According to RA, ‘Too often, our history covers up the brutal nature of colonisation, and leaves out the resilience and contribution by First Peoples. The effective advocacy by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the three decades of the reconciliation process, have all been part of a relearning of Australian history in which the myth of peaceful settlement by courageous European pioneers is making way for a more truthful representation…. A national effort across these areas should involve collaborating to re-story, reconcile and heal, including through local reconciliation committees, advocacy, and partnerships across the Australian community. Such community truth-telling can underpin and support a widespread movement of truth-telling and build understanding of our shared history, (Truth Telling and Reconciliation, RA 2018 p.19). For RA ‘truth-telling’ seems to mean unequivocal acceptance of their version of Australian history.

In 2016 the Centre for Independent Studies published a report which found that there are 1,082 separate programs addressing one aspect or another of Aboriginal disadvantage (Mapping the Indigenous program and funding maze, Sarah Hudson).

Over the last decade, the Productivity Commission’s Indigenous Expenditure Reports (IER) have consistently shown that total Commonwealth, state and territory government per capita expenditure on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is approximately double the per capita expenditure on non-Indigenous Australians, (Indigenous Affairs 2019/20 Budget overview. James Haughton). There are many reasons for greater allocation of financial resources to Aboriginal citizens than to the rest of the population. The most obvious is that of need. Aboriginal disadvantage is well documented. Not so well documented are the thousands of projects which are designed to remedy the inequality. In its 2019/20 report the National Indigenous Australians Agency claimed that, ‘The NIAA funds more than 1,100 organisations through the Indigenous Advancement Strategy (IAS) and Aboriginals Benefit Account (ABA) to deliver over 2,000 activities to improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The majority of these funds are to Indigenous organisations’. It also found that, ‘93 per cent of relevant IAS activities were assessed as having core service delivery which met or exceeded requirements’. One might ask why, if the NIAA is doing so well, it had such a poor impact upon the ‘closing the gap’ targets?

There is rarely any serious media investigation of the thousands of organisations which all claim they are doing a great job on indigenous matters. Nor is there any real acknowledgement of the billions that the government has poured into helping remote disadvantaged Aboriginal communities. Instead we get an unending litany of complaints about governmental failures and we get people like Chelsea Watego being paid by you to tell all of us what a racist society her people have to live in. The idea that establishing yet another organisation is going to solve all the problems in Aboriginal society which the thousands of other schemes have failed to remedy, without working out why the previous ones fail, is stupid beyond belief.
...
Reconciliation requires a genuine two way acknowledgement of past injustices and present problems. What we have at the moment is a clamorous call for non-Aboriginal Australia to accept a distorted and one-sided version of the sources of the current problems in Aboriginal Australia. ..... our failure to have a genuinely open debate on the source of current problems in Aboriginal society will ensure that establishing yet another organisation to solve those problems will achieve nothing.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/12/reconciliation-or-capitulation/

Look at moe, Kimmie, look at moi, I have one word for you.

Corruption.

Cavemen had the same natural resources at their disposal as we have today, and the difference between their standard of living and ours is a difference between the knowledge they could bring to bear on those resources and the knowledge used today.
Thomas Sowell

thegreatdivide wrote on Dec 14^th, 2022 at 4:03pm:

Frank wrote on Dec 14^th, 2022 at 1:16pm:



Comparative Prosperity 101 - a Grappler Free University concept developed by Professor Grappler...

A Boonger living on the beach up north with a house to go home to every night, sandy beaches drinking rum every day and night, catching fish on the morning tide, with an established harem and control over women, and free to choose what he will do on any given day is far more prosperous than the Modern Caveman cited here as living on the streets.... yet their government income/rent/dimi is the same .......................................... a streetie would be lucky to even remember pussy .... or a good feed.. or sleeping on anything but cold concrete...

thegreatdivide wrote on Dec 16^th, 2022 at 12:17pm:


Correct - and now your education begins again - it is only NOW that he/she considers self to be relatively impoverished...... keep thinking.... I try hard but you are slow to bite on reality... so all this guff about 'gaps' and such is meaningless ...... unless that Abo wants to live the White Man's high life without the work involved...... he should be happy in his pristine environment surrounded by plenty in both the traditional and the modern sense... The Last Tycoon ...

Not my point - the point is that some wish to live the best life that they can see others enjoying,

but without doing the hard yards to get it -

they simply see it and want it, and turn that quest into some 'right'.

Same thing - we get these people who do not wish to lift a finger who figure they are entitled for whatever reason, their colour, their 'culture', their 'dispossession' or whatever - to the same as the top rungs get here without having to strive for it.

they are even jealous of and hostile to their own who've made it.....look at Warren Mundine, Jacinta Price, and a few others and how they are regarded and treated by their 'own'.

Paul Keating, in a rare broken clock moment, once said to an Aboriginal bloke that his people were like crabs in a bucket - every time one tried to climb out the others would drag  him/her back.

I personally know that one, coming from a savagely dysfunctional family... you see, the difference between you and I is that while you are mired in theory after theory - I've lived and experienced everything of which I speak...... and that is one huge difference...