During the week we received a number of mails suggesting that perhaps we a front for ATSIC or another apologist media outlet. At crikey we like debate. So in true crikey style we are publishing the following piece from John ‘Kojak’ Pasquarelli on his alternative view on that bridge walk.

Many ordinary Australians who have no other causes to pursue, apart from keeping their family units afloat, can be heard on talk back radio expressing their opposition to saying ‘sorry.’ Many of the silent majority stay that way. They do not want to be abused and branded racist, particularly by those leading light white apologists who have taken it upon themselves to bear the heavy burden of guilt for the rest of us poor white trash. Remember that the same ploy was used by the same people in the lead up to the Constitutional Referendum.

It is confusing and infuriating to see so many white people calling themselves Aboriginal leaders, abusing and deriding other white Australians. These people never acknowledge their white heritage despite the fact that their assimilation has allowed them to reap the richest rewards while many black Aborigines languish in settlements, being slowly killed by welfare and alcohol.

The chattering classes advocate the teaching of what they call the real history of what happened to the Aborigines. I trust that the crimes of white against black will be balanced by the crimes of blacks against blacks, whites, and others. T.G.H.Strehlow, respected by blacks and whites was an internationally respected anthropologist who lived and worked in Central Australia and the Western Desert. A terrible massacre of one group of blacks by another occurred in 1875 in the Finke River area of Central Australia. In Strehlow’s words, ‘the warriors turned their murderous attention to the women and older children and either speared or clubbed them to death. Finally, according to the grim custom of warriors and avengers, they broke the limbs of the infants, leaving them to die ‘natural deaths.’ Manning Clark writes of the massacre and cannibalism of Chinese miners by Aborigines on the Palmer River in 1875 and James Flett, a Victorian Goldfields historian describes the virtual genocide of one tribe by another before the arrival of white settlers. The list goes on. The appalling abuse of blacks by blacks is taking place as I write. The brutalisation of women and children by their drunken spouses and fathers in many settlements and other places is out of control and of obscene dimensions. We are constantly being reminded of some sort of mystical affinity existing between the Aborigines and the environment. Why is it then that far too many of the settlements where Aborigines are running their affairs on their own land resemble huge rubbish dumps and are absolute eyesores?

Reconciliation is really all about money and compensation. We have been told by one Aboriginal leader that ‘there can be no reconciliation without compensation.’ We have a High Court that could go off in any direction and if the legal floodgates opened, future federal and state budgets would have to raise extra taxes to meet the costs. About 1.5% of Australians have demonstrated just how powerful minority groups can be.

I have predicted that the ALP will win the next federal election in a landslide, not because of its stand on reconciliation but because of the effects of the GST. Last weekend however, the revival of the concept of a treaty and the thoughtless embracing of it by Kim Beazley has caused me to change my mind. A treaty will be divisive and will drive much of middle Australia into a corner. A treaty coupled with Aboriginal self-determination and tribal law will become intolerable. Separatism can only end in disaster as we are now seeing in Fiji. If the ALP is silly enough to go to the next election with a treaty as part of its policy platform, John Howard may just hang on and Pauline Hanson will come from behind and take a Queensland Senate spot. The latter event will send the media ballistic.

Ed’s Note : I’m bruised and battered ladies and gentlemen. We received a number of emails accusing us of being an ATSIC mouth piece and just another apologist media outlet, so we’ve run the only alternative article we’ve received in the interest of “balanced reporting”. Please if you feel strongly about this piece or any piece, let it rip in the yoursay section.