Closing the gap: Australia is meaner, dumber and more racist than 25 years ago
The Closing The Gap report should have been a wake up call about the way the government is failing First Australians. It won't be.
In 2001 John Howard was telling Liberal voters to put One Nation last on their ballots. In 2017 the Liberals are making preference deals with them in WA and ridiculously insisting that they're "more sophisticated" now.
Labor senator Penny Wong called shenanigans on this ludicrous claim, arguing that it was the Liberal Party which had changed, but you know what? It's not just the Liberal Party: over the past 25 years Australia as a whole has gotten meaner, dumber and more racist.
This was made crystal clear yesterday when the Closing The Gap report on indigenous health, welfare and education was presented to Parliament, announcing to those MPs which could be bothered showing up that the government was currently on track to fail at just about everything, including six of the seven stated targets to improve life expectancy for indigenous folks.
The current gap in life expectancy between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians is 10.6 years for men and 9.5 years for women. Child mortality hasn't improved. Unemployment is still almost 50 per cent. Literacy and numeracy is similarly poor.
Both Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten made noises about how disappointing these results were and that clearly action was needed, but let's be honest: nothing will happen.
Why? Because indigenous issues don't win elections, thanks to a quarter century of governments making it OK for Australians to be openly stupid, cruel, and racist.
I turned 18 in 1990 and was in my first year of university in Adelaide: a middle class white boy fresh out of private school. Indigenous affairs were not even remotely on my radar. My knowledge of Australian history, like my peers, went pretty much as follows: Captain Cook, convicts, goldrush, Gallipoli, ANZACs, Bradman, done.
And then I heard Archie Roach's Took The Children Away. That was the first time the Stolen Generation came across my radar, and the more I learnt the more horrified I became.
Then came Yothu Yindi's Treaty, calling out the government's hypocrisy on land rights. It was also when I learnt that Canada had made treaties with their First Peoples, including land rights, proving that it was entirely possible – indeed reasonable – for a grown up country to do so.
Just to send that message home the Kev Carmody/Paul Kelly song From Little Things Big Things Grow appeared a few months later, elegantly telling the story of Vincent Lingiari and the struggle for land rights in four chords. Change seemed in the air.
the left have only made this issue worse. if you convince people they're victims and everyone else should change, then don't expect the 'victims' to change. treaties and money does little without the willpower and desire to actually want change.
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Australia is meaner, dumber and more racist (Read 13691 times)
