Australian Prime Minister John Howard is taking some drastic steps to address rampant child abuse in Aboriginee communities in the Northern Territories. Here's a list of the measures being taken:
- Alcohol will be banned in some regions for six months, and X-rated porn outlawed in communities and on public computers.
- The need for outsiders to have permits to get into townships and roads on indigenous land will be scrapped.
- Every Aboriginal child under 16 will be required to have a medical check-up at federal expense.
- States have been asked to donate 10 police officers each to boost the uniformed presence in each community, working alongside federal bureaucrats who will be sent to live in selected regions as town managers.
- Centrelink will immediately begin quarantining 50 per cent of welfare payments to people in the communities, which can only be spent on food and other essentials. Further money can be docked if children fail to attend school, and to pay for meals for the children.
- Welfare recipients will be forced to help clean up homes and streets to ensure safe and hygienic living conditions, with managers able to inspect houses.
Full article available here.
Discussion?
He's absolutely right. What has happened is that the interaction of two completely different social structures - a hunting/gathering and an industrial - has inevitably collapsed the structure of the less complex hunting/gathering system. They haven't, for various reasons, moved into the much more complex industrial structure. Therefore, as a group, they have no systemic structure to guide their lives.
Imagine a biological organism which loses its infrastructure. it will decay to a random collection of cells! No structure - ie, no 'specialization' of properties, where some are heart cells, others are lung, others are...etc.
Societies are similar; they operate within structures of 'normative habits'. Work habits, education, housing, social interactions etc. Collapse that system of normative behaviour - and it's pure chaos.
The industrial society then supports this hodge podge, who are no longer a society - but - it's just life support. Without an internal infrastructure, the group behaves randomly. randomness is an entropic or destructive behaviour.
So, Australia is perfectly right to insist on structure - that the money msut be spent on Food, Education and Children and Self-Respect. This structure, the notion of a structure, will gradually take hold within the community and it can move out of its collapse-to-randomness; can move itself back to a basic structure and then, into the complex structure that is industrialism.
"Centrelink will immediately begin quarantining 50 per cent of welfare payments to people in the communities, which can only be spent on food and other essentials. "
I remember 1 member of the RCMP, himself native,having to do this in a little town in the Territories. It worked very well, and in some cases even shamed the recipients of said welfare into getting jobs. Plus some of the local businesses did the same. This was back in '90-'94.Not sure if they still do it,as said member is now an Inspector down south.
Looks like something that Canada should be looking at as well.As for objections that it would be authoritarian, remember he who pays the piper calls the tune.
If we have to dole out tax payer money to certain groups, and they agree to take it, sure there should be some restrictions. We're telling people what they can do with our money, not with their own.
However, why are they getting money in the first place?
I'll say it again: cut every status Indian in Canada a one time only, last, final cheque and end this craziness. We won, you lost. You gave us tobacco, we gave you booze. I call it even.
Contrast this with the Nanny State activities of the Blair government and discuss the differences.
Probably wouldn't work in Canada unless the Indian Industry is also dismantled. The Indian Industry, BTW, consists of civil servants, politicians, lawyers and academics who make a very good living exploiting the status quo and creating the separatist mindset that is so pervasive amongst First Nations' communities. There have been forty some years of growth in the Indian Industry. It started with the Hawthorne-Tremblay Report of 1968 and the subsequent 1969 White Paper, and until and unless some group of politicians get the balls to dismantle it, nothing will change.
Very Draconian...I like it!!!
Aboriginals' hatred of Tories a good thing
[...]
Rather than celebrate, these changes barely made national headlines. [...]
What unites these changes is their preference for tangible change over symbolic politics. Let's hope it stays that way.
http://www.winnipegsun.com/Comment/2007/06/23/4283565-sun.html
Contrast this with the Nanny State activities of the Blair government and discuss the differences.
Posted by: Stephen at June 23, 2007 11:55 AM
How about the nanny state of Canaduh. The last time I looked the UK didn't have Aboriginee communities, unless you mean the Scots,Welsh and Irish. By the way this was shown on Hong Kong TV last night and of course the spokes wanker against it was a WOmen. Who obviously supports pedophelia
"You gave us tobacco, we gave you booze. I call it even."
The hell you say. I've yet to crash a car after smoking a pack of ciggy butts. Agree with you otherwise.
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/006490.html#comments
What is it on either side that justifies the encroachment on freedom ...is it just the objective, is it the fact that taxpayer money is being used....
I cant say I disagree with it, I am jsut always uncomftable with government coercion....of course if they werent on welfare then there wouldnt be an issue, maybe thats really the point.
I am going to copy this and send it to a certain local newspaper that calls for more government funding for a certain Native reservation where the Chief was tried and convicted of child abuse.
He is currently not the Chief, but no surprise that he had the election of his replacement overturned so that he can run again. The new election goes off this July and he is expected to win.
Apparently, a few hours in the sweat lodge was all he needed to correct the error of his ways and get himself back onto those junkets to Hawaii and New Zealand.
Stephen what a typical lefty response. THIS YOU IDIOT IS ABOUT SEXUAL ABUSE OF CHILDREN.
Whoops forgot that is what you Libs and dippers support.
stephen - I see your point about the encroachment on freedom, but I think the situation goes beyond individual rights.
In this situation it's really not a situation completely dependent on individual free will. That's because our species does not and cannot live only as an individual. Almost all of our knowledge is social, ie, learned. So, if our learning community is 'kaput' - then, we as individuals are also 'kaput'.
An individual (of 'sound mind') may reject individual health care - but - can a society? Can a collective reject its responsibility to its next generation because, as a collective, it has lost all normative standards? Can a collective reject its responsibility because the individuals in that collective have lost all normative standards and are behaving in random and dysfunctional ways?
Since that collective is 'entropically dissipating' then it has no capacity to look after itself or its next generation. Therefore, the host society (the more complex collective) has to take on that task - and try to help the less complex group develop new normative standards and start to look after itself.
Louise - I agree completely. The Indian Industry in Canada is probably the biggest bureaucracy, and a ton of civil servants and academics make a very good living pontificating dependency.
... federal bureaucrats who will be sent to LIVE in selected regions as town managers. A great move ! Can you imagine the army of civil servants in Canada being frog-marched to the reserves to live among their "clients"? Talk about the howls of scalded cats!
Oh that they would implement such a policy here! I GROAN for it. Having worked right on the reserves, I can say from first-hand experience that there is no sign of improvement in sight. The dollars are not the issue. The Native Industry is drowning in cash. There is no way on God's green Earth that any Native should be living in poverty. Eliminating the bureacracy (mostly white people here anyway) would do wonders. Forcing the Natives to do the right thing with the tax money they receive would be better yet.
The following is a letter published in 'The Australian':
As a remote area nurse, I treated too many too often
Saturday, June 23, 2007
TACKLING ABUSE
THE outcry from the safe and comfortable about the Howard Government’s new stance on Aboriginal child sexual abuse is both sickening and infuriating.
As they talk of self-determination, children across the nation are being stripped of their self-worth in the violence of rape and its horrific sequel. Too long have I and many others treated and seen the victims of blatant sexual abuse in remote Aboriginal communities and outback towns. My many years as a remote area nurse saw me treat too many too often.
I ask the politically enlightened to give a 5-year-old boy painful penicillin injections for his anal sores caused by syphilis. Why don’t they come and change the colostomy bag on a 6-year-old girl so mutilated by her rape that her genitalia had to be reconstructed? Or let them help us convince an 11-year-old that her rape wasn’t her fault (whilst we are giving her antibiotics for the gonorrhoea she acquired). That’s what those at the coalface deal with on a distressingly regular basis.
Many people, over the decades, have been crying out in the wilderness for these kids. This is not a new issue and it’s not going to go away overnight. It’s a huge step forward that some people with political clout are finally acting. Grandmothers, nurses, teachers and Aboriginal health workers have been assaulted and threatened for speaking out for the abused. Children have died during or after sexual assaults. For the sake of these kids and the families caught up in the tragedy, we must act. Firmly, decisively and immediately.
Monica Brown
Hunter Valley, NSW
"You gave us tobacco, we gave you booze. I call it even." - Kathy Shaidle
"The hell you say. I've yet to crash a car after smoking a pack of ciggy butts. Agree with you otherwise." - Sean
Valid point, Sean. But guess which one has been condemned as the leper of personal choices.
While certain of the authoritarian elements do rankle, never the less the approach seems to be consistent with the Aussies' "roll up your sleeves and get the job done" approach, with a gratifyingly surprising buy in from many of the traditional "victim/discrimination" camp. It's nice to see responsibility tied to benefits for a change.
I know at least one Inuit community which of its own volition took a similarly drastic approach when they reached a collective decision supported by the church and RCMP to take all the alcohol, pornography, drugs and hard-rock music in the village, make a pile of it on the ice, set it alight and let it melt through and sink (David Suzuki be damned!). They've never looked back.
Unfortunately the Aboriginies are at an even more severe disadvantage than the Inuit wrt the clash of cultures because their social structure was even less defined than that of the Inuit with consequences as ET has pointed out. I suspect it will require that the old generation die out and the new generation grow up under the new order before any lasting benefit can be realized -- likewise many of our own native peoples.
Pissdoff: "THIS YOU IDIOT IS ABOUT SEXUAL ABUSE OF CHILDREN.
Whoops forgot that is what you Libs and dippers support."
Really, that kind of remark verges on insanity.
p.s.: I am neither a "Lib" nor a "dipper" and I'm not trying to defend anyone. I'm just responding to the degradation of discourse.
In today calgary sun there is an article about how canada is handling the problem of family violence on the reserves. We are giving another 56 million to fund shelters and build five more shelters. No prevention or urging the chiefs to take responsibility for thier band members,just more money please.But this move upset the inuit who say where is our money,our woman are being beat up too.Those damn Aussies,first they tell immigrants to shape up or ship out,and now this.Don't they understand political correctness?
It's gratifying to see some politicians, in some countries have the courage to address an horrendous situation among Aboriginals.
Friend worked for SS Ministry here, and was assigned one of our more notorious northern reservations. He said the sexual abuse of children, including incest, was rampant. Alcohol helped to exacerbate the problem.
The best thing, of many steps, the Aussies have done, was to ban alcohol. It's the bane of Reserves here, and I'm not surprised to hear about it in another country.
Wow...way to go Australia. I doubt anything approaching this will ever happen in Canada. IIRC the United Nations condemned our "treatment" of indigenous people some time ago, using terms like third world. I think the UN is as dangerous as it is useless. Wonder what their reaction would be to this.
The Australians are exactly right; they are saying that the money has to be spent on systemic and constructive behaviour - for the next generation.
Consider what the Australians said to Islamic fascism - telling them that if they immigrate to Australia and reject 'the Australian Way' - which is based around a separation of church and state, the rule of law, a democratic elected legislature - then if they reject this, they shouldn't come to Australia. In Canada, with our Liberal-established Charter and its multiculturalism, it's quite OK to reject Our Way and reject democracy, the rule of law and insist on Sharia law.
The Australians fought in Iraq for the same reason; they are very aware of the threat of Islamic fascism - something that the Liberals and NDP in Canada reject.
Throwing money at a collection of people who are NOT a society but just a dysfunctional rabble is useless. But, that's the Canadian tactic of that great monolith that is Indian Affairs.
With the decay of their old normative standards - operative only in the old Hunting and Gathering economy - indigeneous peoples have to adapt and move into the complex industrial society. They have no choice; they cannot live the 'old way'; the land won't support it, and their numbers are too large and- they are settled rather than migratory.
I'm just responding to the degradation of discourse.
====================================
Hmmmm. "Discourse." A word used to excess by the academic wing of the Indian Industry.
You know, I really like John Howard. I can see why the man has been pretty much unchallenged by Labor since he got elected over a decade ago. The man is a genius. While I don't agree with everything he's done (global warming), Australia has had to deal actual environmental crises (for more, read Collapse, by Jared Diamond, a very very good book on actual environmental crises), and thus has some pretty hands on knowledge of stuff like this. Makes me want to live there.
"They have no choice; they cannot live the 'old way'; the land won't support it, and their numbers are too large and- they are settled rather than migratory."
You've hit the nail on the head there, ET. The native culture has been dead for a century. It is long past time to admit it.
Want to end problems on reserves ? Than let's just end the racism and stop seperating native people from the rest of us on crappy pieces of land. Property rights for natives and rights for native women. The damn reserve chiefs are earning more than the prime minister and Indian affairs budget is equal to $30,000 a year for each man women and child with a status card....including the off reserve ones. Gut the whole racist system
http://jimcotton.blogspot.com
It's merely more freaking common senses from John Howard of Australia. Oh to have a Prime Minister with his fortitude and ability to call a spade a spade.
He sorted out the Muslim people who wished to immigrate to his country, telling them the Australian way of life would not change, if they could not abide it, they should not come.
We are getting closer to the same edict here, but Harper needs a clear Majority to do it. The howling Leftists are the biggest danger to our Country's security and survival as a cohesive society.
Pissdoff: "THIS YOU IDIOT IS ABOUT SEXUAL ABUSE OF CHILDREN.
Whoops forgot that is what you Libs and dippers support."
Really, that kind of remark verges on insanity.
p.s.: I am neither a "Lib" nor a "dipper" and I'm not trying to defend anyone. I'm just responding to the degradation of discourse.
Posted by: exile at June 23, 2007 2:46 PM
Actually the full comment was:
"Stephen what a typical lefty response. THIS YOU IDIOT IS ABOUT SEXUAL ABUSE OF CHILDREN."
So are you commenting on here under different identities?
Or cant you read?
And every aborigional child will be shot full of RITLIN and parents cant object