The central idea is - they must take responsibility for themselves. And I say this because I do think that is in their best interest.
White fella, aboriginal 'elders', government -they are all focusing on themselves. If a Vietnamese refugee can, and have, make a go of it, Aboriginese have no excuses left. It is entirely up to them.

I feel no sorry for the ones living in squalor and sniffing pettrol, at all. I do feel very supportive towards the ones who have made a go of it. That's all it takes.

There should be no welfare until people have contributed first. That should be the rule for youth, immigrants, aboriginese, the unemployed. The sick and the orphaned are excepted.  Put in before you take out. Can't be fairer than that.

Quote:




"Agricultural land". So when we send all of these repeat-offender aboriginals to this hermetically sealed community, you think all of them are going to take up the hoe and plough and start becoming productive citizens? This is possibly the most ridiculous solution I have ever heard -- these people, these repeat offender aborignals, are without a doubt the scum of the earth. They represent some of the worst of the worst in terms of the whole of the human species, and evidently viewing from their life experiences, they have little to no interest in being productive. Self-sufficient?? Just a little reminder; 90% of farms owned by blacks in South Africa are now (after being redistributed from productive white farmers) non-producing and bleeding money. Many of these new farmers surely did not have criminal records or checkered pasts; yet they do not produce. The situation will be even worse for Aboriginals not only with no agricultural skills, but derived from prisons as well. They will go hungry within weeks, and that's if they have not all killed each other beforehand.

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A lovely place? You are planning to create hell on earth. I am in favour of Aboriginal self-determination actually, but I do realize that by doing so I am likely dooming those who would be interested in taking part to a society resembling Africa in our midst (perhaps worse). What kind of government do you think a bunch of repeat-offending aboriginals are going to create? Even Aboriginals without criminal records would create a society that no sane white person in their dare mind would ever want to set foot, but taking the worst of their own stock and letting them 'go at it'? Pure folly.

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It's actually in some ways, ominously brilliant. It's like Auschwitz without the gas-ovens. Throw them all in and let them kill each other off without us needing to. Point is, if that's the inevitable end result, why bother going to all that trouble and money to put the infrastructure on the ground when we can just shoot them all?

Your idea is silly also because it assumes that maintaing 'Outside' will be less expensive than just keeping them locked up. Provided that this project makes use of a relatively large area of land, maintaining security around its perimeter might cost a fortune. There'll be thousands of attempted breakouts -- why would these guys want to stay in this ineluctable hellhole?

Here are some ways that I think would ameliorate the Aboriginal situation (note that I didn't say 'solve'; there is a reason for this).

Educational Reform

First step must begin with the schools. This need not even apply just to Aboriginals, though it will involve them with much greater frequency. Education for most Aboriginal children with concerns to 'academic' subject matter (the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic) will be tailored in such a way that higher-level mental functions such as inference and conceptual application will need to be utilized at a minimum -- instead, intensive rote memorization will be employed, and the amount of time at school focused on these subjects will be considerably less than it is now. Basic life skills will be thoroughly drilled into their heads, and other government branches will work to help further eliminate novelty with regards to these skills by harmonizing their services and functions with what has been taught. For instance, the 'example' bus timetable that was used to instruct a child on how to read one will be the same found as the actual one found everywhere else in real life. This increases familarity and reduces novelty -- making things easier for those that adhere to predictable routines and have difficulty processing unfamiliarity.

As shown, education far sooner than now will be made 'hands on' -- oriented towards the development of vocational and athletic abilities. Sports will be played frequently and Aboriginal students will be examined carefully for the existence of any potential favourable innate athletic abilities that could allow them to excel at sports on a professional level. Workplace skills will be built up over a long period of time during primary and secondary schooling so that Aboriginal students leaving in, say, Yr. 10, will be more than ready to enter the workplace performing rewarding physical work. Instead of wasting years and years at school learning nothing and being disruptive, the vast majority of time will be spent preparing for comfortable existences as workers. Of course, this will be optional, but many Aboriginal students (and whites as well, of course), will see early vocational schooling as more enjoyable -- and yes, more rewarding (financially and mentally) for them in the long run, than the academic track. The point is to have a wider selection of academic tracks than available to students now -- which currently attempts to fit far too many triangles into square holes. We are not all of the same mental competence, so education should naturally be centered around this fact.

Free-lunches will be provided for students at schools to further build up the body and the mind. Good bush tucker like Kangaroo meat and highly nutritious endemic plants can be offered to Aboriginal and white students; not only are these foodstuffs extremely healthy, but will likely be appealing to indigenous students who may feel that their consumption would be a way to create a meaningful link between themselves and their ancient blood.

There will be no affirmative action whatsoever in higher education, and standards will be made more rigorous than they are now. Students who have proven themselves to be competent will have this alternative available to them -- those that have not, will not recieve "leg-ups" to grant them it. This is deleterious not just to the minds of men, but to the national purse and our educational standards as well.

Will write more later

aikmann4 wrote on Mar 6^th, 2010 at 8:12pm:


If you were capable of understanding new ideas Imperium, you would realize I suggested no such thing.  The land is there to provide inmates with the opportunity, which some might try. If they don't, that's their choice and there are alternatives.

aikmann4 wrote on Mar 6^th, 2010 at 8:12pm:


Perhaps, perhaps not.  They may have inherited survival instincts that would surprise you. It's their choice anyway, so why should we be concerned?

aikmann4 wrote on Mar 6^th, 2010 at 8:12pm:


"Outside" may resemble a small part of Africa, but so what? It would be only a small part of Australia really, would be fenced off so as not to affect us, and in many respects would be far better than gaol, which otherwise is your only alternative, a proven failure.

aikmann4 wrote on Mar 6^th, 2010 at 8:12pm:


You're guessing. Security will not be free of course, but by using electronic perimeter surveillance together with a mobile guard force, the manpower required would be no more than for a regular prison. Bear in mind too, that Outside is intended as a last resort, for people on whom all your other measures have failed.

aikmann4 wrote on Mar 7^th, 2010 at 11:13pm:


Good.  Let's continue to discuss this for a while then, and try to work it up to being a viable proposal.

I initially made the suggestion in response to an earlier post in which the writer asked "what would you do" after describing some hopeless case repeat offender. It's a question I have heard asked over many years, and it's about time some answer was found.

aikmann4 wrote on Mar 7^th, 2010 at 11:13pm:

I don't think providing equipment is necessary, as the sort of farming inmates might be expected to do would be subsistence level only. The land/soil/water supply need to be good enough to support agriculture though. It is not good enough to be pushed onto some barren wasteland, which has often been the Aborigine's lot in the past.

aikmann4 wrote on Mar 7^th, 2010 at 11:13pm:

Depends on whether you set your expectations too high.

aikmann4 wrote on Mar 7^th, 2010 at 11:13pm:

None, or nearly so. I would not expect welfare payments to be made to the inmates of Outside.

aikmann4 wrote on Mar 7^th, 2010 at 11:13pm:

The assistance I envisage would be provided for a limited startup period only (perhaps 6 months), after which enough inmates should have been trained to be the ongoing trainers themselves. If they have not their future seems bleak, but it's their choice.

aikmann4 wrote on Mar 7^th, 2010 at 11:13pm:


I don't think you could get public acceptance of shooting or enslavement, but you might get acceptance of an unpoliced self-sufficient gaol, where the inmates survive, prosper, or die according to their own choices and efforts.

Outside would be much cheaper than keeping people in gaol indefinitely. Inmates would be responsible for providing their own meals. Outside would not be provided with TV, sporting facilities, libraries, telephones, and other costly items found in normal gaols.  Medical treatment, dentistry, and the like would be provided under the user pays principle.

fawkes wrote on Mar 6^th, 2010 at 9:44am:



You mean a reservation. A kind of Aboriginal Lord of the Flies.

Soren wrote on Mar 7^th, 2010 at 8:22am:


I read what Roger Sandall has to say on these matters. He makes a lot of sense. I'd also say a lot of Aboriginal people would agree with much of what he says. Some, anyway.

"People reading about the Nazi period in Germany often wonder how the most cultured nation in Europe could fall so low. But we might just as well ask how Aboriginal life has come to this, in 2006, in a humane democracy like Australia. Is there a perverse and deluded theory of social order, and of the moral requirements of Aboriginal life specifically, that explains why Australians are both paralysed by these horrors and quite unable to move on? Can there be a semi-official theory about Aborigines, land, and culture, along with a fixation on the past, that makes it difficult for policy-makers to conceive of necessary change?"

Unfortunately, however, Sandall doesn't really have any solutions either, except to remove Aboriginals from outback settlements, put kids into boarding schools, and stop romanticising "culture."

As he says, you can't educate kids in the classroom when they receive different messages in the broader community. This is the problem: the Enlightenment value of education is not working to change Aboriginal conditions or values - at least at the primary school level. And if you don't finish primary school...

As Sandall also points out, making reference to Marx, you can't have people living in conditions where there's no economic activity.

We can, of course, include hunting/gatherering as economic activity, but that's not how it works in many outback Aboriginal communities. The economic activity is often between a white-managed store and Aboriginal people using welfare benefits. As Noel Pearson point out, this is not a "real economy," and such a "sit-down" mentality is the reason of much of the disadvantage in Aboriginal communities.

These factors are why we have the problem of Aboriginal disadvantage in Aboriginal communities, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. Sandall wants blacks to forget history. Unfortunately, much of the modern "history" only goes back one or two generations. In some desert communities, Aboriginals first came into contact with whites in the 1960s. Many of the problems in outback communities stem from the cataclysmic change from an indigenous hunter/gatherer lifestyle to - what? The policies have changed so much.

From Aboriginals being, in many places, hunted and killed, to being rounded up and placed in missions, to living and working on stations for rations, and after the '67 referendum, to being granted equal wages and being made redundant.

And only then to the welfare state.

This excludes the policies of the stolen generation, which placed intergenerational scar tissue on many families, and which Sandall also aknowledges.

You can't forget the past, but obviously, if you don't move on, you're lost. The challenge for the current federal and state governments is not necessarily how to right the wrongs of the past, but how to fix things now in a way that is sensitive to the past.

If you don't, you'll face the same problems, time and time again.

As I've said before in this thread, if all you do is belittle, bludgeon and berate, all you'll get is more alcoholism, petrol-sniffing, child abuse and neglect.

True change comes about through engagement, empowerment and enthusiasm. You can imprison entire generations (and we have) - but what are the results?

fawkes wrote on Mar 12^th, 2010 at 12:35pm:


You're so right, Fawkes. I work in an area where I see many of these problems. The solutions we use all take time, and are very hit and miss. At the policy level, I don't think we've conceptualised the problems well enough. At the social level, we have an increasing disparity between rich and poor, and this creates tension that causes crime. But we also have a consumer society - this makes people want more and more things. What to do?

Remember when juvenille conferencing was the big thing? It can work with some kids, but it's a bit on the slide now. I don't have any easy solutions for entrenched Aboriginal problems. As I said, I think you need to know the problems at the community level and not create federal (and often politically simplistic) solutions.

So, yes. Guilty as charged. Pathetic's a bit harsh, but you may well be right.