[Green-Activist] Howard messing with our minds

[Roy Garner]

Dear Activists,

What has dominated the media, and the attention of the nation, for the  
past week?

When the papers reported Howard's initiative against alleged sexual  
abuse of children in indigenous communities, there was at first little  
or no mention that the report, Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle "Little  
Children are Sacred", which triggered Howard's so-called "national  
emergency", had been commissioned not by his government, but by the  
Northern Territory, http://www.nt.gov.au/dcm/inquirysaac/.

If the indigenous leaders haven't identified the areas that need most  
attention, why should the Howard government know better?

But concern for Howard, not the children, is what really motivated this  
most cynical of our prime ministers to call in the troops—concern for  
what would otherwise have dominated the weekend TV chat shows:  the  
unpopular pay rise for politicians  
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s1956154.htm in an election  
year that has seen mortgagees go to the wall  
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/national/surge-in-families-forced- 
to-sell-their-homes/2007/06/29/1182624165339.html, and $11 billion  
earmarked for five new navy ships  
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21936956 
-5006787,00.html.

The "national emergency" came in a week that saw Labor still riding  
high in the opinion polls.  The massive diversion of funds from welfare  
areas to defence was followed by Friday's massive diversion of the  
nation's focus, away from this misuse of funds to generations of  
neglect of the needs of indigenous communities; suddenly, after 11  
years in office, the Howard Sorry Initiative Please Vote For Me  
Committee sent the army into indigenous communities, having decided,  
apparently by osmosis, what is best for them.

The aboriginal 'genocide' continues while politicians attempt to  
explain away the tragedy by attaching different labels to it for mass  
consumption.  Theirs is the genocide of systemic neglect that sees them  
die young or struggling to rear their families and pass on their  
culture to a new generation; that sees the young disoriented and  
confused through drugs, alcohol and petrol sniffing.

This is the real emergency, and we must fear that a few media grabs for  
the evening news of boots and jungle greens and the encircling  
paternalistic whites will be lost in a cloud of red dust as the road  
show moves on, leaving only the sorrow that continues to corrode the  
lives of many indigenous communities.




  
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