🚀 go-pugleaf

On Thu, 29 May 1997 07:58:08 -0700, Geoff Pike <gpike@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>On his first day in the Senate, WA Liberal Ross Lightfoot said -
>"Aboriginals in their native state were the lowest colour on the
>civilisation spectrum."
>
>Where does the Liberal party find these people? Remember they also found
>Pauline Hanson as well! The newly appointed Senator's remark shows
>breath
>taking arrogance. Here we have a civilisation that lived in Australia
>for 30,000 plus years, in harmony with the environment, without
>pollution, mortgages, stress, or environmental degradation, without loss
>of native fauna species etc etc etc - and this turkey is arrogant enough
>to basically call them the lowest form of life.
>
Here we have another bullshit argument from the abo apologists. I
really must wonder where some people get their information.

There was no aboriginal civilisation. Simply ekeing out an existence
as stoneage hunter/gatherers does not make a civilisation, no matter
how many years it lasted.

By definition, a civilisation needs complex cultural, political and
legal structures, highly developed material resources, and cities.

These were not in evidence in aboriginal communities in 1788.

As to living in harmony with the environment, are you aware that it
was the use of fire by aborigines that destroyed Australia's great
forests and turned much of the land into desert? This is fact.

Can you prove there was no loss of fauna? Who wiped out the giant
kangaroos and wombats. And someone must have killed all those etcs.

Yes, on the scale of civilisation, the aborigine circa 1788 was at the
very lowest part of the scale.

They had no writing; no agriculture; no animal husbandry; no
technolgy; no cohesive social systems outside the tribe; no knowledge
of the wider world (your big picture, I believe); no foreign
relations; no science; no permanent settlements.

They had none of the features that mark a civilised society.

What they did have was a very tenuous grasp on life, marked by long
periods of deprivation and malnutrition.

>No Senator, it is you that is showing your lack of civilisation and your
>lack of the big picture by making such a biased, insensitive and
>appallingly ethno-centric remark! You should resign immediately.
>
Yes, the senator should resign; for being gutless enough to appolgise
for erroneously telling the truth.

Why do the twerps of the world always demand the resignation of those
whose opinions they dispute?

And ethno-centric? Please? What has happened to the facts? I know that
sometimes they arre unpleasant and they don't always suit our
theories, but they cannot be changed to suit the fashion of the
moment.

>And while I'm at it, what about his party's refusal to apologise or
>compensate for the aboriginal kids stolen from their parents over a
>period of some 60 years? Haven't they heard of the concept of collective
>responsibility? If we wrongly jail someone, the community has a
>collective responsibility to compensate that person (even many years
>after the event) - and we do. 
>
And while I'M at it - Have you read the entire report? Or just the
bits they show on tv? Compensation is one of the lowest priorities in
the recommendations.

>However what the Libs are currently saying is that if we remove children
>from their family, force them into a completely different and alien
>culture, expose some of them to abuse from foster parents etc - then we
>as a community we don't have ANY collective responsibily for the actions
>of our society and for the effect that this horrendous action has on
>them!  
>
Horeshit! Why don't you wait for the government's response, not the
response the media is saying they will make?

>Why don't we have a collective responsibility to compensate for the
>shameful acts that our society has committed on these children? We might
>have thought it was right to send someone to jail if we thought 
>(at the time) they were a murderer. However the minute we realise we
>were wrong we compensate them.  Why not the same with aboriginals or any
>other group?

These children are children no more, they are now well into adulthood.
If you wish to follow the line of monetary compensation, where do you
draw the line. The parents? The children? The children's children? Or
the biblical 7 times 7 generations? Do you even think we should draw a
line?

Let's stop being ethno-centric for a minute and look at the actual
lineage of most of these children. Very few full blood aboirigines
among them. Most of them were of mixed ancestry, so being taken from
the aboriginal side may be seen as rightly restoring them to the
non-aboriginal side.

Perhaps there would be a lot less angst if the wankers of the world
would let them just be people, instead of insisting they be solely
aborigines and that they deny their non-aboriginal heritage. But maybe
that wouldn't suit your romanticised view of "the noble savage".

Yes, with the wisdom of 1997, we can see the policy was wrong. But you
cannot judge the past by the standards of today. How will we be judged
in fifty years? We do not know, because we do not know what the
burning issues of 2047 will be.

But if we refuse to take opportunities to progress, instead always
looking back with guilt and regret, we will be known as the generation
that failed to progress.

And that's my honest opinion. No apology required. No apology given.

Chookas
--

David

Cogito ergo sum.  uumh I think?

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