Or is it just my bullshit detector? The sudden ‘humanitarian’ decision of the Howard Government to send police and military troops to the Northern Territory Aboriginal communities this week is more than a little suspicious. Such a heavy handed response seems excessive and would never have been tolerated or supported by the Australian public. That is until the issue of child abuse came to light last week.
With the release of one report claiming widespread child abuse in ‘all’ Northern Territory communities the government has launched into action. Not with the provision of counsellors or health officials, but with police officers and soldiers.
If I was a more cynical man I might suggest that ‘child abuse’ was the perfect excuse and cover for the government to begin draconian measures to ‘clean up’ the Aboriginal population. After all, who would oppose measures aimed at stopping ‘child abuse’? Anyone remember 'children overboard'?
One can only speculate on Mr Howard’s true motivations. Perhaps we are due for another visit from the UN who have already been very critical of Australia’s treatment of its indigenous population? But then, that would suggest that the government cares about the UN’s opinion. Why should they? They ignored the UN’s opposition to the invasion of Iraq. And Mr Howard ignored them again when they asked for help in Sudan. So obviously they aren’t trying to help the aboriginal communities for the sake of international appearances.
And then I remembered ‘Gav’s Rule of Australian Politics’ which states that: “Government decisions are only made if someone stands to make a lot of money from said decision”.
I do seem to remember last year there were a lot of whispers about uranium mining and proposals for nuclear energy being floated. Where do they mine uranium? Oh that’s right, the Northern Territory. Why did they have problems mining it there before? Oh yeah, the aboriginal population who own the land opposed the mines.
Northern Territory, uranium mining, aboriginal land owners, child abuse claims, police and military intervention…? I’m not sure how those things could possibly fit together. Do you have any ideas?
Stay tuned.
*** Update! Evidence is surfacing. Read this.
2 comments:
Cynical bastard!
How can you possibly draw a link between the Howard Governments push towards further uranium mining, Howards support for Ron Walkers "Clean Energy Australia" company, which wants to build and run nuclear plants in Australia and the Governments legislation to seize control of Aboriginal land?
That's crazy talk.
John Howard has always been a vocal supporter of aboriginal rights and issues ( apart from that small incident scrapping ATSIC ), some of his best friends are aboriginal, such as.....Andrew Symonds, the Australian cricketer. OK, so he's not aboriginal as such but he is dark in colour and plays cricket, you can't get more aussie than that.
Anyhow, i for one am gald the government is acting at last, sure they have done nothing for the past ten years but now they are going to flood the northern territory with health workers and police.
Luckily Australia has an over abundant supply of both health workers and police, you can see them lining up around the block most days.
My guess is that the government wilol have to get health workers from overseas, poeple like DPatel ought to solve the problem quick smart. Maybe we could get some of the indonessian army that we train to come over from Papua New Guinea where they have been doing outstanding work dealing with the indigenous people there and they could lend a hand.
For every problem there is a solution.
You're right. How could I dare to suggest otherwise?
We should probably at least hope that if they are bringing in police from around the country they don't bring in any police from Cairns. The 200 arrested aboriginals may not even make it to the watch house.
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