Prime Minister for Canyons wrote on Aug 29^th, 2016 at 3:51pm:


"Such a wonderful inclusive family event that made my heart swell with pride at being an Australian living in Fremantle"   

greggerypeccary wrote on Aug 29^th, 2016 at 3:53pm:



So a picnic would have done.

Prime Minister for Canyons wrote on Aug 29^th, 2016 at 4:07pm:


I reckon so.

They seem to like looking up at the sky and going "ooo" and "ahh", though.

thehermit wrote on Aug 29^th, 2016 at 4:16pm:




How about halfwit?

"THE CRUELTY OF HOME COMFORTS

FOR many Aboriginal people, Australia Day is a day of sadness, a day which marks when their dispossession began.”

Thus wrote the leftie Mayor of Fremantle last week, justifying his council’s decision to cancel Australia Day fireworks out of “sensitivity” to Aborigines.

Corina Abraham, an activist for the Nyoongar Elders, agreed, pointing out our national holiday “signifies death and anger, when our lands were stolen”.

Cancelling the fireworks is an excellent idea, and will certainly drive home the point.

But why stop there?

There are so many other things that January 26th signifies for Aboriginal people. So I assume the mayor, his nine councillors and the Nyoongar Elders will happily get rid of them too.

How about, for starters, sanitation, medicine, a rich and varied diet, fresh water on tap, increased life expectancy, toilet paper, Coco Pops, Netflix, air travel, the combustible engine, reverse-cycle airconditioning, bike paths, fishing lines, halogen lamps, cigarettes, chardonnay, package cruises to Bali, the Olympics, dental floss, mobile phones, laundromats, Sportsgirl, Pokemon Go!, taking the kids to the cricket, opening presents on Christmas morning, Happy Meals … I could go on.

There are, after all, so many dreadful things settlement brought to indigenous Australians.

link

No, it is culturally insensitive. Fancy reminding Englishmen of a failed attempt to blow up their Parliament,

Lord Herbert wrote on Aug 29^th, 2016 at 8:50pm:
They didnt even wear pants before europeans arrived. Their contribution to music was and is a hollow stick that makes a single monotonous droning noise. 100,000 years and no one figured out how to drill a few holes to make varying notes. Less advanced than neanderthal.

rhino wrote on Aug 29^th, 2016 at 8:57pm:


That was utterly disgraceful of course, and one can only imagine the cultural shock this must have imposed upon the convicts as they came stumbling down the gangways onto terra firma. To be greeted upon their arrival by such blatant disregard for the sartorial conventions and dress codes must have traumatised more than a few of them.

rhino wrote on Aug 29^th, 2016 at 8:57pm:


Inexcusable.

But there's a reason for why they remained as Stone Aged people for all of those many thousands of years, and it behooves us to be sensitive to their right to dignity, and to not denigrate or belittle them from the perspective of our own cultural conceit and arrogance.

But for certain events of pure happenchance our own European heritage would have been just as stuck in a cultural and technological limbo as theirs was. Our indigenous Australians remained as they did because they didn't face any real challenges of a major kind that demanded they change their ways and develop new coping mechanisms.

It was tribal wars in Europe that forced the opponents to become technologically creative and innovative.