Australia

[Jose Jones]

3 hours ago, CapeRed said:

I don’t believe that people don’t want the gap closed and to see a positive change . A change that was proposed such as this needed a lot more information behind it. I struggle to understand what the gov is doing with the almost $40 billion a year allocated for aboriginal affairs.

$40 billion a year, of course!

It is pretty simple, the Indigenous people had their land stolen, their children stolen, were legally classed not as humans, but as fauna up until 1960, and are suffering worse health, education and incarceration outcomes.

 

And all they asked in return was a body that could advise the government on indigenous issues, so they could take a little bit of control of their own affairs.

And to stop any future governments from getting rid of it, they wanted it enshrined in the constitution.

[Jose Jones]

6 minutes ago, Moo said:

 

Out of interest what details were missing, in terms of the consequences of a vote in favour?

This was the question:

 

“A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

Do you approve this proposed alteration?”

[Jose Jones]

2 minutes ago, Jose Jones said:

This was the question:

 

“A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

Do you approve this proposed alteration?”

Pretty vague eh?

[Evelyn Tentions]

The Guardian is the only media that hasn't gone full RWNJ, including the ABC.

LNP (Australian tories) led by Peter Dutton blindly oppose everything. The No case was championed by 3 coconuts, all in the pay of mining corporations (who want to keep mining unfettered on Indigenous lands) The Merde-och press (and the rest) amplified the lies, misrepresentations and misinformation. 

To be fair to the racist cunts in Australia, it's not just Indigenous people that they discriminate against,  Southern Europeans have only become acceptable recently (and their 2nd generation are as bad as Anglos). Asians, Africans, Middle Eastern all suffer.

Fuck, even I got abused as a Pommy migrant in the early 70s. The White Australia policy wasn't ended until Gough Whitlam (who for me shares a pedestal with Bill Shankly) in 1973. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Australia_policy

[SasaS]

I bet the campaigns were conducted in a mutually respectful manner dealing mainly with carefully thought out arguments and actual issues at hand and in no way was it all plunged in a divisive culture war and seen as an opportunity to express political affiliations, ideological leanings and a desire to tell the current government what you think of their performance unrelated to the referendum they backed.

[Jarvinja Ilnow]

7 hours ago, Jose Jones said:

Yes the lack of detail allowed the opposition room to fill in the gaps with bespoke lies and fear-mongering for all different types of people.

Pretty naive politics really.

 

Although that being said, I still can’t believe the margin of the result. Will go down as a shameful moment in the country’s history.

 

And there is the glaring error in the referendum. Even Lidia Thorpe voted against it because it had no substance. Apparently,  aboriginal people get 3 x the money spent on them yet they are still living in poverty with no hope of employment. That suggests a vast weakness in the system that is continuing to fail them. Maybe the Aussie govt should do a bit more thinking about what is going wrong, in detail, rather than making vague well-meaning gestures?

[bossy]

2 hours ago, Jarvinja Ilnow said:

And there is the glaring error in the referendum. Even Lidia Thorpe voted against it because it had no substance. Apparently,  aboriginal people get 3 x the money spent on them yet they are still living in poverty with no hope of employment. That suggests a vast weakness in the system that is continuing to fail them. Maybe the Aussie govt should do a bit more thinking about what is going wrong, in detail, rather than making vague well-meaning gestures?

Maybe by including aboriginal people in deciding what to do with the money, recognising their value and importance and acknowledging the different way of life many desire. 
I’ve been to the Oz a few times. The first time, racist MP Pauline Hampson (sp?) had a 13 year old aboriginal kid jailed over Christmas for protesting at a speech she made. Crazy watching the news and listening to the justification for it.

And as for the Guardian (I know it wasn’t you who brought this up) being some sort of dodgy MSM outlet, where the fuck is there a news and information site that’s completely without an angle. I’m happy to be classed as a liberal guy - small l- and I read liberal news. 
Australia is beautiful, I love lots about the place, but i also hate the way it treats the people who were there first. 

[Jarvinja Ilnow]

52 minutes ago, bossy said:

Maybe by including aboriginal people in deciding what to do with the money, recognising their value and importance and acknowledging the different way of life many desire. 
I’ve been to the Oz a few times. The first time, racist MP Pauline Hampson (sp?) had a 13 year old aboriginal kid jailed over Christmas for protesting at a speech she made. Crazy watching the news and listening to the justification for it.

And as for the Guardian (I know it wasn’t you who brought this up) being some sort of dodgy MSM outlet, where the fuck is there a news and information site that’s completely without an angle. I’m happy to be classed as a liberal guy - small l- and I read liberal news. 
Australia is beautiful, I love lots about the place, but i also hate the way it treats the people who were there first. 

I'm not disagreeing with the fact that aboriginal people need to be in charge of their welfare and ambitions, far from it. It's the appalling lack of thought that went into this empty vessel of a referendum. It's simplistic to  attribute the result just to Aussie racism. Albanese expected people to vote for a blank cheque and it seems many were worried about that. He was in charge of this and he's been lazy as fuck with the detail.

 

If the Yes vote was serious about improving aboriginal people's lives they should have put some critical thought into it. Now all they've done is ruin a promising opportunity and set the cause back years.

[bossy]

3 hours ago, Jarvinja Ilnow said:

I'm not disagreeing with the fact that aboriginal people need to be in charge of their welfare and ambitions, far from it. It's the appalling lack of thought that went into this empty vessel of a referendum. It's simplistic to  attribute the result just to Aussie racism. Albanese expected people to vote for a blank cheque and it seems many were worried about that. He was in charge of this and he's been lazy as fuck with the detail.

 

If the Yes vote was serious about improving aboriginal people's lives they should have put some critical thought into it. Now all they've done is ruin a promising opportunity and set the cause back years.

A blank cheque is the least that should be offered. 

[Jarvinja Ilnow]

55 minutes ago, bossy said:

A blank cheque is the least that should be offered. 

No, the least that should be offered is constructive and effective solutions, not just empty gestures and platitudes.

[bossy]

28 minutes ago, Jarvinja Ilnow said:

No, the least that should be offered is constructive and effective solutions, not just empty gestures and platitudes.

So vote not to allow representation just in case it doesn’t work.
It was a racist victory. I’ll shut up now because I know what I think and I know you disagree with me. 

[Jarvinja Ilnow]

Just now, bossy said:

So vote not to allow representation just in case it doesn’t work.
It was a racist victory. I’ll shut up now because I know what I think and I know you disagree with me. 

That's not what I said at all. Nice straw man argument, though.

[bossy]

Just now, Jarvinja Ilnow said:

That's not what I said at all. Nice straw man argument, though.

Whatever that means. Racist vote. 

[CapeRed]

10 minutes ago, bossy said:

Whatever that means. Racist vote. 

11 hours ago, Jose Jones said:

$40 billion a year, of course!

It is pretty simple, the Indigenous people had their land stolen, their children stolen, were legally classed not as humans, but as fauna up until 1960, and are suffering worse health, education and incarceration outcomes.

 

And all they asked in return was a body that could advise the government on indigenous issues, so they could take a little bit of control of their own affairs.

And to stop any future governments from getting rid of it, they wanted it enshrined in the constitution.

Nobody disagrees that the past is shameful in terms of what happened. Spending $40 billion a year without achieving any positive outcomes is a big issue. This should be looked at along with a failure of the various government boards to make any headway. The government put forward a proposal which failed to provide substance as to how the whole scheme would work including the choice of people who would be chosen and how they would be elected. Simply stating things haven’t worked and this would failed to win over the electorate. I believe that many Aussies want to see the lives of indigenous people improve drastically the government needs to re -visit and refine the proposal.

[Moo]

12 hours ago, Jose Jones said:

Pretty vague eh?

 

Vague in the sense that no specifics were provided as to the likely consequences of voting in favour, and that no demands were stated other than representation. 

 

39 minutes ago, CapeRed said:

 

 

The £40b already being spent, and the how of delivering on a yes vote are surely irrelevant and secondary (respectively) to the proposal.  

 

What I know of the proposal is very limited but if it was only to guarantee recognition and representation, then using current policies and a lack of detail as reasons to vote against seem a bit of a cop out. What did people have to fear with a yes vote?

Happy to read info that betters my understanding, especially detail about the lack of detail.

 

[Jose Jones]

23 minutes ago, Moo said:

 

Vague in the sense that no specifics were provided as to the likely consequences of voting in favour, and that no demands were stated other than representation. 

 

 

The £40b already being spent, and the how of delivering on a yes vote are surely irrelevant and secondary (respectively) to the proposal.  

 

What I know of the proposal is very limited but if it was only to guarantee recognition and representation, then using current policies and a lack of detail as reasons to vote against seem a bit of a cop out. What did people have to fear with a yes vote?

Happy to read info that betters my understanding, especially detail about the lack of detail.

 

There was obviously nothing to fear, but the inability to communicate simply and clearly, meant that there was plenty of room for reasonable doubts and bullshit lies to fill the detail gap.

 

However, having had a very small bit to do with indigenous engagement in my job, the lack of concrete detail does go with the territory.

The aboriginal culture is very much about sitting and talking and getting to know each other.  Only after a lot of that can you move forward to getting anything done - it can be quite frustrating.  
 

So the Voice proposal, by its nature, was always likely to be lacking in concrete detail that the Anglo Saxon mindset demands.
 

The Uluṟu statement from the heart was the basis for the voice proposal, and I think the government (wrongly) assumed people might have paid attention to it: https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement/view-the-statement/

 

There is also a history of referenda never getting up in Australia, especially those mid term of government as the opposition always oppose it for purely political reasons, as in this case.

[razor]

It was lacking in detail, and some on the left did reject it, but it was clearly a positive first step, which unfortunately has now been missed.

 

In New Zealand, they recognised that it didn't matter how much money they threw at issues (health, education, justice), this was inevitably being done within the framework of a western mindset.  So instead of shouting, they listened.

 

When a system is failing a clearly defined group of people, and nobody thinks why, it is usually because the very voices they need to hear are missing from the conversation.

 

In New Zealand they have worked really hard to start to re-evaluate institutions and systems that westerners / colonisers have put in place, which inherently advantage / privilege fellow westerners / colonisers.

 

Australia could do a lot worse than follow the example of their little neighbour.

 

This was a massive opportunity missed.  The fabric of the nation needs to be re-examined.  

 

My son lives in Melbourne.  A lovely city, a lovely country.  But an inherently racist one.

 

The UK has elements of racism, but its own biggest hindrance to progress is class and classism.

 

Even the recent Boris Johnson drama on Channel 4 had to have the "stick in the mud" cast as a northerner, and the point of difference for her being class.

 

In the case of Partygate, really, it was satirising the privileged classes (as a lot of the best British drama does), but still little has changed.  You need a posh speaking voice, a private education, and access that parental connections brings to get on in most aspects of British society.

 

For example, the days of working class actors, comedians, musicians etc will soon be gone.

 

And all because Ed Miliband couldn't eat a bacon butty.

 

 

[polymerpunkah]

The proposal reminds me of the idea of "consultation" which has become central to the relationship between Canada's indigenous populations and our various levels of government.

 

It's not enshrined in the constitution (though indigenous rights, both treaty and based on common law, are) but has been developed by the courts.

 

It requires meaningful consultation with, and if necessary, accomodation of, indigenous peoples when any decision that might effect their interests is contemplated.

 

Things are still far from perfect, particularly as you get further from the larger centres--and most starkly on remote reserves--but the changes that have occurred in my lifetime are significant.

 

And many (most? all?) of those changes were a direct result of their rights being enshrined in the constitution in 1982. It's allowed the courts to force governments to make real positive changes to the way they deal with indigenous peoples.

 

Without knowing the details, it does look like an opportunity missed.

 

 

 

[VladimirIlyich]

23 hours ago, CapeRed said:

Ah the guardian , that bastion of fair reporting. This was a referendum that many people felt was short on a lot of important detail and they were being asked to vote yes and the details would be sorted out later. I wonder how many of you would vote for something which appeared to be short on some important detail. 

Your username has 'Cape' so are you in South Africa by any chance?  

[Creator Supreme]

4 hours ago, razor said:

In New Zealand, they recognised that it didn't matter how much money they threw at issues (health, education, justice), this was inevitably being done within the framework of a western mindset.  So instead of shouting, they listened.

Sad to see the Kiwis have swung right in the latest election. I don't understand people.

[Waitak]

45 minutes ago, Creator Supreme said:

Sad to see the Kiwis have swung right in the latest election. I don't understand people.

A New Zealand political commentator recently summed up 10 reasons why the Labour Government's support halved in the period leading up to the election, and he correctly predicted Labour's defeat. There is a lot of detail in his article, but the headings are:-

 

1. Labour's handling of Covid

2. Failure to deliver the promised transformation or even the basics

3. Poor management of the economy

4. Public dissatisfaction with deteriorating public services

5. Failure on tax reform

6. Perception that Labour is arrogant and out of touch

7. Lack of clarity about what Labour believe in

8. Labour's focus on "woke" politics instead of working class politics

9. Labour's radical reinterpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi

10. Labour Minister's integrity scandals

 

Labour won an outright majority in the 2020 election (a rarity under MMP) and thus had a historic opportunity to achieve many of the things you would expect a Labour government to implement, but they clearly failed to do so. Their left wing support has defected to the Greens, and their support in the centre has swung right.  

 

 

 

    

[CapeRed]

2 hours ago, VladimirIlyich said:

Your username has 'Cape' so are you in South Africa by any chance?  

No I don’t.  I live in Australia.

[Mudface]

3 hours ago, VladimirIlyich said:

Your username has 'Cape' so are you in South Africa by any chance?  

 

No, he's Batman.

[CapeRed]

11 minutes ago, Mudface said:

 

No, he's Batman.

I can’t go anywhere without robbin’  baboom

[sh#t waffle]

23 hours ago, Jose Jones said:

Pretty vague eh?