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The Bolt Revolt

By Cally Jetta

Andrew Bolt’s sheer idiocy and unabashed loathing of Aboriginal people never ceases to amaze me. There is nothing particularly special and unique about a bigoted nitwit with archaic views and a big mouth; the only standout difference here is that somehow this man has been given a platform to spew his hate rhetoric from. Just how is it, that a man with a painfully obvious agenda of ‘lefty’ bashing and racial prejudice comes to hold a position commenting publicly on Aboriginal issues? It completely undermines the fact that we have a great many educated and informed Aboriginal people out there quite capable of speaking for themselves and expressing their opinion. Likely in a far more succinct and objective manner, also.

So please allow me now to express my opinions in regards to Australia Day celebrations and Bolt’s disgraceful spin on the whole thing. For a start the whole ‘Australia Day ban’ heading is sensationalistic and misleading. Aboriginal people are not demanding that there be no national celebration whatsoever – simply that it is not held on a date that for many of our people, holds sad and mixed emotions. Is that really such a hard concept to process? That we do not wish to drink and party on a date that reminds us of the pain and hurt our ancestors endured? Would it be such an enormous travesty to do these exact same things and enjoy all the same perks of a public national holiday but on a date that has no negative connotations for any Australians? I have put myself in other people’s shoes on this one; and nope, still don’t see the big issue here. The outcome can be a win-win.

Bolt in his recent article referred to Aboriginal people as a ‘dysfunctional race’. I wonder how he defines this? I consider myself to function quite well, my family also. What racial group in Australia is fully functional, I wonder? Without crime; drugs; bullying and harassment; corruption and violence; greed and cruelty? Personally, I don’t think causing devastating and irreversible damage to a unique and pristine environment in just a mere 200 years is a symptom of a ‘functional’ people or way of life.

Also, how can he genuinely be surprised or judgemental that after 200 years of genocide, segregation, forced removal, assimilation just to name a few, that Aboriginal communities are still in a state of healing, grief and repair? He fails to understand that until the full truth of the atrocities and mistreatment are laid bare, the grief and anger will continue. We have many still today searching for identities and families stolen from them, Bolt disregards their suffering and the ongoing trauma that such racism and denial causes and the fact that the problems he references as ‘dysfunctional’ are not unique to Aboriginal Australians but issues echoed in other dispossessed cultural and racial minorities around the globe also in a state of repair and healing.

Bolt then implies that to reject Australia Day is for Aboriginal people to denounce any European ancestry they may have. Wow, what a low blow that ridiculous argument is. I have Aboriginal and Scottish descendency, as do my children. Preferring not to celebrate on a day our family holds for mourning and reflection is not an act of hate, ignorance or rejection at all. It is not a stance against European people but a refusal to accept the lie of ‘terra nullius’ that was announced on arrival, dismissing Aboriginal occupancy and ownership completely and paved the way for the huge losses to life, land, culture and more that the First Peoples of Australia have endured. Australians seem to understand the need to pay respects to those who lived and lost fighting to protect their freedom and home; except it would seem, when it comes to Aboriginal lives lost.

I am not bitter. I am not some unwashed, leftist hipster, bleeding heart. I do not have a victim mentality or any issue with embracing the full diversity of my ethnic and cultural origins and I refuse to allow some strange man to label me as such because I argue a different case. That is the definition of a bully as far as I’m concerned and the need to separate and distinguish people on the basis of whether they’re left or right, conservative or hipster is completely juvenile and misplaced. Bolt argues that it is extreme leftists pushing for a change of date that maintains division and creates hate. This is an unfounded argument that’s been used for decades now to brush Aboriginal history aside and avoid upsetting the status quo. Of course there will be some resistance and backlash to truth and change when many have built a life on denial and ignorance and in no way want to lose any of the power and control they have enjoyed for so long.

When our local people wanted a monument erected to acknowledge the site of a massacre in which Aboriginal men, women and children were shot down, the local council (direct descendants of some of the perpetrators) refused stating it would lead to division, unrest and conflict. Well I’m sorry, but I believe that if something is true and right – then damn the consequences. Shout it from the rooftops because good change never comes easy, those being held down and being spoken down to and about have always had to fight to have their perspective included. This is no different. Just another case of shut up and put up, or else we will paint you as the ungrateful, racist, whiney Aborigine you are.

The division in this country comes not from confronting the truth, but avoiding and denying a very painful and recent past and the impacts this still has today. The division comes from a lack of rigor and consistency in our schools when it comes to accurate Australian history and Aboriginal studies. The division comes from individual guilt, ignorance and fear. Fear that if they dare see our point of view and agree they will somehow lose or forfeit something. The division comes from a highly controlled media owned by few rich people with conservative views and lacking the integrity to hire real journalists. The division comes from bitter, hate filled individuals such as Andrew Bolt who speak out of place on matters they have very limited understanding of and with the pitiful agenda of validating and garnering the support of other ignorant racists.

So long as ugly hearted men like this speak for Aboriginal people, rather than Aboriginal people themselves, we still have much work to do and disadvantage to overcome. But together we can do it. You don’t have to be leftist or a hippy to know what is true, right and just. You just have to be a human with a soul, some empathy and the courage to hear a perspective other than your own.

46 comments

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  1. Clean livin

    Hi Cally, just ignore the fool. It works wonders, and leaves the other fools to take notice.

    Unfortunately, you have written many words to probably accurately describe Bolt, probably got yourself into a frenzy in doing so, and achieved little.

    As soon as I saw the “word” Bolt, I stopped reading.

    As I say, it works wonders, but I can understand your anguish over this fool!

  2. Terry2

    I first came across Bolt when he used to appear on Insiders and I gained the impression that, as a fairly run of the mill journalist he stumbled on, and subsequently climbed onboard a band-wagon that could bring him notoriety and money.

    He is the Kardashian of current affairs in Australia, a role that Mark Latham is trying to emulate but with little success so far.

    I don’t believe for a moment that Bolt holds the views he expresses but I do believe that he has hit on a golden goose that just keeps on delivering for him.

  3. Kaye Lee

    I have absolutely no problem with moving Australia Day to another date and don’t see why anyone would. Hell, we moved the Queen’s birthday.

    One thing that is not spoken of enough is how Aboriginal wages were stolen thereby denying them the same access to wealth accumulation that other Australians had.

    “From the late 1800s until the 1970s Aboriginal workers were for all intents and purposes enslaved. They were denied access to their wages which in many cases were simply stolen by corrupt officials and employers. It locked them into a cycle of poverty.”

    Source: https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/economy/stolen-wages#ixzz541Xm8sQR

    The article is well worth the read if you are interested in yet another way in which we created disadvantage.

  4. Tinfoilhatter

    Bolt attended Murray Bridge High School. His hatred of Original People is a product of teenage angst & a lack of humour.

  5. David1

    I suspect Bolt was dropped on his head at a very early age and never fully recovered. Or to be more kind, he has spent life since adolescence, president of the dumb and dumber club. Hence his current positions with the Murdoch outlets written and electronic.

  6. Jan

    So many of these morons need years on the therapy couch .From a Bolt to an Alan Jones to Donald Trump.Yet these sad men hold position of power.

  7. babyjewels10

    Bolt is a dolt, who services other dolts. Sadly, Australia has more than its fair share of them.

  8. Jim Craney

    I often wonder where Bolt got his right wing extreme views from. Leads me to wonder which side his Dutch parents favoured in WW2, and if they collaborated with the German occupiers.

  9. roma guerin

    This is a wonderful response to this abominable man and I have posted it to my FB page. I sincerely hope that people will read it there too, and share it. Thank you Calli.

  10. Sean

    Mike Carlton calls Bolt the village idiot from Melbourne.

    Australia became a federation on the 1st January 1901. We have only been celebrating Australia day since the mid 90’s. Pick any other day of the year. My family stays home on the 26th and reflects on all the terrible things we have done to the aboriginal people since invasion day. It also means we don’t have to be confronted by drunken bogans draped in the Australian flag.

  11. Glenn Barry

    Bolt is yet another one who has inspired sufficient hatred to illicit an assault against his person, it’s a shame that whoever it was that tried to get him, didn’t leave a mark.

    The big issue still in this country is that he has sufficient audience to still be on air and in print, though I anticipate the eventual demise of Murdoch in print version at least as he cannot subsidise those businesses perpetually

  12. guest

    Bolt might well look more honestly at the actions of British colonisers in Oz and then look at Dutch colonisers in various parts of the world (eg, South Africa and Indonesia) and see if he can tell the difference in the actions they carried out against the indigenous peoples. He might like to reconsider his myopic, jaundiced views, but at the moment he makes too much money out of his scribbling. We know what he is.

  13. john ocallaghan

    Bolt is an obnoxious racist creep,but sometimes i catch a bit of his show on Sky just to keep tabs on the bastard.

    Two of his most frequent guest’s are Indigenous leaders,Warren Mundine and Adam Giles,and they get on like a house on fire,and i often wonder often think that until Indigenous leaders like these two speak up against Bolt then he will just carry on like the racist he is!

  14. Presser#1

    Sane, logical, well-argued and thoughtful — all the things Andrew Bolt isn’t. At least not publicly. His stereotyped version of a grumpy old white man who suspects he wouldn’t last five minutes in a world of true equality has become irrelevant to the point of comedy.

  15. Terry2

    Cook claimed the east coast of Australia for the Crown under instruction from King George III 22 August 1770 at Possession Island, naming eastern Australia ‘New South Wales’.

    Captain Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet, comprising 11 ships and around 1,350 people, arrived at Botany Bay between 18 and 20 January 1788. But the area was deemed to be unsuitable for settlement and they moved north to Port Jackson on 26 January 1788.

    The date is immaterial so it really depends on what we are celebrating . If it is the arrival of the first fleet or settlement or invasion no date will be acceptable to first Australians. So, maybe we need to change the name not the date ??

  16. Linda47

    It should be noted John ocallagan, that Warren Mundine was the Australian Aboriginal leader and the former National President of the Labor Party. He quit the Labor Party in 2012, which was when he started dating Elizabeth Henderson, the daughter of Gerard and Anne Henderson, who are directors of the very far right conservative think tank The Sydney Institute. He was then appointed into the position of chairman of the Australian Government’s Indigenous Advisory Council by Prime Minister Tony Abbott. He married Elizabeth in 2013, so he changed sides to suit his wife and in-laws. Now being a far right wing conservative, he fits in with the Bolt idiots. As for Adam Giles, his aboriginal heritage goes way back on his father’s side and his grandmother only found out about the heritage in the 80’s..

  17. Cool Pete

    Bolt is an obnoxious bastard! When Adam Goodes was subjected to racial abuse, this dickhead accused him of being racist!

  18. Rob

    One of andrew bolt’s offspring James, is employed by right wing think tank and LNP policy generator, Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) as their IPA digital communications manager. As of march 2017 has been getting his feet wet with IPA podcasts to the elite !! interestingly Bolt Jr says the alleviation of poverty as a key interest of his !! Are we concerned yet ??

  19. Cool Pete

    Is it any wonder why I call the Bolt Report the Bot Rot?

  20. king1394

    It’s not the day itself, it is how we are encouraged to celebrate it with a ludicrous outpouring of flag-waving and self-congratulation. People of Anglo descent might be well to remember it as the day when the first prison was opened. The first Hanging occurred barely one month later, while the first flogging of our ancestors happened on the First Fleet on the way. The early days of the colony were times of privation and misery. So let us remember Australia on January 26th with sorrow and solemnity befitting the history behind the date.

  21. Rhonda

    My contempt of this revolting man is absolute. Cally, your words and argument make clear and perfect sense. Change will come. It simply has to. PS John O’Callaghan, I’ve been shaking my head over Warren Mundine and his RW apologist BS for years. I despair

  22. Ian

    If recognising facts & sparing a moment to consider the plight of others make me an extreme Leftist, than an extreme Leftist is what I proudly am. Bolt can kiss my ass. If all I amounted to in life was the likes of him, I would be ashamed.

  23. White Male

    Australia is a flawed society like every country on Earth. We are a work in progress but are nevertheless unique in being a single nation occupying a single continent. The clear start of the unification of the continent was the arrival of the first fleet. Now millions of people from all over the world have made their home here. It seems to me that January 26th is the obvious date to celebrate the unification of the continent, except for perhaps for January 1st, the date of Federation. If people of Aboriginal heritage dislike the date, do they have another to celebrate our Country? Or is it not worth celebrating at all?

  24. James

    You make some valid points, but when you ignore all of the contributions to Australian society over the past 200 odd years that have helped to form the great country we have today, you put yourself up to be criticised for being part of the problem rather than part of the solution. It is your choice to mark January 26 as a day of mourning. There have not been 200 years of genocide…there have been atrocities committed and yes, they shouldn’t be forgotten but there has to come a time when history becomes something we as society reflect on, learn from, and most importantly move forward from, not to forget what has happened but to grow as a nation and be the best people we can be individually and collectively. I think you’re showing your own ignorance on how history is taught in schools today because perhaps you’re basing that on your own experience. I also think that as bad as Bolt may be at speaking in behalf of Aboriginal people, yourself speaking on behalf of all Aboriginal people are only one step better.

  25. Phil

    All good points made in your article Cally. I’m caucasian Australian and I too want to see Australia Day moved our of respect for the indigenous Australians whose dispossession must be like a burning hole in the collective heart of the people.

    Bolt is a true nobody – he doesn’t rate as a public intellectual, or hold higher degree qualifications. He has no history of support for the democratic system he so freely abuses, he has never spoken out for a just and decent society.

    He is a second rate hack payed to mouth opinions that reflect and amplify the prejudices of a truly minute section of the listening and viewing public. The more racist, the more alarming, the more anti-mulitcultural and anti indigenous he can be, the more regularly his listeners and views will tune in to feed their prejudices – his job is to sell this small cohort of highly prejudiced and narrow minded people to the advertisers. It is those advertisers who need to be taken to task – after all it is they who want it told like he tells it.

  26. Jan

    Warren Mundine is just another sick sycophant to power and so called prestige.He is no friend to the aborigines either.

  27. Avril Wilkinson

    Beautifully written Cally.
    Warm, passionate and well informed.
    And I totally agree on simply another date to celebrate Australia Day.
    This has nothing to do with race really because I as a white Australian could have written something just like you have written here on behalf of the Aboriginal people as I have a complete understanding of why it would only be decent and compassionate to make it any other date. But it’s all about the human condition I think.
    My understanding comes from knowing right from wrong. Seeing injustice and expecting something to be done about it.
    But the world we live in where you can serve an 18 months of a 3 year sentence for murder because the perpetrator was drunk and apparently is not held responsible nor accountable for getting drunk tells me my desire for justice is never going to be a part of the human condition.
    My sadness for just about every travesty in the world in my life and prior as I have a big problem with having way too much empathy means I feel the suffering.
    Being a mother and imaging someone taking my child.
    The stolen generation of Aboriginal children, 60 to 80 thousand Irish babies stolen from unmarried mothers and sold by the Catholic Church. And then like many Aboriginals put into suvitude. In excess of 100,000 British children told their parents were dead and sent to the colonies far and wide and put straight into institutions were daily rape and servitude like 5 year old carrying rock and bricks to build the horror institutions.
    Lenin and Starlin slautering millions of adults and children of their own race.
    Speaking of recent horrars, WWl and WWll
    White humans comitting the most horrific atrocities on other white folk.
    In my lifetime, what the Tootsies and the Hutus are still doung to each other and the Yugoslavian’s all more closely genetically than any of us setting off chemical weapons on their own people.???????
    The largest genocide on the planet was that of the American Indians.
    I tried time and time again to explain this to my Aboriginal friend but sadly she wasn’t interested. Only in her Aboriginal plight..
    We, as you can imagine grew apart. She doesn’t see me as a white human being having any right to be angry and upset about all the other human travesties in the world because she said, they don’t count because it’s about where you live.??? 🙄🙄🙄
    When I think of the horrars my direct decendants from England suffered from starvation and infantile death after death then on top of that in 1902 forceaby sent here against their will. Told to choose Canada or here. Drew from the hat. They were as Indigenous to England as any other indigenous peoples.
    Christ, the world is a mess and is not getting any better.
    We are still and more than ever on a daily basis torturing animals in apparently legal acceptable standards in the name of industry.
    Humans are the problem. It has nothing really to do with one thing or another.
    Only money and power……
    Perhaps power more than anything.

  28. johno

    Well written Cally. Bring on the new date.

  29. Hettie Lynch

    Australia day used to be celebrated on July 15. I have long argued that the most appropriate date for it is August 10, the date that the Constitution was altered to include the First Australians as citizens in their own land.
    That is a day we can all celebrate as a beginning of nation building. Not nearly enough, but it was a start.
    There are so many public holidays early in the year, then after June, nothing till October.
    People say, ” But the barbecues! ” well, in most of Australia winter is a much better time for a barbie than mid summer. No flies, for starters .
    August 10.

  30. Stephen ODwyer

    Well written, Bolt is a self serving moral bunkrupt. Will be happy when he is gone

  31. Harry

    I think January 26 ought be called “Reconciliation Day” to recognise the need to reflect on the impact and wrongs perpetrated by our forebears and not yet addressed to any extent.

    I doubt if our ruling elite will allow this to happen and they also appear to have the support of a considerable number of ignorant aussies who agree with Bolt that aborigines are lazy etc etc and do not deserve recognition in the Constitution and they resent “their taxes” paying for “favourite treatment” they do not get.

    Terry2: I have no idea if you are correct that Bolt does not genuinely hold his nasty, extreme and bigoted views but he has certainly carved a niche for himself that sells Murdoch “newspapers” such as the odious “Herald Sun” that is only good for lighting the wood BBQ and even then it stinks.

  32. Harry

    James: I respectfully disagree. I’d like you to outline your definition of a “great” country? On what criteria is it “great”? In my view Australia is “great” for some but is marred by rising inequality, division and racism, fuelled by some, mostly politicians and media of the right.

    I am a naturalised Australian who arrived from the Netherlands as a nine year old with my parents and siblings. I love this country enough to be willing to criticise it for the shortcomings and injustices I see daily, perpetrated on our indigenous and non-indigenous, in the hope that enough is us will recognise the need for change.

    I think Cally has made a very strong case not just of past wrongs but of injustices and racism that are not just historic, they are still happening.

  33. Don moore

    Whilst agreeing with your observation of Bolt as a bigot,certainly on climate change,I think reconciliation ought to be a two way thing,and aborigines should take responsibility for their abuse of fire as a lazy way of land clearing ,burning all the humus out of soils and creating a desert in Australia

  34. Michael Taylor

    Don, there are a couple of points you may not be aware of.

    The burning of scrub did not create deserts. ‘Firestick farming’, as it is called, had a three-fold purpose. One, by burning off the old growth it encouraged new growth. Two, by burning off the old growth it helped reduce the risk (and frequency) of uncontrolled bushfires (which we see today – the burning off of old growth by the CFS in early Spring). Three, the new growth attracted animals to the scrub, which in turn were hunted for food.

    Aborigines did not change the climate or our geography. In most cases, the deserts were already here before the Aborigines settled in Australia.

    I think you’ll also find that modern farming practices have done more to damage the environment in 200 years than Aborigines did in 60,000 years.

  35. diannaart

    Well said, Michael.

    Always someone who has to try and obfuscate the harm done to First Nation People by blaming them for something, which, as you have pointed out, not based on facts.

    As for the 26th of January? Let’s give it to the invaders and call it Invasion Day, the rest of us can then have a United Australia Day or other appropriate appellation on a date agreed upon by all (except for Bolt et al who can whine as much as they like).

  36. Rossleigh

    I’ve long argued that we should celebrate the Rum Rebellion on January 26th (the day it occurred) because who couldn’t celebrate the overthrow of someone with the name of Bligh? Ok, it may have been a group of capitalist bastards who were behind the rebellion, but surely everyone should be able to celebrate sending a governor back to England. Even the descendants of Bligh… If they’re still upset that the man has been mistreated, they should just get over it!

  37. diannaart

    Rum Rebellion has its possibilities – I would definitely support Rum Rebellion day – even though I no longer drink – just has that certain shindig, knees-up type celebratory sound to it.

    Considering the long list of grudges the “landed gentry” have against people who work for someone else or just don’t earn cazillions working for themselves, for example, the inequities leading to the Eureka Stockade rumble.

    There is so much room for change… but that is the crux of the problem, uber-conservatives and their obsessive control disorders simply react to the idea of anything changing or any change not initiated by them – they never learnt to share toys as children…

    … should be easy to simply treat others with respect…

  38. wam

    Bolt, like a senior contributor here, has an image of Aborigines as ‘black’. QED his criticism, possibly based on his schooling at rapid creek, is followed by the majority of Australians.

    I find Tlob the saddest, most narrow-minded journalist in Australian history, An appeal’s court ruling best describes his character:

    “The Court of Appeal later reversed the $25,000 punitive damages, though it upheld the defamation finding, describing Bolt’s conduct as “at worst, dishonest and misleading and at best, grossly careless”

    To a large extent Australia was colonised by the lowest class of english society, uneducated, survivors of crime and mostly young men with no interest in Aborigines beyond sex and violence. (historically the example set by white society for Aborigines has been drunken rape and slavery till wave hill 50 years ago). SA, the state without convicts, arguably, treated the Aboriginal population as vermin to be eliminated with compunction.

    Very sad Avril, your history was almost exclusively based on culture not racism. Consequently, not relevant to Australia and the treatment of Aborigines.(why did hitler murder of millions of germans or mao millions of chinese or polpot not get a run in your list)

    Many Aborigines of today, not just in the past, meet racism on a daily basis.
    Why should they allow you to mitigate because the english killed the irish, especially when the english bastards killed on every continent since the crusades,..

    ps
    “When our local people wanted a monument erected to acknowledge the site of a massacre in which Aboriginal men, women and children were shot down, the local council (direct descendants of some of the perpetrators) refused stating it would lead to division, unrest and conflict”
    Did they vote not to give planning permission or not to pay for the monument???

  39. Jon Chesterson

    Totally with you, beside you Cally! The bitterness, deception and humiliation comes from Bolt, his reality is no check other than to destruction, preferably of his kind of contemptuous, irrational, delusional, ignorant, rank thinking. Shame on the owners of the media that give him the platform to speak in public and spread his social disease.. it is not freedom of speech, he attacks freedom of speech replacing it with ‘hate’ speech, lies and intimidation. Free speech comes with responsibility for what you think and say.

  40. Avril

    Hey Wam
    Re: Very sad Avril, your history was almost exclusively based on culture not racism. Consequently, not relevant to Australia and the treatment of Aborigines.(why did hitler murder of millions of germans or mao millions of chinese or polpot not get a run in your list)

    Merely because I’d be still writing if I were to have pointed out every single persecuted and slaughtered race on earth.
    Same race murdering their own race. Other races slaughtering others. Invation still going on today most recently Isis.. slautering and raping their own race.
    I was merely trying to point out that the Aboriginal race is not Robinson Crusoe in persecution and horrar.
    I believe the stolen generation here were given a well over due even if token apologie before the stolen British children were even acknowledged. Centries worth of deportation to the colonies.
    Religion has been the major reason for much persecution by man on the planet. Still is.
    I thought your “SAD” was most uncalled for.
    Don’t for one minute think I don’t acknowledge injustice wherever it may be.
    That you missed that is flabbergasting.

  41. Avril

    Also Wam,
    Everything I pointed out is completely relevant to Australia and the treatment of Aboriginals.
    Explain to me please why your persecution is for more precious than other human being’s purseution in history and the present??
    More precious than the American Indian’s or more precious than the Chinese or the Russian’s. Or more precious than the very recent genocide of the Yazidi People and the thousands of kidnapped women as sex slaves still being held as I write.
    Do you even know or care about what’s happening in Iran as we speak.
    Or are you only racially driven.
    No place for empathy for any other human being’s except for the Aboriginal RACE.
    I usually refer to as the Australian Original Land Owners. Or the Australian Indigenous PEOPLE.
    News flash, The Aboriginal Race which you refer to live on planet earth 🌍
    And these people’s education and health and opportunities becoming equal to all other Australian’s have always been an issue for me. As I empathise and recognise injustice wherever it may be.
    Last time I left my home and especially went out to support Aboriginal people fighting for full autonomy of their land, I was told, “can yooz go away”. Not even a, ” but Thankyou for going to the trouble of coming and we appreciate your ardent support.
    While Aboriginal people continue to push their own supporters away because those supporters only happen to come from a persecuted white ancestory hence probably my empathy for the persecuted, then the cause will remain stalemate.
    Their are many Aboriginal people far Les racist than yourself who I will continue to fight for all the other things I mentioned including a more appropriate date for Australia Day celebrations.
    My mother went to the Northern Territory for many months in the early 90’s to help the little deaf kids with their sign language and went and interpreted many events that were held where usually they sat in silence.
    Doesn’t count eh. She was just a white woman from an extremely poverty stricken up bringing and picked on daily as a child for having an Irish Sirname….
    Now that’s sad….

  42. Avril

    And Wam, if you were having a dig at my Great Grandparents being forcably sent to one of the colonies then I’d like to take the opportunity to mention how many good men and women were sent here as convicts and later on for merely caught stealing food to feed their families. Then shipped away from their loved ones never to be seen again.
    My family at least were able to stay together but my Great Grandmother hated every waking second she had to live here.
    Till the day she died she had her son go out and raise the Union Jack up that flag pole.
    The bigger bastards were the supposedly educated Gentry rulers who treated everybody like crap including my ancestors.
    Persecution sux period.
    The largest mumbers today out of any modern human struggle as we speak are of Women and Children and Homosexuals
    All around the world because of Religious political misogynistic Consertive Rule. Which Western regressive lefties seem to defend.
    But I’m guessing they also don’t matter cause they’re not Aboriginal?????
    Wake up to yourself…
    The human condition is not a good one period.

  43. Avril

    Hitler and Mao, Pol Pot and Idi Amin etc murdered millions of their own driven by power.
    All invasions past and present are driven by power.
    Many driven by religion.
    And the Aboriginal people like every other indigenous peoples who were invaded were considered Heathens…..
    And in other prior conflicts, the wrong denomination.
    Now apparently we are all evil Ifidels or Heathens in the eyes of Islam.
    It just doesn’t end Wam.
    Man’s overwhelming desire for power and religion/superstitions has so much to answer for…..
    It is not so simple as being just about race….Hatred and bigotry comes in all forms….

  44. James

    Harry, when I refer to Australia as a great country I base that on the fact that there is no country in the world that I would rather my children grow up in. Great doesn’t mean perfect, but as for the ‘shortcomings and injustices you see daily, perpetrated on our indigenous and non-indigenous’, you’re being as non-specific as I was being using the word great. You will not find a country in the world where inequality and injustice don’t exist. I’m not opposed to the date being changed, though I still think people will have issues either way. Aboriginal Australians have suffered greatly in the past but in more recent times much has been done to support and provide opportunities for Aboriginal people to improve their lives. Sure there is work still to be done, but the amount of energy that is spent on ‘changing the date’ is to me, more shameful when it is compared to any other social justice issues. This is a great country and a country of opportunity, and sometimes it’s easier to blame governments, or educational institutions, or historical happenings than to take the opportunities that do exist. And you know what, there are indigenous and non indigenous people in this great country that are bludgers, that are lazy, that are criminals and it is completely ok to refer to them as such because they are the choices they make.

  45. Avril

    Harry,
    What I am trying to say is that invasion, killing, slavery and persecution is not just based on race.
    I obviously have Viking ancestory and in more recent centries Anglo Cletic.
    As a child I was especially tall for in the 60s/70s. And very skinny.
    Blond, blue eyed and fair skinned.
    By my first year of high school I had reached just short of 5’10” 177 cm.
    I was litterly still half a foot taller than the tallest kids. Very few of the senior boys were my height or taller.
    So all of primary and high school I was mercilessly bullied for being so tall and skinny. Thank god I stopped growing at 178cm.
    The mixed blood Aboriginal kids two of whom I distinctly remember as being particularly good looking were 2 of the most popular kids in school??? I envied the girl I’m thinking of.
    When I was in my late teens in the late 70s very early 80s I had an aboriginal friend. She told me she was a third Aboriginal with Celtic ancestory.
    Every Deportment and modelling course she took was paid for by the government.
    Her dance classes and any dance group she organised was paid for and funded with literally thousands of dollars from the government.
    You have no idea the amount of funding available to the indigenous peoples of this country when they take the initiative to get it.
    The problems of course still lies at grass roots levels for Aboriginal communities far from the cities.
    This is also true for white Australians living rural.
    The telecommunications, the lack of health resorses and every other jolly thing we take for granted in the city is shocking.
    Then in small Aboriginal communities even worse.
    Something Harry which you’re not used to or don’t really have a grip of is the sheer size of this very hot dry continent and its sometimes almost penetrable landscape.
    Getting professionals and other needed resorses out there is very difficult.
    I have a friend in the country only over an hour out of the city who some days can’t get internet. Where a doctor only visits the small township 2 days per week.
    You have politicians only interested in the cities.
    They don’t even care really about those out rural who are feeding us all.
    The environment, which I hold very dear to my heart and the plight of our dying wildlife populations and also for the welfair of farm animals who are treated no better than an ear of corn is in the state it’s in due to over population. Seven billion humans too many on this dying planet 🌍
    It’s a very glum outlook like it or not.
    But James is right in that their is a lot being done to try to right past wrongs in Australia.
    But so much more needs to be done.
    Education, education, education…
    I won’t be satisfied till Aboriginals are a huge part of the medical, legal, engineering and other highly respected professions in main stream Australian society.
    And I know for a fact this is happening….
    But we need a government who shows more respect for education by keeping costs low so every class can get a go. Then we would have as many doctors out in rural areas than we need. Teachers coming out of the wood work. All we hear is a shortage of doctors and teachers. So they import doctors which creates language Barriers. Educate our own fir crying out loud. Stop punishing stydents financially and open up more places in our universities.???? More support and free accommodation for Aboriginal and other rural kids from poor back grounds to go to universities.
    With more support for students from poor families who still live at home or share with their Mothers and or Fathers.
    I have just joined the Australian Sustainable Party. Look em up.
    The only party who’s really dedicated to real change for Aboriginals and sensible about our particularly fragile environment with very little water and farmable land.
    Better not bigger is their policy.
    Makes perfect sense. There is hardly a Koala left due to housing bloody people.
    Humans are not a very well species as a whole lets face it.
    The human condition has a virus…
    The Australian Sustainable Party is supported by the wonderful and incomparable, Entrepreneur Dick Smith.
    I buy all his Australian grown and produced products. Smart man..
    And a quick note for Wam since she’s so very racially driven, The Crusades was a battle for religious superiority of the holy land at that time ordered by the Catholic Church in Rome who I believe is Italian and located in Italy, for English knights to invade the holy land.
    Not a racial battle.
    And ridiculous religous battles, same race against same race are well and truly underway as we speak.
    Bigotry is not just about race and is not only about race here in Australia. Mainstream Australia does not understand Aboriginal culture and more should be done at the grass roots mainstream education level.
    You will find that professional Aborigionals working and living in the city don’t face as much racism on a daily basis than I’ve received sexism in the 70s, 80s and 90s before I put on weight.
    And I always wore boyish or loose casual closes. With an A cup. Go figure.
    Constant unwanted attention from badly behaved bullying men. Making me feel extremely threatened and frightened.
    People suck in general.
    My son does not behave in this manner.
    He is not sexist or racist.
    In the early 70s I learned all about Aboriginal culture and were even shown pictures of Aboriginals lined up with iron collars in chains and explained to how some of the first settlers and the authorities ar that time treated those native to this land.
    What’s happened if I learnt that in the early 70s compared to the curriculum in todays school’s. It doesn’t make sense to me.
    Aboriginal war heros from the Great, Second, Korean and Vietnam wars haven’t even got a memorial at the National war memorial in Canberra.
    I rang after my visit there to enquire why and was told that we needed to pay for it. Oh.
    But I daren’t go any futher with that because and I quote, from Wam’s criticism of me,
    “Why should they allow you to mitigate because the english killed the irish, especially when the english bastards killed on every continent since the crusades,..”
    Mmmmmmm, unquote.
    (They meaning Aboriginal people…)

  46. Avril

    1st of January Australia day….
    Federation Day….

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