The social issue no one in Australia wants to talk about

This subject has irked me for quite some time now, it began after a young aboriginal boy got electrocuted whilst crawling through a hole in the wall in his family's house.

It was found that there was no RCD fitted to the home.

I feel for the family's tragic loss and as this article states, the accident was preventable.

www.abc.net.au...
Most definitely preventable but this where I started to get angry, not at the lack of an RCD though.

The first thought that popped into my mind was why was there a hole in the wall in the first place?

This is where some people have called me racist because I have the gall to point out that the people who live in these houses are HUMAN ADULTS.

Instead it seems this particular race of people have decided that living like animals is easier.

Now that is a huge generalisation I know but hear me out.

As the above article states, the occupants believe that the department of housing is at fault, this is partially true, but as someone who has lived in a remote town with a majority population of aborigines, I have seen first hand at how these houses are treated.

Smashed windows, rubbish strewn around, furniture destroyed, floors ripped out, roofs ripped off, the list goes on, even the image in the above article shows rubbish strewn everywhere.

Again, no one is to blame for this but the occupants.

A recent article and the reason for writing this thread again got my back up.

A State Government report paints a bleak picture of the life of Aboriginals in Roebourne, revealing alarming levels of alcohol abuse, child neglect, violence, crime and overcrowding.

...

Police figures in the report reveal that between February 2008 and February 2009 there were 59 reported domestic assaults and 56 non-domestic assaults in Roebourne.

In the same period there were 10 reported sexual assaults, 41 acts of threatening behaviour and 171 reports of property damage. Eighty per cent of offences were alcohol-related.

For a town with a population of 1000, 75 per cent of which is Aboriginal, the quantity of offences is out of proportion, the report states.

In an area of the town know as The Village there can be between 15 and 20 people living in each home at any one time.

Village resident Cyril Munda, who lives among the squalor, said no one should have to live in such conditions.

The report, dated July last year but quietly placed on the department's website, highlights the poor school attendance and literacy and numeracy rates of the town's children. It also highlights the high proportion of Roebourne children considered vulnerable in terms of their physical, social and emotional development.
*

The crime figures paint quite the picture.

The images accompanying the article also paint quite a picture too...






Is this the governments fault?
Is this mine the tax payers fault?

Or should these people drag themselves out of the stone age and act like human beings?

Call me racist if you must but it disgusts me that the children in these communities are being brought up in these conditions.

It is all the adults in these community's fault.

To those who aren't Australian probably won't understand this issue, it is hugely biased when reported in the media, the two above articles quite clearly show that it couldn't possibly be the fault of the occupants of these communities, no just blame the government, to blame the people who need to be blamed gets you called racist.













[edit on 24/3/10 by Chadwickus]

to echo a fairly common aussie sentiment, "if you don't like the way the austrailians live, maybe you should f**k off home."

seems to me like they were getting along just fine for 50,000 years before people with guns forced them off their lands and out of their communities.

[edit on 24/3/10 by pieman]

Agreeable thread Chad,

On the other side of Australia, ive lived near Mt Druitt, you only have to ask around and someone will know of the place. Very similar things happen there.

On a side note, people who rent houses and suddenly cant afford it or have asked the real estate to fix something or else they'll pay no further rent, end up trashing the joint in some form of retribution.

But i guess after all, humans are a form of animal.

What do you expect when yuo treat people like trash and feed them trash? It's just typical anglo elitists trying to get rid of the blacks.

reply to post by pieman

Every country has been invaded in some way or another.

So i guess nobody should have moved to england? We should have left them riding around on horses, jousting for honour and hiding in castles?? haha,

Imagine only being allowed to stay in your country of birth.....

The world is everyones.

reply to post by Chadwickus


You opened yourself up there brother... The Black Militants and White apologist will come out and blame you for something you have no control over... this was the fault of the home owner, if they want to live like Animals that is there god giving right to live as such... You see that kind of garbage here in the States in the Inner Cities and Trailer Parks... No one wants to take responsibility for their own actions any more, they want to blame # that no one alive today was responsible for.


Idiots everywhere.

You list all of the bad/wrong things these people are doing in their current situation. Sure, that's easy. You could look at a crack addict and list a bunch of things that are wrong that they do to -- but that tells you nothing about why they are the way they are -- why they are an addict, what addiction does to an otherwise OK person.

As another has already stated, the Aborigines managed quite successfully for millenia without a garbage problem. They had a way of life that was very functional. You guys, you white guys came in and changed their world upside down.

Maybe because you were the disturbers, you have some responsibility to try and figure out how to make the two cultures work? Try starting with a little respect.

reply to post by intrinsic


They treat themselves like trash.

Please don't take this thread as some racist attack on aborigines, it is speaking up about what a lot of us are thinking.

There needs to be a line drawn, we've paid tenfold for the crimes and atrocities we inflicted on their ancestors, we're still paying for it now.

The simple fact is, these adults need to take responsibility for their own actions instead of relying on hand outs from the government to fix the problems they themselves caused.

Typical reaction from slaves towards those who refused to be slaves (forcefully brought to ORDER). Their way of life was destroyed and they were forced into this trash-producing civilization where they have no other choice but to rot!

Originally posted by Chadwickus
To those who aren't Australian probably won't understand this issue, it is hugely biased when reported in the media, the two above articles quite clearly show that it couldn't possibly be the fault of the occupants of these communities, no just blame the government, to blame the people who need to be blamed gets you called racist.

I think we can relate the problems of our aboriginal people to yours, to some degree. I would suggest that it comes down to social stratification and, yes, racism, alcohol and drug abuse causing/created by despair, corrupt indigenous government and a paternal white hierarchy that doesn't know how to fix the problem they created.

Happy people don't abuse themselves, their kids, their homes. Education and health care create opportunity. You don't just send them a cheque, you build schools and clinics, you make sure good food and water is available. You throw money at it the right way, because otherwise, you keep on paying for folks to remain useless to themselves and to greater society.

You are right, Chad...

This issue is something that continually gets swept under the carpet and everyone simply refuses to deal with it...

You mentioned in one of your posts "we've paid tenfold for the crimes and atrocities we inflicted on their ancestors"...I do agree with that...

However I do also believe indigenous Australians still need all the help and support the nation can provide for them, and I dont believe that's necessarily financial either...

In fact, many prominent indigenous Australians like Mick Dodson say exactly that, its not really a case of money and you could throw a trillion dollars at the problem and it wouldnt be solved...

On the other hand, I honestly don't know how we solve that problem, I really don't...

reply to post by wayno


Everything you mentioned I have considered and understand.

I did say I was massively generalising but what I am talking about isn't an isolated incident, it is a huge issue.

Blaming something our ancestors did over 200 years ago is a cop out and is shirking the issue.

We can't keep living in the past, otherwise we will never move forward.
Their actions now are seriously hurting the next generations chances of having a full life.

A quick story from when I was living in a town called Fitzroy Crossing, the place I alluded to in the OP.

A friend of mine worked at the hospital and worked with a lot of the local children. Many of these children had to steal money from their parents just so they could eat, the usual choice of food was from the deep fryer at the local servo, chips, chico roles and the like.

Originally posted by Chadwickus

There needs to be a line drawn, we've paid tenfold for the crimes and atrocities we inflicted on their ancestors, we're still paying for it now.

you're not paying as much as they are.
what exactly do you think a land, culture, heritage and a society is worth?
what makes you think you're in any position to judge what an aboriginal has lost and if your not in that position, where do you get off claiming you've paid "tenfold"

well how about you just give them back the land and allow them to revert to their stone age ways if that's what they want to do.

you really think the evidence suggests the western way of living is better?

I won't call you racist

I didn't consider Pauline Hanson to be racist, either

Like you, I've lived amongst Australian Aborigines, shared classrooms with Aborigine kids

Yes, they got a raw deal. And it was almost totally attributable to the fact their parents were worse than hopeless at parenting and were falling-down drunk every chance they got alcoholics

My sister was a nurse in Mt.Isa for years. I don't know how she stuck it. Aborigine women were brought into the hospital and the first thing that had to be done was bathe them, no matter how drunk they were, because they were foul beyond belief

Those 'bad' white nurses had to scrub those women down, change the water, scrub them again, rinse and scrub again. Each time, layers of what looked like skin peeled from their bodies and into the water. First time my sister experienced it, she nearly fainted, because she believed it was skin. Until it was explained to her that what looked like skin and what was peeling away from those bodies was layer after layer of clothing, some of it years old, to the point it had adhered to the patient's real skin in some instances. Those women simply put one lot of clothing over the last, year after year ... never bathed, never removed the layers of clothing

Many of the aboriginal children were suffering scabies from lack of any form of food apart from flour and water 'damper' which they'd cooked themselves over open fires. They were severely malnourished, despite the astonishingly large payments handed their parents on fortnightly basis by the government. Their parents spent the lot on grog and indulged in drunken orgies until the money ran out. Then they begged and threatened for more money for grog until the next government payment. Many if not most of the children, even very young ones, were infected with sexually transmitted diseases

Children raised in such an environment invariably follow the example set by the adults and become useless alcoholics themselves at a young age, followed by illegitimate pregnancies, children born with fetal alcohol syndrome and infected with a variety of disease

When they can't scrounge more alcohol, adults and children alike will sniff petrol

The situation was bad enough when it was against the law to serve alcohol to Aborigines. But the do-gooders fought for the right of Aborigines to drink and the situation's gone even further downhill since then

I've known Aboriginal women sleep with half a dozen men at the back of the pub for the price of a glass of beer per man. Then the women collapse in the grass. Their kids know better than to bother them and leave them alone until they stagger home sometime the next day. While this is going on, Aboriginal toddlers are left at the mercy of the world and the ministrations of their older siblings who're usually spaced a year apart, all foraging for any sort of food, even if they have to break-in somewhere to get it

The whites tried to break this cycle by separating Aboriginal children from the adults, putting them in church homes, giving them an education, decent if plain food and teaching them some sort of skill via which they could earn a living. Thanks to the mechanations of that breed of snakes known as lawyers, those Aboriginal kids became known as 'the stolen generation'. And the do-gooders wring their hands and ghost-write pathetic tales and get today's Aboriginals to sign them. Brings in big dollars and distorts what actually happened. And adds to the collective self-pity of today's Aboriginals who're encouraged to summon up a bit of outrage and sign papers demanding financial compensation from today's government

You're right. No one wants to talk about it. People would rather blame anyone but the Aborigines. And the majority of Aborigines don't care either way as long as someone gives them money and tells them what a hard life they're having

But, if you're a person of pigment, you're never to blame, apparently and should not be encouraged to accept responsiblity for yourself --- as long as there's someone of lesser-pigment around to pay for you and to blame for all your problems

[edit on 24-3-2010 by Dock9]

Same thing happened to American Indians. They were cheated, intentionally made sick so they died in great numbers, they were exterminated by all available means, their land taken, forcefully moved to reservations, where they died from starvation, impoverished, their culture taken away from them, turned into human trash and now the "superior race" is looking for a final solution with all justification on their side. Really sad and very stupid... Idiocracy incorporated.

reply to post by JohnnyCanuck


Yes! you are exactly correct and i thank you for bringing this up.

This IS where the government is to blame, using the money incorrectly.

Further to my above story, Fitzroy Crossing introduced a total ban on take away alcohol to curb anti social behaviour.

A report of that can be found HERE

I've heard report that since the ban on alcohol other substance abuses have increased, particularly petrol sniffing.

So I'm sceptical of just how effective it is.

What I don't understand is why doesn't the government, instead of giving them cash every week, also give them food stamps, or credits to the local supermarket?

This would reduce the amount spent on alcohol and hopefully giving them and their children a good chance at proper nutrition.

Originally posted by Dock9
The whites tried to break this cycle by separating Aboriginal children from the adults, putting them in church homes, giving them an education, decent if plain food and teaching them some sort of skill via which they could earn a living.

decent plain food, like beer and flour and water made into a poor bread over a fire?

the cycle was created by white people, it hadn't existed before white people, lets not pretend it's any different.

reply to post by Chadwickus


The Howard Government introduced "income management" for indigenous Australians receiving government payments in various parts of NT...This was widened by the Rudd Government...

I've looked high and wide, but have been unable to find any info that indicated whether this policy has been effective in reducing the problems you spoke about in your O/P, but you'd think it would...

If someone is forced to spend a certain amount of their income on the necessities, you'd think their situation, and more particularly that of their children would improve...

I'm surprised the govt hasn't extended this to other centres of indigenous population (like Fitzroy Crossing)...

As usual, the recycled old argument about how us White People are to blame for the predicament of others. I think some members are conveniently overlooking the message in the OP. This is exactly why things will never change: a group of people in dire straits won't acknowledge that they are responsible for their own well-being and conduct in the present. The message is rather simple: change your attitude and take responsibility for improving things in the present!

Originally posted by Retrovertigo
I'm surprised the govt hasn't extended this to other centres of indigenous population (like Fitzroy Crossing)...

are you?
it seems to me that every time an indigenous people pull themselves together they start doing crazy stuff like looking for their land back or for their culture to be respected, the government have a strong interest in keeping them drunk and downtrodden.