 |
 |
>I've seen Pauline Hanson on TV reports over here. She doesn't seem very >bright so one assumes she's just a figurehead for more powerful, murkier >forces - any Oz members care to elaborate on who they might be, if my >assumptions correct? She seems to be a spent force these days, David. One Nation dissolved in a welter of recriminations and various legal difficulties, and the days when it garnered 15 per cent of the vote seem well past. She was the figurehead for a rural dissatisfaction which expressed itself in a nostalgia for simpler lives (5 per cent flat tax and Proper Morals), blaming the Other (Vietnamese, Aborignals) for its difficulties, etc etc. An old story, especially here, and in the end a sad one, because the ugliness of the reaction doesn't mean the initial complaints - a wide sense of disenfrachisement, and not just in rural areas - were not entirely valid. Thanks Gillian for your emails; I wish mine had been more considered; I can hardly count myself expert in this area, just very interested. So far as I understand it, the relationship of the Australian Government to activist groups seeking improvements for Aboriginal communities has been either to ignore them or to establish them as "consultative" groups or advisory bodies to the Minister, without any real power. The history of Aboriginal activism towards Australian government is quite long - it started in the 1920s with the Aborigines' Progressive Association and the Australian Aborigines League. The APA demanded not charity or protection but justice, citizen rights and freedom from the legislative restrictions placed on Aboriginals in _1938_. And, of course, land rights: including, I noted with interested, the right to "own" the land which was stolen from its original owners. They're still asking. I think the cultural moves you note, Gillian, are the problematic ones John Kinsella was signalling towards earlier in this discussion. They run the danger of covering with colourful pr the absence of any real move towards the real issues of discrimination, the results of which are the appalling health and social statistics which appear in our newspapers now and then. The appointment of Ruddock as Minister of Aboriginal Affairs has to be entirely depressing to anyone involved in these issues; it seems to me completely outrageous, given the history of his public comments on Aboriginal affairs before he got his portfolio (incompetence, ignorance and racism a qualifying factor?) I feel very pessimistic about what is happening to the powerless under this government. Best Alison