Windschuttle says left-wing historians exaggerate numbers of Aborigines killed during white settlement. They say the debate needs to be from a compassionate viewpoint. That is, it is OK to exagerate figures to present a compassionate history. I say it’s all bullshit. While we argue over how many people died in Tasmania in eighteen something, in 2003, women and kids are sick or dying from health and social chaos in Yeundemu and elsewhere. Can we get back to the real debate and start people thinking about answers to todays problems; leaving the academics to pontificate/debate/sell more books/manage their careers/feed their egos…..you know, forever drawing blue prints but never building. We are currently enjoying a small window of opportunity that has come about by political correctness loosing it’s ascendency. We need to sieze the day and debate the issue without fear of being labelled rascist. Some points. Dual Laws The police are hampered in their day-to-day duties by the this strange example of wooly thinking. The rules of law concerning murder, rape, theft, occassioning bodily harm, property, drunkenness, wife beating and child beating are set in place for all Australians. However! Last year, a court in the Northern Territory actually took into consideration the fact that a man had already been punished by tribal law in that he had been speared in the thigh by his tribal elders and thus his punishment from the courts was less! Just to be clear on that – in 2002 in a first world country, a court sanctioned the spearing of a man through the thigh! No one was held accountable or charged with occassioning bodily harm that I know of. The only aspects of tribal law that are relevant are those that all societies use. The way that we all educate our children in the family environment in what is acceptable social behaviour as they head towards adulthood. Again, in the Territory, we have the case of an Arnhem land man who successfully argued that tribal law gave him the right to sexual relations with his underage bride. His sentence was reduced from thirteen months to one day. We all know what would happen if I scored with the pre-pubescent around the corner – and rightly so. We have laws to protect children and they need to be applied across the board. I can hear the minority screaming ignorance of the law, but our laws handle that. White, black, brindle – the law applies. Ignorance of a law is no defence. Migrants with no english, sub eighty IQ people and tribal aborigines all have this problem. The point of law is that they are charged with offenses and the court applies compassion – not the social workers/engineers. One people – one law……..puleease. Land Rights. The give ’em land and all will be well school needs a rewrite of their curriculum. There is no point giving land to people just to sit on. What is the point of guaranteeing tenure to some shitty piece of scrub or desert country to people when all it does is perpetuate and highlight their abject poverty. What is the point of ATSIC, or whoever, buying up properties and handing them over to people not trained or educated in the running of cattle stations. The result is more money down the gurgler and no progress in living standards. Land rights have had little impact on the well being of the aborigines. Alcohol Alcohol is impacting so severly on quality of life matters in remote commuities that I’m surprised that the afore mention historians aren’t hammering the genocide effect. Yet while it is acknowledged, there are still people who say ‘but the white fella gets drunk too!, as if this throw away line should stop us looking at the problem. Yes the white fella does get drunk but until 80% of my local suburb are drunk and brawling on a Friday night I think we can treat this white fella problem a little after the problem in Aborigine settlements. Alcohol is a problem – fix it! If we are to have one law and one standard for granting title to land then we also need one standard for education and health services. Governments and commentors have discussed this ad nueseum but the whole debate has centred on how difficult this is. In my previous life as an army officer I would allocate tasks and the subulterns would say, but sir – I havn’t got enough men, or I haven’t got enough resources. I would counter, I know what you have and all we are discussing now is the degree of difficulty of the task. I know how hard that is too! Just do it! Lack of Education and poor health standards are killing Australians needlessly – stop counting dead Tasmanians and start counting school teachers and medical staff. I know this is simplistic and that there are a hundred problems to deal with on the road to educated, healthy people but as we forged this country to where it is today we countered and overcome similarly difficult problems – we need to do it again. The Royal Flying Doctor and School of the Air are good examples of our ability to overcome problems that would have others mulling around discussing the degree of difficulty. Lets work and think at that level and bring the whole nation to the same starting line.