On the Uluru statement
Rlynch01@Bigpond.Com writes: Re. “Calls for a treaty with Aboriginal Australia have a long and troubled history” (Wednesday)
I didn’t hear this Uluru statement as mawkish: I heard it as a call to see the facts of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander now, characterised by astronomical arrest and incarceration rates, abysmal health statistics, continuing removal of children from their families. Australian Financial Review can’t see that side of ATSI reality, but it is there, inappropriate and it simply doesn’t work for them or us. And an elected committee with power to recommend with gravitas to the legislature, that the legislature can’t sack at the merest inconvenience could have a hugely informative role.
On the right and Duncan Lewis
Mike M writes: Re. “How the right turned on ASIO” (Wednesday)
So they ask questions of someone who should know…and when the answers do not fit their preconceived ideas they “play the man and not the ball.” Clearly they prefer living in a world created from their own prejudices.
Re Uluru, as Mungo MacCallum writes in the Byron Bay Echo, “In 1972, the It’s Time election, where Gough Whitlam announced: ‘We will legislate to give Aborigines land rights, not just because their case is beyond argument but because all of us as Australians are diminished while the Aborigines are denied their rightful place in this nation.’ The simple goodness and rightness of these words still resonate through the years which have followed.“.
Proof that being a barrister does not mean filling the air with meaning verbiage & waffle as does the increasingly precarious incumbent PM.