Setanta wrote on Aug 28^th, 2024 at 8:18pm:


At every meeting of the Victorian Bar Council, president Georgina Schoff acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which the meeting is held and pays her respects to elders past, present and emerging.

At a recent meeting, I decided to acknowledge all Australians. I posted the minutes on social media and was promptly labelled a “racist”, a “visitor” and an “introduced species”. I was publicly condemned by two of my fellow Bar councillors and was told by the Indigenous Justice Committee that I had brought the Victorian Bar into disrepute.
...

When we are told that acknowledgments of country are about showing “respect” to First Nations people, what is meant is respect for Indigenous Australians as the true sovereigns of our land.

The term First Nations deserves attention. A nation is a distinct political society. Therefore the term First Nations suggests there was once a number of distinct political societies, separated from the others, that lived upon our land and were the first nations.

While the existence of tribes or clans at the time of British settlement is an established fact, the notion there were “nations” by any definition cannot be established. The idea has also been rejected by the High Court of Australia and is accordingly wrong in law: Coe v Commonwealth [1979] HCA 68 at [12].
...
In Australia, we are the beneficiaries of a legal system that has been developed over centuries and which is arguably one of the best and fairest in the world. I accept that the imprisonment rate is significantly higher for Indigenous Australians than non-Indigenous Australians. But this fact alone comes nowhere near close enough to proving our legal system is the main causal factor, or that a radical change to it by creating a two-tiered system based on race would close this gap. The reasons people commit crimes are complex and multi-factorial and are generally skewed towards economic, social and environmental factors. One thing I hope we can all agree upon is that race is not a factor.

Acknowledgments of country are not about showing “respect”. They are political statements signalling support for a two-tiered system based on race. They have no place in the law, including in our courtrooms, and the average Australian instinctively knows this. A colleague recently told me that when court commenced with an acknowledgment of country, their client immediately felt the judge would take a view against them and lost any notion of receiving a fair trial. This is what happens when the legal system infects itself with politics.

For as long as people continue to make political statements by way of acknowledgments of country, I will continue to acknowledge all Australians, signalling my support for an Australia where we are all equal and subject to the same laws regardless of our race.

(Lana Collaris is a barrister and member of the Victorian Bar Council.)

Grappler Truth Teller Feller wrote on Sep 9^th, 2024 at 1:59pm:


no, it was organised by a lobby group

John Smith wrote on Sep 9^th, 2024 at 1:44pm:


I have a long history with the ACL, I won't go into much detail, but there was a time when Jim Wallace, their MD at the time, now Chairman, was somehow a stakeholder when it came to Labor & their plan for a Mandatory ISP-level internet filter.

At the time I was working with an ISP in their internal department that dealt with the then ACMA Blacklist.  My team was involved in reporting instances of blacklisted or illegal material on user hosting or access to content on the Blacklist.  The list was highly secret and was never to see the light of day.

Some legitimate business sites were on the list because they had been compromised and were used to host illegal material.  Content that had been long ago cleaned up and removed, but they were still on the list, so it wasn't maintained well.

Long story short, Labor twisted the narrative from "should the Government control a secret blacklist of sites that they can block without oversight by the public, under the guise of combating child pornography" (we didn't use the term CSE back then), to "Is it technically possible to do this".

In the end, they did a feasibility study that comments on a lab test Telstra did, in a simulated environment and a single laptop, which allowed Conroy to say that they can block these sites with an impact on performance of no more than 1/70th of the blink of an eye.

And the process continued on.  No more questions of should we, and the can was answered in the yes, even though their own tests showed it wouldn't work as advertised, hence the commenting on the Telstra Lab tests.

To get to the point, somehow the ACL and Jim Wallace were able to get into closed-room meetings with the Government and even the Minister and industry stakeholders to decide what Australians could and couldn't access on the internet.

There was an infiltration into the ACL to positions where someone could provide "friendly" technical advice, gain access to their plans and what they were doing, and feed that info to others fighting the cause.

Long long story short, those in the ACL are power-hungry and despicable people.  They will do anything, even flirting with the law in terms of donations and gifts if it furthers their cause and over time, it was less and less about the Church but their own crusade for influence and access to the halls of power.

Nothing has changed.

They all operate in an echo chamber and often, from Wendy Francis, Lyle Shelton and Jim himself, they let their mask slip and say the quiet part out loud in public, from Chaplains in schools to fighting for the right to expel children for being gay or that it is impossible for men to rape their wives as they don't have the right to refuse them sex under the bible because their husbands own their flesh.

The comments made by Dave Pellowe were not during a church service, nor were his follow-up comments.  It was at a conference discussing how to infiltrate local, state and federal governments and agencies with people who will push their agenda.  Very similar to the ACL, which is why they're often a crossover.

He has tried to excuse his comments by painting the Welcome to Country as a religious ritual that is incompatible with his Christian Beliefs, rather than an acknowledgement of the traditional owners of the land.

While he may not be an ACL member or hold any power within their ranks, he is of their ilk, just another heathen exploiting their faith and their position within the church to secure influence and power over others.

SadKangaroo wrote on Sep 9^th, 2024 at 6:43pm:



I've always found religious nutters to be an insidious lot and a pox on democracy.

John Smith wrote on Sep 10^th, 2024 at 8:36am:


Never said t was a church thing - it's a private meeting, invitation only, if this Invader wanted to say something on the issues, he could have asked to be included - instead he storm trooped his way in demanding a paid nonsense to suit himself, and then when told NO he got huffy and tried to get Big Mummy to save his ass.

Weak as piss.  That group should get a order to prevent him coming again.

Go back to trying to get at freediver over this church nonsense... the issue was the invasion of a group without right or reason, and then using intimidation to try to get his way with that group.

He's lucky they were decent Christians and didn't just throw him on his arse... they tried to turn the other cheek.... maybe next time, eh?

SadKangaroo wrote on Sep 10^th, 2024 at 10:21am:


Couldn't care less about your fanciful 'invasion' - I'm seventh generation Australian and have EVERY right to be here ... may have been better if they had killed them all off - but they didn't and those left prosper The White Man's Way. 

They can always take to the bush again and take you with them.

Some have demanded their own State/Homeland - when offered they don't want it.

So you don't mind if some Neo-Nazis gate crash the next Aboriginal meeting and demand they sing 'Advance Australia Fair' and 'God Save the King', do you?

Grow up and get into the 21st Century.  Better still - get your uppity gate-crasher to go gate-crash the La'emba Mosque during a service or meeting..... he's that determined that all others will abide by the voices in his head.... turn 'im loose!!

Haha.

       

John Smith wrote on Sep 10^th, 2024 at 8:35am:


You don't realise, do you, that traditional Aborigines are deeply religious, superstitious and soaked in supernatural beliefs and magic. They believe in spirits everywhere, fear and worship and revere them.