The "ISIS" brides due to return today

"will face the full extent of the law" and "will be arrested" - well, some of them will. They will "all be subjected to monitoring" - perhaps.

I keep wondering about this. I suspect these "ISIS" brides, women who went off to join their husbands in the Islamic State fight which failed are not all the same. 

Some of them will have gone out of a belief that the proposed caliphate would come about. They would have seen themselves as the wives of the leaders. They would have been ready to assume roles which gave them control over other women. They would have believed they would eventually be leading lives where they controlled not just other Muslim women but all women. These women would be hard line radicals. I have no doubt that at least one of those returning to this country will be in that category. She will still be a believer in these things. Given the opportunity she would do it again and believe that doing it "differently" would mean success the next time.

Then there will be others who will still believe it was right to go. They won't see it as a failure but a setback. The conditions there may have been appalling but they will believe that this is necessary in order to get to heaven.

There will be others who believe varying shades of both these things.

And there will be women who went because they had no choice. They had married, often by family arrangement, the men they went to join. They were told that not to go would bring shame on their families and the families of the men who went. They will have been taken out of school at the earliest possible age. They are not well educated. All their lives they have lived under the control of their fathers, their brothers and their husbands. To a lesser extent they have also been controlled by their mothers and then their mothers-in-law. They will have submitted to sex whenever it was required of them. They will have had multiple children and be expected to bring them up in the same traditions. 

This group will go on believing all this is right because this is what they have always been told. Changing those beliefs will be impossible. They may appear to do so. They may try but those beliefs will always be there.

Monitoring all these women, their children and grandchildren will cost millions of dollars every year for many years to come. Those who are citizens of this country have the right of return. How we handle the situation is going to be a test for all of us.  

   

Do we need another "Intervention"?

The "Intervention" was a government initiative of the early 2000's. It involved taking over some of the welfare payments being made to some indigenous people and leaving a smaller amount for discretionary spending.  It involved bringing in alcohol free zones. Some welfare payments were tied to school attendance. There was a greater police presence in some indigenous areas.

The plan was supported federally by both Labor and the Coalition but it was opposed by the state Labor government and Human Rights Commissions. It was also supported by many indigenous elders.

These "interventions" were also heavily criticised by people who claimed "indigenous people have the right to self-determination". They claimed that the result was increased levels of incarceration for those who would not abide by the measures.  That the measures did result in lower levels of domestic violence and increased school attendance was not seen as a measure of success. It was claimed there were "other" ways of helping indigenous people. The measures were dropped and there has been an increase in domestic violence issues. Alcohol related issues have increased. School attendance is down. There are more instances of children not being even adequately cared for.

Should those measures have been kept in place? There are still people arguing that they were wrong, that this is not how indigenous affairs should be handled. 

These arguments are being made even while billions (yes, billions - not millions) of taxpayer dollars are being spent for no measurable improvements. Argue that the reverse is true and we are told it is the fault of "the system" - whatever that is. We are told that indigenous people need "greater" rather than lesser control over their own affairs.

Is that working? No it is not. It will not work. Handing more control to indigenous "leaders" has been shown over and over again not to work. The latest horrific (and it really is horrific) murder of a young child came about partly because of this. The child had been the subject of repeated welfare reports. Nothing was done. The police were involved. Nothing was done. She slept on a mattress in the "living room" of a house not really fit for human habitation. Not so long ago it had been a new dwelling that, appropriately cared for, was more than adequate. The child's grandfather is head of an indigenous housing organisation and is reportedly receiving a very high income. Everything suggests this child should have been safe, well housed and well cared for but she was not. What is more it was considered so "normal" by the authorities they did not intervene. 

Yes, it sounds "racist" to say that. When suggestions are made about what might be done then there are claims of "if you do that then there will be another "stolen generation" so we have to leave them where they are". 

Perhaps it is time for more people to read the report into the "stolen generation" and look at the number of successful claims. There has been just one successful claim in this state - but we are still told there were "many" children just taken from their families. 

I would not agree with a policy that in any way forcibly removed children from their families if they were being even just adequately cared for at home. That said I wonder whether we do not need to intervene much more strongly when children are not being properly cared for. Is it perhaps time to stop the nonsense of "the right to self-determination" when such large sums of money are being spent for no visible benefit?  

 

There is currently a joke

going around that goes something like this. 

A man goes to heaven. He is waiting for St Peter to fill out the paper work at his desk. He looks around the office and sees all the clocks on the wall.

"What are all the clocks for?"

"Oh, they are the lie clocks," St Peter tells him.

"The lie clocks?"

"Yes, if they move then we know people have told a lie."

"Oh. Whose is that one there?"

"That's Mother Teresa's. It has never moved. She never told a lie."

"And that one?"

"That's Abraham Lincoln's. He only ever told two lies."

"Can you tell me where the one belonging to Donald Trump is?"

"Oh Jesus has that one in his office. He uses it as an air conditioner."

Yes, funny but it could also be applied here to our Prime Minister and his Cabinet, particularly his Treasurer. We have, believe it or not, just been told that "Lying is how you build trust." 

Apparently you lie to the public and then, gradually over months and years, you lie to them even more so that they come to believe that their policies are necessary and the changes are necessary. They tell you "the situation has changed", that an external event or some natural disaster has made the change in policy necessary. It is not true of course but this is how they handle policy changes.

There are some changes coming up in the Budget that will do a great deal of economic harm. They are being made with an eye to a third term in government. They will appear to be giving to "struggling" families who are finding it hard to make ends meet. 

A retired bank economist tried to explain to me yesterday that the proposals being discussed in the press will raise rents by around twenty percent. They will not add to housing stock and may make it more expensive to actually build houses. We already have a housing shortage. This will add to the problems. But.... it sounds good. 

By the time the next election comes around this will almost certainly be blamed on the war in the Middle East and the fuel shortages. Will the government be held to account? It is unlikely. We will just see more solar panels and wind turbines on agricultural land and be told that this is how we reach the magical "net zero".  

There is a need to be quiet

if you live in close proximity to other people. At least, I thought there was.

I live in a group of twelve units. They are not flats where people live on top of one another but self contained ground floor dwellings. They are what Americans might call condominiums. 

When I moved here I expected there would be a need to be aware of those around me. I was prepared for a need to be quiet. I hope I have been.

The same is not true of everyone. There is an alcoholic who lives in another unit whose voice I often hear. There is someone who lives two doors from her. I often hear her talking to the alcoholic and going in and out of her unit. These are background sort of noises. I can cope with those. They occur during daylight hours.

No, it is my next door neighbour. My neighbours seems to keep very odd hours. It is not unusual for me to hear what sounds like the dishes being done at eleven in the evening. This is not quiet. It is clattering and banging. The footsteps backwards and forwards are rapid and heavy. 

There is a machine of some sort being used at times. It sounds like one of those heavier floor polishers used by commercial cleaners. The other morning it was used just after 3am.  Yes, of course it woke me. The wall between is not that thick.

This person goes in and out the back screen door. It is left to bang shut. The other door is shut with a bang. There are more heavy footsteps. 

Oddly I never hear a television set or radio.

I have no idea what this person does for a living. Is it shift work? I would not have thought so. I am not sure this person even does go to work. We have spoken - but only briefly.

Is it unreasonable to ask for quiet between ten at night and six in the morning? Is it unreasonable for people to be aware? 

It worries me. Am I making any noise which disturbs people? Nobody has said anything but I still wonder.

I suppose it is better than being able to hear the two young ones on the other side when they are in bed.   

We are over taxed

in this country. We pay some of the highest, if not the highest, rates of taxation in the world. (Yes, some of those Scandinavian countries are high - but they get more for their Euros.) 

We are also over-governed.            

We pay tax on almost everything we buy through the "GST" - the "goods and services tax". We pay tax to our local council, shire, borough or whatever it is called. That is supposed to pay for things like local roads and rubbish collection. We pay taxes to our state government. We pay taxes to our federal government. We also pay for other government run "services". Our national health service is not "free" - although the Prime Minister keeps telling us it is. 

A great deal of our taxes go on duplicating services in varying amounts at different levels. They go on sorting out the different laws and regulations in each state. They go on employing the vast legal network needed to oversee all this. Yes, plenty of people have cause to want things to go on this way. Their livelihoods depend on it.

It needs to change. It won't change.

But it is also this sort of thing that allows petty little dictators who are also excellent con artists into making people believe that millions upon millions of dollars spent rooting up trees in parkland is a good idea. The Premier of this state is one of those dictators. He is still trying to go ahead with the "LIV" golf course to the north of the CBD. There is already a golf course there. It is a public course used by many. It is apparently more than fit for purpose. There are hundreds of trees there. The LIV course is redesigned. It requires hundreds of trees to come out. Not as many people will be able to use it. The land has been taken without compensation from people who have cared for it, from ratepayers who have paid their taxes into it.

I could not care less about golf. I am Mark Twain's view that it is "a good walk spoilt" but I do care about the trees and the wildlife which rely on the trees and the removal of our green canopy. I also care about fairly compensating people for loss. This has not been done here.

This is what happens when a government is handed too much power. All I can do is hope there is a backlash at the next election - but it will be too late to save what needs to be saved.   

We are segregating, not integrating people

when we insist they must "retain their language and culture".

I was accused of being "racist" yesterday. This was after someone had read my blog post. They did not like it.  Didn't I know how important it was for indigenous people to retain their language and culture? We have no right to take that away from them I was told.

I was no suggesting that it be taken away from them but this is apparently how my words came across. I have not, as demanded, taken the post down. There is no need for that. I may be wrong in what I said there but I do not believe I am.

I will put it to you again. I will put it to you simply. If you cannot speak the "official" language of your country then you cannot fully participate in the conversations and you will be dependent on others. If you cannot read and write that language then you will be dependent on others. 

I remember a speech pathologist of my acquaintance remarking to me how hard people with cerebral palsy who have speech defects will try to communicate using speech. Of course they will. If they can speak they will try however hard it is. All the communication devices in the world do not make up for speech. Speech makes it possible to be part of the conversation without anything in between.

With respect to indigenous people however this has nothing to do with not being able to speak but being able to speak a language which is widely understood. It is about not being able to read and write that language. 

The indigenous teen I know who has come down from a remote community to finish school this year struggles at times. He is an intelligent boy. He knew it would be difficult. His guardian here is giving him extra help and they both know he needs it. He also knows that using good English and having good results will get him into the course he wants to do. He is one of the most motivated students I have come across. He knows, and his parents know, that success will only come if he works for it. 

He can speak his local indigenous language "but it can't say what English says" and his culture is still important to him "but there is lots of other good stuff which is just as important". Yes, he likes some aspects of "pop" culture just as much as any other teen. I hope he makes a go of it but he has huge hurdles to overcome when so much is invested by others in him "retaining" his language and culture. 

You do not need to lose your language or your culture entirely.You need to recognise they will change over time and the balance of their importance may change. What we cannot do is demand that it be retained so that the disadvantage is retained with it.   

  

A five year old has died

in the most horrific circumstances but I am almost certain her death will not bring about the changes which are needed. 

I am writing of course about the death of the very attractive little aboriginal girl who lived in one of the "camps" outside Alice Springs. It is not the sort of place where anyone should be living in this country, let alone a child. She did not have a bedroom, or even a bed. She slept on a mattress on a floor in a room where whisky bottles were lined up along the windowsill. The house is apparently strewn with rubbish. 

To me it all sounds all too common in that part of the world. I have talked with aboriginal women who are even more worried than I am. They are among the seeming few who really do want the best for their children, who insist on them going to school. They make sure their children are fed and clothed to the best of their ability. They try to keep their boys from running in the streets at night. So far those I know are winning the battle - but at a huge cost.

The way we handle "indigenous" affairs in this country has to change. It is not working. It will never work. 

Over and over again there have been "councils" and "organisations" and "groups" and this or that body which have failed. They have all failed because they have the same philosophy. They say "indigenous people have the right to self-determination". They say they have "the right to retain their language and culture". 

Consider this though and see if it works. You speak a language which has a relationship with another language spoken before white settlement. Yes, it has changed and evolved over the years. It is incomprehensible to all but, at most, a few thousand people.  You send your children off to the school where they are taught in that language. You know your children are supposed to go to school but you are not really interested because you may not be able to read and write at all. If you can it is probably only in a very limited way. There are no books in your house. Nobody reads bedtime stories.

The school does not have the resources other schools have because the wide ranging resources available in English are not available in your language. Still the cost of running your school is still higher. Absenteeism is high. The students are restless. They have not had enough to eat and there was some serious fighting in the camp last night. The fighting was almost certainly alcohol induced.  

I could go on but it does not take imagination to realise that this does not work. Children need to be educated in English if they are ever to have any chance of breaking free of a cycle of dependence. They need to be in a situation where their parents or guardians can only spend their government handout on specific items. Their parents and guardians, particularly their male parents and guardians, need to be gainfully occupied. They may not be "employable" as such but they need to be required to "work" in some manner or other.  

Yes, I know that idea goes against everything we have been told we "know" and "believe" about the importance of retaining language and culture. The reality however is that language and culture are not being retained. They have never been retained. The claim we are doing that is false. It has always been false. Chaining people to some sort of mythical past culture does not work. Real aboriginal culture was brutal and violent. It left any of the weak behind. This is rarely acknowledged. To actually say this is to leave one open to claims of "racist". We seem to believe it is better to rely on "traditional" ideas like "welcome to country" and "dot art" even when the first idea had an entirely different purpose in the past and the second idea is a mid-twentieth century one introduced by a white man. 

Is it really racist to require people to contribute something to society if they possibly can? I have never had any problem with "work for the dole" schemes that give people some sort of employment. I have friends with disabilities who receive disability support pensions but still contribute through working in sheltered employment or by volunteering in other places. It gives their lives a purpose. This is what many of those in the "camps" and communities need.  

There is an "indigenous industry" out there with people who are making money through the philosophy of "retention". Until that stops then there will be more deaths, deaths of innocent and very attractive children. Is that what we want? It seems it is what some people do want.