In the past 30 years Australia, particularly the Territory has moved to the political left. We’ve have become very much a nation of Socialists, willingly and increasingly suppressing individuality and achievement.
We’ve replaced them with fawning paternalism supposedly focused on our communal welfare. Yet in reality we’re driven very much by the politics of envy, and when it comes to things Aboriginal, by a deep underlying and all pervading racism.
It’s a smug belief in our own superiority that drips from every level of academia and manifests itself in every decision of bureaucracy. This is the true motivating force behind paternalistic Socialism, wherever it raises its ugly head.
Nowhere in our nation is this more evident than in the realm of Aboriginal land and communities. Over the past 60 years the world has witnessed the rise and fall of Communism followed in many cases by a disastrous life sapping form of government where individuality and personal achievement are suppressed in favour of “the common good” and community ownership.
We have witnessed nations struggle and come to grief under the weight of non-functioning bureaucracy that these systems inevitably bring about.
The world has witnessed these devastating failures – yet we have gone ahead an introduced the same form of community ownership over Aboriginal owned land. We stand back and wonder why we fail to see any entrepreneurial activity on this land.
Instead we witness the same levels of envy, infighting and destruction that this kind of land ownership has created elsewhere around the world. Well surprise, surprise!
Could we ever have expected anything else I wonder? In recent times we have seen token efforts by Government to break this down by introducing a system of short term leases.
Yet still we are apparently suffering from the same fear of individual achievement. We have been unable to make the only move that will allow the growth of individuality, a move away from dependency and the creation of thriving economies, by granting of long term individual land ownership.
This could be achieved by a system of perpetual leases that while retaining Aboriginal title, much like we do under the present broader system where all land is vested in the Crown.
These leases must have the ability to be on-sold on the open market. Only in this way will true lasting wealth be created for those of Aboriginal origin who want to get off their backsides move away from a life of welfare dependency and take their place as equal Australians living in the only world there is, today’s world!
Saturday, April 20, 2024
The freedom of the press still furnishes that check upon government which no constitution has ever been able to provide – Chicago Tribune.
Yes, I agree with Steve Brown.
Racist apartheid remains central to antics, results, and the excuses, for failings obviously occurring under the Commonwealth’s Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) 1976 Act.
Their racism still producing the same disgraceful results.
Where improvements can be found within communities, almost all were achieved despite the ALR (NT) not because of it.
Relevant Land-Owner Corporate entities aka “Land Trusts” must be held accountable – along with their managements and agents, for their ongoing disgraceful refusal to accept their responsibility for deplorable housing quality, quantity, over-occupancy, and their management of their lands.
If serious to improve circumstances for individuals and families living within these communities, the Commonwealth must amend their ALR(NT) to ensure these corporate entities cease being exempted from being held accountable for their responsibilities, so can immediately start holding them, the owners, accountable in open courts like other landlords who behave so disgracefully.