BILL DAY - draft of letter (Sun, 24 Jun 2007) to The Editor - The Australian
Dear Sir,
Have we learnt nothing from the disastrous and illegal invasion of Iraq?
Without consultation and in their frustration, will Australia's discredited neocons attempt to forcibly apply their social theories to Northern Territory Aboriginal communities? Labor Governments and Oppositions have failed to speak for their most loyal voters. However, Aborigines are survivors. Although they will not resist with guns and bombs their resistance to the latest interventions will be sure and effective
Yours sincerely
Bill Day
PO Box 425
MAYLANDS
WA 6931
Mobile: 0408 946 942
| Insert (7 July, 2007) NT takeover ploy for nuclear waste dump: Caldicott
Monday, 2 July 2007
By Todd Cardy ADELAIDE, July 2, 2007: Anti-nuclear campaigner Dr Helen Caldicott says the federal government's intervention in the Northern Territory is a ploy to allow the dumping of nuclear waste in the outback. Dr Caldicott, an anti-nuclear activist of more than 20 years, said she feared Prime Minister John Howard would turn Australia into the dumping ground for the world's nuclear waste. She said the takeover of Aboriginal land titles, part of the government's crackdown of child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities, was a ruse to clear the way for the dumping of waste in remote areas. "The land grab from the Aborigines is actually about uranium and nuclear waste," Dr Caldicott told AAP before speaking at the Australian Medical Students' Association conference in Adelaide today. "It is obvious - you don't take land away from people just because their children are being sexually abused." Dr Caldicott said Australia should reject nuclear power, ban uranium mining and concentrate on developing renewable energies such as wind, solar and hot rocks. She said the health consequences of uranium mining, nuclear power and nuclear power plants were serious and would induce epidemics of disease, malignancy and deformity that would be experienced for generations. "Australia is in great danger of becoming a major nuclear nation now," she said. "I think it is very, very, very dangerous medically. "I am worried that people making decisions do not understand medicine or genetics. "They (the government) are being pushed by the economy and wealthy corporations, like Western Mining and BHP Billiton, who seem to have no regard for the health and well-being of this generation and all future generations. "We as doctors now have to teach the politicians the implications of the ramifications of what they are currently considering." Dr Caldicott said nuclear power plants were beacons for terrorist strikes because each site attacked could kill many more than any conventional bomb could. She said the western world's lead in building and maintaining massive nuclear arsenals and the war on terror had led to the current climate of insecurity. "To go into Iraq and Afghanistan and kill people the way we are doing is enabling America's addiction to power, control and war," she said. "Rather, we should be trying to teach America how to live in peace with everyone in the world." - AAP |
End insert
| Outrage as budget ignores problems
| Putrid playground ... Ricardo Timber, 3, who lives with his grandparents at
One Mile Dam camp , two kilometres from Parliament House, in Darwin
Photo: Terry Trewin |
Joel Gibson and Alexandra Smith
June 22, 2007
THE Premier, Morris Iemma, has declined to pledge any new money to tackle the Aboriginal child sexual abuse crisis in NSW, despite criticism from the Federal Government. The Prime Minister, John Howard, yesterday challenged the NSW Government to act on the 2006 Breaking the Silence: Creating the Future report, which he said it had been sitting on for more than a year. The report found that sexual abuse was at least four times more likely in Aboriginal communities than in non-Aboriginal communities in NSW, and was shrouded by a culture of "silence, denial and inappropriate responses such as protecting the perpetrator rather than the child". Like last week's Northern Territory report, it found that the abusers were mostly men, the victims were both boys and girls and the crime was often handed down from one generation to the next. The causes include misguided government policies, drug abuse, social disadvantage, a breakdown of family structures and widespread exposure to pornography. Despite this, no new funding had been allocated to implement the recommendations, NSW Coalition and Greens MPs said yesterday, describing the Government's response as an outrage. ' Mr Iemma declined to defend his response, saying he would work with the Federal Government to tackle the scourge. "We will carefully consider the details of the Prime Minister's proposals," he said. "There are few one-size-fits-all solutions to tackling serious and complex issues like child abuse or alcoholism, but we will work carefully to develop a whole-of-government response to the Prime Minister's initiatives." Even before the Federal Government pointed the finger at the NSW and West Australian governments yesterday for failing to act on damning reports into sexual abuse, Opposition MPs and the authors of the NSW report had condemned the state for failing to spend money on the problem in this week's budget. The former attorney-general Bob Debus, who commissioned the report in 2003, had estimated $25 million was needed to implement its recommendations. Nevertheless, the NSW Aboriginal Affairs department suffered a 40 per cent cut in this week's state budget - from $49.5 million to $29.2 million. The Government attributed this to the "winding down" of the Aboriginal Communities Development Program, which provides new housing, and conducts repairs and replacements to houses that are unsafe. A spokesman for the Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Paul Lynch, said the Government's January response to the report contained "88 actions focusing on law enforcement, child protection, early intervention and prevention as well as community leadership and support". But the Greens MP John Kaye said it was an outrage that the Government was still refusing to allocate more money to tackle the indigenous child abuse epidemic. "[The projected amount of] $20 million to $40 million is not a lot of money out of a budget of [$44.6 billion spent on services], but it's a massive long-term benefit. The budget should have been heading upwards, not downwards. It's not a time to be reducing budgets for Aboriginal communities." The Opposition parliamentary secretary for Aboriginal affairs, Robyn Parker, said the Government promised a five-year, whole-of-government plan, but never followed through with the funding for it. "All the language is there in the bureaucratic speak, but there's no dollars there to deliver it. It's another snowjob," she said. "We are talking about a report that's really, really frightening. The NT has received all this attention, but we already know in NSW it's just as bad."
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