It was not indigenous Australians who destroyed thousands of Aboriginal jobs in country areas by suddenly raising the wages of cattle station labour in 1965; it was the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission.  Nor was it indigenous Australians who decided, just as the commission’s judgment was having its devastating effects, to massively subsidise remote Aboriginal settlements, condemning generation after generation to inadequate housing, an education scarcely worth having and a future shorn of jobs and hope; it was the Whitlam and Fraser governments.   And it was not indigenous Australians who removed the prohibitions on the consumption of alcohol by, and the sale of alcohol to, Aboriginal people that had been in force throughout Australia since 1929.

It was state and territory governments that, in keeping with the 1960s zeitgeist of self-determination, repealed those controls and decriminalised public drunkenness, plunging fraying Aboriginal communities into a spiral of alcohol-fuelled violence and helping to ensure that indigenous offenders are nearly three times more likely than non-indigenous offenders to be intoxicated when they commit their crimes.  The result, as one Aboriginal community after the other succumbed to the epidemic of substance abuse, was that indigenous incarceration rates, which had been falling since World War I, began to soar.

Far from slowing that rise, the explosive growth in welfare outlays that followed the onset of the crisis perpetuated the pathologies by allowing dysfunctional communities to survive. And instead of frankly confronting the root causes, successive governments relied on grandiose statements of good intentions and on torrents of cash in an increasingly futile attempt to paper over the cracks.
...


It is clear that much-touted nostrums, such as diverting juvenile offenders from the court system, have been tried and largely found to fail, with most studies concluding that they do not decrease the risk of reconviction, the time to reconviction, the seriousness of further offending or the number of reconvictions.  And it is equally clear that while those approaches are not a viable solution, imprisonment does reduce the extent and incidence of serious offending, as well as shielding, at least for a time, the victims of violence from their tormentors.  That hardly implies we should simply accept the dreadful costs mass incarceration imposes on indigenous Australians and on the moral fabric of the nation.

What it does mean, however, is that we face an alternative. We can salve our conscience by retaining the unstated premise that has led to the current calamity: that indigenous Australians are essentially a separate race, who should be funded to live at enormous expense in places where there are no viable jobs, where supplying basic services is prohibitively costly and where alcohol and drugs are the only antidote to squalor, boredom and despair.  If that is our choice, today’s pathologies, and the mass incarceration that is their symptom, will persist for decades to come.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/if-separatism-is-such-misery-do-we-t...

Brian Ross wrote on Jul 18^th, 2020 at 4:27pm:



You continue to be a complete ass.

You really are a card, Soren.  Always look overseas for criticism of Australian society simply because you disagree with a decision made by a democratically elected government of this country.   When you have figured out what democracy actually means, get back to us, OK?   

Then you might try answering the questions asked of you.  You keep missing the ones I ask.  Shame really, 'cause I'd like to expose you for the hypocrite you are.  Which is of course why you don't answer them, right?  Tsk, tsk.   

You really are a card, Soren.  Always look overseas for criticism of Australian society simply because you disagree with a decision made by a democratically elected government of this country.   When you have figured out what democracy actually means, get back to us, OK?   

Then you might try answering the questions asked of you.  You keep missing the ones I ask.  Shame really, 'cause I'd like to expose you for the hypocrite you are.  Which is of course why you don't answer them, right?  Tsk, tsk.     

Another failure to answer the questions.  Tsk, tsk.  No wonder you're a trick-cyclist than have a real profession, Soren.   

Brian Ross wrote on Jul 19^th, 2020 at 9:49pm:



'not answering my question' is your spineless, lying, ridiculously childish way of trying to squirm out when you are pinned down as a fool.  You have no questions because you have no coherent ideas that would need illuminating by questions answered.


If you had coherent, well-thought out ideas you would simply state them. Instead you get all tut tutting, yawning and mysterious trying to cover up how pathetic and bereft of ideas you actually are.

We see you, Bwian, and it's comical.

Frank wrote on Jul 18^th, 2020 at 7:00pm:



Thomas Staines Eliot, Poet Laureate.... I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear my trousers rolled.. I have measured out my life with coffee spoons (slurps) ...

Brian Ross wrote on Jul 20^th, 2020 at 10:48pm:

Answered.

See? All you had to do was to say what your question was and it got answered.

And it's the University of Bologna. And yes, I attended one semester as a study abroad in the 90s.
Founded in 1088, it is the oldest university in the world.

And yes, it is infinitely superior to your mail-order phoney doctorate which has taken you to the dizzying intellectual heights of yawning and inane tut-tutting when anyone asks you what day it is.