Some years back (Well OK..a lot of years back) I was a Company Commander in a battalion and had as my CSM a tried and trusted Warrant Officer who shall remain nameless. He was good if not a little hampered by a short fuse.

Some time after this appointment my CSM found his wife in flagrante delecto and stabbed her to death. He picked up his kids, took them to his parents and duly reported to the police.

He received life.

In todays Australian Amanda Banks has an article (no link) about an Indigenous woman who found her husband in flagrante delecto and stabbed him to death.

She received a suspended sentence.

The difference?

Tribal Law is involved.

Can some enlightened reader explain the rationale behind this. Nothing warm and fuzzy please – just legal facts.

Police in Alice Springs are under fire for moving on topless dancers

ATSIC’s only female commissioner, Alison Anderson, is considering a formal complaint to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.

She said she would defy authorities to dance topless at a ceremony in Alice Springs yesterday afternoon.

“This is part of our law, this is part of our culture, this is what makes us Aboriginal,” she said.

I’d normally have no hastles with girls going topless although I have a preference for the toplessees to be young nubiles but in this case I think we need to think it through. If a group of white girls went topless in public in a group they would be charged with indecent exposure.

I’m not defending the law on indecent exposure only to say it exists and police are duty bound to apply the law without fear or favour.

It comes down to this – one country – one law. The tribal cultural thing is frought with danger as witnessed by the creep who claimed his male privelidges over a 12 or 13 year old ‘promised bride’.

To Commissioner, Alison Anderson’s statement This is part of our law, this is part of our culture, this is what makes us Aboriginal I must add; and one law, this is what makes us Australian.

So, until parliament changes the law to something like…it is an offence for people to go naked in public except for groups of aborigine women… then the police at Alice are correct.