Inconvenient Truth in Aboriginal Affairs

 

Photo credit: SkyNews

Because she's worried about intelligent Australians seeing through the intent of the so-called Voice to Parliament, Ms Langton claims there is no evidence that previous advisory bodies have failed.

I worked with such a body for 15 years; the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) and its successor the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Services department (the latter lasted 12 months while ATSIC was abandoned).

On this one, rare occasion, I agree with Ms Langton. I don't believe ATSIC/ATSIS failed, however, I don't run the country and the people who funded ATSIC were convinced it was a failure. So much so, they shut it down.

ATSIC did a lot of good in a very challenging, politically unpopular, and highly visible portfolio. It built houses, airfields, sheds and other installations to enable business, provided a community employment program, and was engaged in a very wide range of programs all intended to improve the lives of indigenous Australians. Some improvement occurred.

True, there was a lot of waste. Houses it built were destroyed weeks after being finished; money was used for purposes that were not approved. A rich harvest of community managers managed to feed at the money trough. However, it could hardly have been called a failure.

If it did fail, it was because of the clients who didn't make the best use of the programs available. ATSIC funded businesses that eventually stalled because clients couldn't get themselves to work. Literacy and numeracy problems didn't help when it come to management, organisational and accounting issues.

ATSIC was the only opportunity indigenous people had through their Regional Council/Regional Planning process to provide bottom-up advice to governments on what was needed at grassroots level. To that extent, it certainly wasn't a failure.

Maybe the problem was that the organisation expected generations of challenges to be changed within a few years. An impossible task for any government.

Sadly, Ms Langton is pushing the Voice and doesn't want to associate past failure with the very high probability that any Voice will fail. It will.

The Voice will divide Australia, disrupt our community stability, degrade our government performance and will only benefit a handful of mostly wealthy, white Aborigines who will make a fortune and achieve nothing of any value to the many remote and regional Aboriginal Australians who need help.

I won't vote for a change to our Constitution and I explain why here:

#Robinoz

PS: ATSIC's budget for most years was about one billion dollars. We fund the Left-wing, biased, ABC for more than that and look what we get.

Why Australians Should Vote "No" in the Voice to Parliament Referendum

Alice Springs was a beautiful town in Central Australia that is suffering from the impact of dysfunctional indigenous Australians and their communities.

Crime has run rampant. The township has been adversely affected by crime for decades, but all towns have some level of crime. Unfortunately, the level of crime during the last couple of years has reached epidemic levels.

Neither government policies nor the under siege Northern Territory Police are able to get the situation under control.

Billions of dollars of taxpayers expenditure over decades, thousands of Aboriginal organisations, private, public and otherwise haven't resolved the problems of regional indigenous people.

Why would we expect a change to the Australian Constitution to provide better solutions?

The short answer is, it won't. What it will do is provide special access to Parliament and Government policies by 3% of the Australian population who are indigenous or part-indigenous.

My short article commenting about why I won't vote Yes in a referendum that will further divide the nation is here: https://tinyurl.com/rchenry

Let me know in the comments what you think.

#Robinoz