*Pic: The Aboriginal Nations … pre-First Fleet …
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been accused of effectively declaring Australia “terra nullius” before British settlement, after remarking that Sydney was “nothing but bush” prior to the arrival of the First Fleet.
During a breakfast for British prime minister David Cameron in Sydney this morning, Mr Abbott made a speech about infrastructure and noted the “extraordinary partnership” between the two countries since the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788.
“As we look around this glorious city, as we see the extraordinary development, it’s hard to think that back in 1788 it was nothing but bush,” Mr Abbott said.
“The marines and the convicts and the sailors that straggled off those 12 ships, just a few hundred yards from where we are now, must have thought they had come almost to the moon.
“Everything would have been so strange. Everything would have seemed so extraordinarily basic and raw, and now a city which is one of the most spectacular cities on our globe.”
Kirstie Parker from the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples said the comments do tremendous damage to the relationship of the Prime Minister and Aboriginal people.
“I’d say they were a blunder except this is becoming a habit for the Prime Minister,” she said.
“On several occasions just in the last couple of months, he has made comments that have erased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from the landscape.”
Ms Parker said it was not a case of reading too much into the remarks, or taking them out of context.
“For the Prime Minister to say there was nothing here but bush is incorrect; there were people here with sophisticated systems and societies and rules,” she said.
“We were here.”
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Russian media picture … the images appear to show a fighter jet shooting a missile in the direction of a passenger jet. Picture: LiveLeak
TASMANIAN TIMES, August 4 …
• Sic Semper Tyrannis: the MH17 shootdown
TT, Sept 2, Bart Wisse …
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• Bill Gammage, The Conversation: The biggest estate on earth: how Aborigines made Australia
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• Leonard Colquhoun, in Comments: Two other stories about a Ukrainian shoot-down of MH17: ~ http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/russian-tv-airs-clearly-fake-image-to-claim-ukraine-shot-dow ~ this story in the UKN ‘Telegraph’: “Russian pictures of MH17 being shot by Ukrainian jet ‘fake'”. Remember that the USSR was the pioneer in pictorial manipulation, with old photographs of ‘nonpersons’ being primitively photo-shopped into silver birches or sets of steps.
