Opinion
6th April 2000
The issue of the 'plight' of Aborigines is not so much about compassion, of which there is little, but about the platform of pontificating for shallow politicians ...ALL OF THEM.
The situation I would like to confront every bleeding heart of the 'Aborigine cause' is this. Take one sweaty, dusty, bare-footed, snotty-nosed, tattered clothed Aborigine to the door of their home one night and ask the self-righteous advocate of Aborigine causes to put their visitor up for the night.
How many of us would do it? I am damned sure that I would not!
Now that according to the purist is racism. So what! That decision is a matter of personal choice. Candidly I am fed up to the teeth hearing about the plight and deprivations of these 'political footballs.' What has been lost in all this nonsense is that the issue that has become the burning topic the 'stolen generation' was also of its time a 'government decision' made by politicians. Today it is the same bungling ineptitude based on political posturing that sees another generation, one might be tempted to call them 'lost' as well, of politicians doing what they do best ...stuffing everything up!
Growing up in New Zealand, a country renowned for its racial tolerance, in the days before the intervention of 'black politics', my picture of the Australian Aborigine was that of a nomadic people, who were 'less' than their white brothers. Never for a moment did I ever equate the Maori, with the Australian Aborigine. The reason is not hard to fathom.
The Maori, not as is wrongly claimed indigenous to New Zealand, are a race of people who by the strength of their character, their bearing and their intellect have long 'commanded' respect. As one who unlike many Australians has had a strong interface with the 'other' race, I can honestly say that I can never remember seeing the Maori people in general as being different. Many of my Maori friends were quite brilliant students and excelled, whilst the others were no less or more academically endowed than their European counter-parts.
The pages of New Zealand history are written with many glorious chapters of how the Maori has richly contributed to that tapestry.
Forgetting for a moment the 'image' of Maori bikie gangs, a product largely of unemployment, with its consequence of a falling off of self-esteem, the Maori people generally engender a great deal of respect. They do not cry for unremitting eulogies of sorrow, nor demand respect. Never-the-less they have extracted much from this new vogue 'black politics' that the New Zealand Government were 'black-mailed' into.
I cannot say that the same can be said of the Aborigines, by the Australian population as a whole. What I see is a people who by natural instinct prefer to live a simple nomadic existence. It is true of course that the advent of the European has removed much of that land from their desire to 'go where they want.' In this sense the European descent upon this land, must be viewed by them as an 'invasion'. But history is written of people's being conquered and dispossessed ...that is the nature of man.
I am afraid I am not one of those who try to transpose the events of yester-year, to today's standards. Had those who rant and rail today been born of those times, they too, would have been a party to the conditions and values of the day. What was seen to be right at that time was most likely done for the best of intentions. Certainly the Church organisations would tell you that. Yet today we have all these bleeding hearts crying in hindsight. They call on a whole raft of international treaties to justify their arguments. The assumption of course is that these international 'laws' are sacrosanct. Many would argue that the element of commonsense has gone out the window and that we are now being herded like cattle.
Yes I do have sympathy for those who were torn from their Mothers and fathers, yet most of those who are paraded before the media like prize exhibits, would never see the light of day were it not for those who fan the flame of this political malcontent.
Most Australians I believe would have a natural sense of compassion for these souls, but they are fed up with the 'Aborigines' who have a biological foot in both camps. There seems to be a marked ratio of 'political activism' increasing with the lower biological Aborigine component. How many 'pale' Aborigines do we see at the coal-face of this festering conflagration? It is one thing to fight for the depravation of one's people, but it is another to use that as a political tool to improve ones political ambitions. There are far too many Aborigine activists doing precisely that. For my money I would sooner hear from a unknown Aborigine, giving an account of how these things affect him or her.
Finally a word about the 'stolen generation'.
Why has this become the buzzword of the day? What is so different from the depravation suffered by the Aborigines, than that of those who were 'transported' to Australia for petty crimes … for those young men in the flower of their youth who were sent off to two world wars ...some never to return, some scarred and maimed for life ...the young lads who were sent out from Britain to places like Australia, to end up in Church establishments to be sodomised and equally scarred for life ...and of course the people who became the victims of another politicians 'grand plan' the victims of Buchanwald, Auschwitz and the others.
There is no doubt that the Aborigine question is a confronting one, but I often wonder if the white man and his entourage of varying shades of 'coloured whites' were to butt out and leave it to the Aborigine himself to determine, if we might not all be a little wiser ...and better served by our meddling politicians.