Wednesday 13th January 1999


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Hanson's son in custody

Scott

Have you seen the way in which Pauline Hanson is referred to in today's Courier mail (p3) in the article concerning her son Stephen? She is described, not as a politician, but as 'his infamous politician mother'! Such a description would seem to me to be verging on the libellous.

Kind regards
Avril Baynes

@notd readers will have probably seen the media thrashing that the arrest of Pauline Hanson's son Steven has got in the papers and on television.

The Courier-Mail again demonstrated their perfect lack of objective reporting in this short, opinion based piece which goes against all accepted norms of reporting (12th January 1999) as highlighted in the article below:

Hanson's son held in custody on warrants.

Pauline Hanson's estranged son Steven was locked up for two nights in the Brisbane watchhouse, but spurned his mother's help.

Steven Jack Hanson, 23, was arrested in East Brisbane on Sunday night after police found three warrants for outstanding fines during a credentials check at a random breath test stop.

But he was kept in custody for a second night when paperwork regarding one of his fine options did not arrive before 6pm yesterday.

Det Snr-Sgt Paul Bergin said the warrants issued to Mr Hanson for allegedly possessing a dangerous drug, failing to vote in an election and not wearing a helmet on a motorcycle.

The warrants were issued in Townsville between 1994 and 1995 and totalled $536.

Hanson had the option to pay the fine, spend time in jail or do community service.

Hanson opted for the community service.

He said he did not want his mother to contact him.

The split between Mr Hanson and his controversial politician mother was made public during the election.

In a magazine article, Steven Hanson alleged he did not expect his high-profile mother to support him through a life threatening illness he said he was suffering.

What the above article does not say is that Steven Hanson was reportedly paid Au$20,000 by New Idea to spill his guts in a personal tirade against his mother during the Federal Election in September 1998.

The Yorta Yorta tribe

Dear Sir
I am very happy for you to circulate the article. It usually takes a few weeks for them to appear on our website -- they have to be adapted a bit. I am enclosing the article as it was submitted to the Courier-Mail, and with the title I used. I don't think they made many editorial changes.

Kind regards
Ron

Courier-Mail Column: The Yorta Yorta Case Ron Brunton

The week before Christmas seems to have become the traditional time for the release of controversial judgements on Aboriginal heritage and land claims.

On 19 December 1995, the Hindmarsh Island Bridge Royal Commission presented its report; on 23 December 1996 the High Court issued its Wik decision; and on 18 December last, Justice Howard Olney of the Federal Court found that native title did not exist over land and water the Yorta Yorta people were claiming in Victoria and New South Wales.

There may be good reasons for this rather curious timing. Perhaps judges hope the Christmas break will give people the opportunity to actually read their findings before launching into wild commentary. But if this is what Justice Olney wished, he must now be feeling sorely disappointed.

A Yorta Yorta spokeswoman immediately used the ‘G’ word – accusing the court of committing ‘genocide’. The environmental group Friends of the Earth issued a press release stating that it was a day of ‘absolute shame’ for Justice Olney and the Federal Court.

And in a less inflammatory tone, Australian Democrats Senator Lyn Allison said ‘the system is clearly inadequate if people robbed of their land title little over 100 years ago cannot affirm their traditional rights that extend back many thousands of years’.

But if the senator’s logic is accepted, the only way to make the system ‘adequate’ would be to return all of Australia to Aboriginal ownership. In a time scale encompassing thousands of years, why should people ‘robbed’ of their land 100 years ago have more rights than those who lost their land 150 or 200 years ago? And why should Aborigines be precluded from affirming their traditional rights over ‘robbed’ land now held under freehold title?

One of the tragedies of human history is that so much of it is a tale of dispossession. Many of the early settlers and convicts who came to Australia from the British Isles had themselves been ‘robbed’ of customary rights to land, or were the descendants of such unfortunates.

As Justice Olney stated, the Native Title Act gave him no warrant ‘to play the role of social engineer, righting the wrongs of past centuries and dispensing justice according to contemporary notions of political correctness rather than according to law’. And as a former Aboriginal Land Commissioner, he cannot be portrayed as a crusty old conservative, seeking any excuse to reject a native title claim. Indeed, I would be surprised if his findings in the Yorta Yorta case gave him any great pleasure.

A judge who was unsympathetic to the Yorta Yorta might have taken strong action against the two senior claimants who were caught out telling deliberate lies. Personally, I believe that it was unwise to allow a lie under oath to go unpunished, because this sends out an unfortunate message, one that may ultimately ensure that our legal system really does become ‘inadequate’.

I must declare a specific interest in the Yorta Yorta case. I was called as an anthropological witness by some groups who were opposing the native title claim, although Justice Olney stated that the various anthropologists, historians and linguists who gave evidence did not have much influence on his decision. Nevertheless, his findings are consistent with the arguments presented by those of us who appeared on behalf of respondents to the claim.

There was overwhelming evidence that the Yorta Yorta people had lost or abandoned those connections with the land that derived from a traditional system of laws and customs, or from anything that might reasonably be seen as a continuation of that system. By ceasing to acknowledge and observe these laws and customs, the foundation of their claim to native title had disappeared, and the High Court has determined that in these circumstances native title cannot be revived.

The evidence did not just come from outside observers, but from the statements of Yorta Yorta themselves. Justice Olney cited an 1881 petition in which ancestors of the present claimants said they had lost possession of all the land within their tribal boundaries and that they wished to change their old mode of life.

In the 1930s Yorta Yorta leaders were denouncing Australians who wanted to prevent them from adopting ‘the culture of the white man’. They argued that the only aspects of traditional culture that should be retained were items like corroborees, but only if they were treated in the same way that Europeans treated their old folk dances.

As recently as two decades ago a number of the most senior Yorta Yorta elders – including some of the present claimants themselves – were recorded as stating that the traditional culture had long disappeared, and that only the most scattered fragments had been retained.

Since that time, many Yorta Yorta have sought to revive aspects of their traditional culture. In some instances this has meant adopting practices based on fantasies about the past. A number of witnesses gave evidence about their commitment to the environment based on traditional customs, and said that they only took from the land and waters ‘such food as is necessary for immediate consumption’.

As Justice Olney noted, this is commendable. But it represents a definite break with traditional customs rather than any continuity. Early observers were struck by the ‘very wasteful’ way in which the Yorta Yorta and other Aboriginal people actually treated their resources, and their indifference towards conservation. Contemporary Yorta Yorta have taken their cue from Friends of the Earth, not from their ancestors.

If people like Senator Allison really believe that the Yorta Yorta have suffered a serious injustice under the current law, they should campaign to change the law so that native title can be claimed by descendants of the traditional owners even if they have not maintained an appropriate connection with the land. Senator Allison could give a wonderful start to such a campaign by allowing Aborigines to affirm their traditional rights over any land that she now holds, and convincing all her Democrat colleagues to do the same.

Ron Brunton is an anthropologist with the Institute of Public Affairs on the Sunshine Coast

National Party in disarray

Here is an extract from the Sydney Morning Herald article:

Mr Armstrong said the Federal Government's failure to provide sufficient Medicare provider numbers to doctors willing to relocate to the country for five or 10 years was a direct cause of the rural doctor shortage. He said three years ago he promoted the scheme to the Federal Minister for Health, Dr Wooldridge, "yet where is the action?"

A spokeswoman for Dr Wooldridge said the minister was "sorry" Mr Armstrong had not realised that 1996 legislation allowed for Medicare provider numbers - which license doctors to operate and bill under the Medicare system - to be attached to towns classified as areas of need.

What they are being told... about the "sins" of the white man

Some interesting comments on ABC Television at 4.30am this morning in an "Open Learning Agency of Australia Pty Ltd" program about Aborigines produced by the University of South Australia. (Open Learning Pty Ltd is owned by Monash University - guess who funds this trash!) - Unfortunately I only caught the tail end of the program.

"A heightened sense of political and cultural identity has been the basis of the feeling of pan-Aboriginality"....

Prof Colin Bourke University of South Australia: "The Aboriginal family is the core of Aboriginal society and always has been. But today, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, it is assuming an even greater importance because of what has happened in the past. Aboriginal families have been attacked by Colonial Authorities and Governments. Aboriginal peoples have been removed from their families, because of their colour, because of their beliefs and because they wouldn't acquies to authoritarian rule."

Roberta Sykes (the discredited "Aboriginal" author: "The black family has really been fragmented in this state one out of every six children was removed from their parents and their former records of that are a lot more were removed than are formerly recorded.

"That's large numbers of people and certainly in the enquiry into the Aboriginal Deaths in custody they found that the majority of people who died in custody had an institutionalised background. Institutionalised as a child and no personal history and so while this institutionalisation continues we can continue to look forward to these sorts of events in the future. We are laying down the path by which this may occur. It seems to me the only effective way that we can break into this cycle is to stop it before it starts and in order to do that we need to look at Youth and Community Services or whatever those government departments which have something to do with family breakdown, Police Departments and Court Procedures. We need to go out of our way to nurture the Aboriginal family."

Murdoch on the Internet

Well wouldn't you just know it. Murdoch doesn't like the Internet.

The Courier-Mail tells us today that he spoke in Singapore last night and had this to say, "I don't think other media companies are doing much more on the Internet than we are. We don't see any need to hurry this.

"I believe I am a skeptic as to the value of all these things, as the shareholder is, but I absolutely do not underestimate it.

"I think the Internet, which will be a fantastic service for the public all over the world, will actually destroy more businesses than it will create, in the sense that it will actually wipe out the middlemen."

The comments were made together with the statement that The Courier-Mail would "wait before plunging into cyberspace".

At home in Karana Downs

Each morning I have a special visitor to my office. The little fellow is called Max. Max lives about 500 metres down the road and spends his whole day visiting the neighbourhood - his owners say they hardly ever see him at home.

He is such a friendly little dog and so unterritorial he arrives at my office shortly after me - at about 4.30am - demands to be let in then spends about 10 minutes harranging me, rushing around the place before he moves on to the next home and checking out the odds for a bit of free tucker.

Just thought I would share that with you.

Yesterday thousands of Ipswich homes were damaged with repair costs expected to mount to millions of dollars. I took a drive down Mt Crosby road, Tivoli to visit the area and took these photographs of one of the damaged houses.

Large gum trees were literally ripped out of the ground or torn in half - it must have been quite frightening to be in the eye of the storm which was only 5 km from the global office.

Microsoft.

I could fill this page ten times over with Microsoft horror stories. Anyone who have developped software using Microsoft products would know what I mean. It's not unusual for a major Microsoft programming environment like the one I use to have over 5,000 bugs. Under the threat of legal action, I once forced Microsoft to send me a CD ROM burnt especially for me with the bug-free (sort of) version of the product I had paid good money for. I can do that because I have 20 years experience in computers and I don't take bullshit from anyone. However, I do feel for the million of novices who do not know their software is buggy and think that they are doing something wrong. How often does your windows 95 or 98 freezes up? How often do you have programs bombing out with an error message? How often do you have to recover your active desktop in win 98? How often does your MS Explorer crash? If you were using an operating system like Linux, you wouldn't even know what a crash or a virus is.

The thing that worries me a great deal is Microsoft's habit of taking over companies which come up with top products. Recently, they took over the Internet's leading banner advertising company, the LinkExchange. I also remember when they took over the gamezone and immediately made it incompatible with Netscape browsers. Now, you can expect the LinkExchange HTML code to be incompatible with Netscape. In fact, it already is because the IFRAME tag they insist on is only supported by the MS Explorer. And the funny thing is that the IFRAME tag serves absolutely no purpose other than being incompatible with Netscape and making local testing extremely hard because of the error message that pops up every time the URL for the frame cannot be accessed.

Bill Gates wants the Internet to be his and if he cannot get it as a whole, he will buy as many pieces of it as he can. Let's all hope the tide will soon turn and that the law will catch up with the big Microsoft bully. In the meantime, remember you have the ultimate Internet power at your fingertips: you can choose what to click and what not to click.

JG Estiot

Barbarism

One of my brothers-in-law always maintained that civilization as we know it would be just a memory once drivers ignored traffic lights. Well, that's been routine for years now in Sydney so I've been told. So much for civilization as we knew it.

But new depths of barbarism were plumbed yesterday. On ABC radio last night I heard that a person or persons broke into Tassie's biggest winery and opened the taps on six large stainless steel tanks of wine. One hundred thousand litres of red wine literally went down the drain.

I've never drunk a Tassie red, but even if they are execrable - which I'm sure they are not; Australia produces marvellous wines - this marvellous fruit (!) of human ingenuity and labour did not deserve this treatment.

What sort of person(s) would do such a thing? I doubt your average yobbo let alone crim would bother. No, it would have to be the work of a health fascist, or some other variant of intolerant ideologue who infantilely demands everybody live as he or she does.

A pox on all such mean-spirited, obnoxious, poisonous, worthless, life-hating, legitimate pleasure-denying spoilers.

Antonia

Immigration from New Zealand

Hi Scott,

tried to send this through your news email, but it would not accept my New Zealand email address.

Just read today's news about the Asians coming in through New Zealand, and it was strange because we heard similar here in New Zealand where we are holidaying.

On Sunday Kurt and I went out trout fishing with a charter boat on Lake Taupo.During conversation I said how many New Zealanders were migrating to Australia. The skipper said "New Zealanders or Asians"?

Continuing on with the discussion, he said that many people believed that there were many Asians who were refused citizenship to Australia obtaining New Zealand citizenship. This made it far easier to migrate to Australia under the Australian immigration laws. This way they could still come in through the back door even though they could not immigrate as Asian citizens.

>From reading todays news it appears that this is true, I think that this should be investigated by One Nation. Perhaps Robyn Spencer with her links to immigration could check it out.

Regards from New Zealand - Bette and Kurt

Drugs

In reference to Antonia's comments regarding drugs in yesterday's (12/1/99) @notd, I agree wholeheartedly. Young people carry the burden of the drug scene upon their shoulders.

Following is an extract of an address I gave on Ecstasy, or 'E' as it is commonly known: Ecstasy is the drug of the 90’s. It is no longer just a dance drug, as this report by Kathy Evans shows. “It looked more like a coffee morning than a party. All these middle-aged, sensible types standing around clutching plates of fruit. They looked like they were having an unusually good time, though, wrinkled faces wreathed in smiles, bodies, some plump with age, swaying in time to the music, mainly from the ‘60s. God, anyone would have thought they were on Ecstasy. They were. This was the scene at a recent house party given by middle age academics. There were 10 guests, most over 40, including a government official, a school teacher and the managing director of a building firm. And before the party they had taken a tab of Ecstasy, at a cost of $60 each, as an experiment. To see what it felt like.” These are meant to be educated citizens leading the younger generation.

Of course young people indulge in it too. Anna Woods died from taking Ecstasy, the same week as English girl, Leah Betts. ‘A Current Affair’ decided they would milk this tragedy for all it was worth, sending Anna’s sister to a rave. Within 10 minutes, she had shown Australia how to buy Ecstasy, how much it was, what it looked like, and where to find it. And Mr. Betts, Leah’s father, well he was a tabloid's dream: He was once in the drug squad. Media madness at it's finest...

In regards to Bob Carr, he will predictably use the controversial alcoholic iceblocks as a central issue during his campaign. Imagine the public outcry if our education system was to disintegrate further, as inebriated six year olds take to the classrooms. It would certainly make Mr Carr a laughing stock.

Just another drunken and stoned young person of the 1990's,

Shondra B.

Thoughts

as a person who spends the majority of my time outside australia,i would like to point out a few things that i notice about one nation when viewed on australia's abc international.i must point out that i agree with most things about one nation but not all,anyway here i go.

1.one nation politicians shouldn't act with knee jerk reactions to things that the other parties react to.think about it because the real people want to see some thought put into policies,not just white washing.

2.when talking about imigration,look into all countries in the world at their imigration policies,so when some smartarse journo asks a question it will show that the party is well informed on how other countries deal with their immigration problems.

3.same as above for foreign investment.

4.be careful and not answer leading questions,slow down on reponse time to questions.

hopefully the above may help.it may not be new revelations to you but it is just the observations of one traveller

best of luck in the future

Andrew

from the global office:

Another perfect day in paradise.

Have a good one.

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