Brian Ross wrote on Aug 31
st, 2018 at 3:05pm:
Grendel wrote on Aug 30
th, 2018 at 8:25am:
LOL
Australian society and culture was influenced by the settlement by the British starting in the 1700s. That is an undeniable fact. Australians were considered British subjects... NOT British, until the 1900s... but our culture and society does differ from the British culture. We are not: English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh..... our society and culture has been influenced by the Aboriginal culture as well.
We as a people recognise Aboriginals as Australian as does the rest of the world, we recognise their place in our history. Just as we recognise the British.
Which Australian Prime Minister announced to the House of Representatives that he was "British to his bootstraps"? When did Australia recognise that Indigenou Australians were human beings and citizens of their own country? Oh, thats right, 1967, after a referendum was undertaken to get their permission. What a shame many white Australians don't consider Indigenous Australians to be human beings today...
Don't get hysterical, pissy auntie. That referendum was about the Commonwealth having powers regarding Aborigines.
The sections of the Constitution under consideration:
51. The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:-
...(xxvi) The people of any race, other than the aboriginal people in any State, for whom it is necessary to make special laws.
127. In reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives should not be counted.
51 was about Commonwealth powers to make laws about aborigines, as distinct fro States having such powers.
127. was simply counting people in the census. Not the same as 'not considered human beings'.
Anyway, it wasn't 'their country' in the sense of a society and a country that has a constitution, parliament, a common language, recognised borders, can boil water, has invented the wheel, etc, etc. Aborigines had none of these and understood none of these concepts that make up a country,
I think it was actually very sensible and sensitive not to rush in a lot earlier and demand that they be like everyone else - which is what happened in non-Britannic colonies. Taking people from the Stone Age into the 20th century is not something you can rush.
Anyway, recognition and making laws for them has been probably the most calamitous event for the Aborigines that are still traditional Aborigines (ie not urban, blonde and blue eyed Aborigines). Violence, alcohol and drug related degradation, indignity, sexual predatory behavior towards children, unbelievable violence against women BY ABORIGINES is the stark feature of today's 'Aboriginal communities'.
No money can remedy their own 'not counting themselves as human being' malady.
Making laws for them means keeping them in their 'traditional environment' where they do nothing but sink. The YES vote in 1967 may well have been a huge mistake. There was no such degradation before. Now there is and there is no Commonwealth law that can do anything about it because it is NOT a matter of Commonwealth law or whether they are counted or not in the census.