culturally feel aboriginal, then you’re an Aboriginal”. Do you just have to make a suitably-phrased declaration in a culturally-appropriate manner? Or is there to be an indigenous equivalent of the current Australian citizenship test ? (And what would go into such a test ?)

If it’s inheritance, do you qualify with three great-grandparents of your eight, one great-great-grandparent of your 16? Would four of the 16 being white redneck rapists from the Back o’ Bourke disqualify you? How can these questions be asked, let alone answered?

Interestingly, prominent Melbourne QC Peter Faris, former chairman of the National Crime Authority, raised the same question in the Legal Affairs section of The Australian, Fri 9 May 08, in commenting on the Victorian government’s proposed Koori County (= District) Court:

Victorian Aborigines are overwhelmingly mixed blood and often with 1/8th or 1/16th Aboriginal parentage. It is nonsense to say that a person of 1/16th Vietnamese and 15/16th European blood needs to have a special court to tailor his sentence to his Vietnamese cultural needs. Anyone making this argument would be laughed out of court. And yet, we will now make it the law in the case of Aborigines.

Previously, Faris raised the other unmentionable:

“Section 8 [of the new Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities] states: “Every person is equal before the law.” This seems to directly contradict the concept of Koori courts, where we now have a separate court system, separate court procedures and no doubt separate punishments for a group of persons defined by race. We will be told they are “separate but equal”, which is the historical basis . . . of apartheid in South Africa.” (Full article –

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23666993-17044,00.html )

A quasi-parliamentary indigenous representative body is both a feel-good tokenistic distraction and a cruel perverse fraud. The one recently disbanded clearly, in all senses of the word, didn’t work; more likely than not, it alienated the very majority upon whose continuing goodwill and forbearance indigenous advancement depends. In a brutally clear expression of reality, Wesley Aird, a member of the Gold Coast Native Title Group and a board member of the Bennelong Society, deconstructed the acronym A.T.S.I.C. as Aboriginals Talking Shit In Canberra.

Just like the 2020TSIC, actually.

30 years of such talk, and remote communities’ health, welfare, literacy, numeracy, whatever, is worse. This particular road to hell paved with good intentions should be called The Nugget Coombs Track.

For the whole article: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23607245-5014047,00.html

Leonard Colquhoun 7248

For www.oldtt.pixelkey.biz
May 2008