Close the Gap and Intervention events coming up...

There will be a Close The Gap event at the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service, 186 Nicholson Street, Fitzroy on Wednesday 25 June from 10am-2pm. Attendance at this event would provide an opportunity for those with a health interest to build bridges and network with health providers in the Aboriginal community. However, it would be helpful and courteous if you could phone ahead and express your interest in attending on 9419 3000.

On Saturday 21 June next, there will be rallies right across Australia as part of a National Day of Action to protest the intervention by the Australian Government in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. If you are interested be outside the State Library of Victoria on the corner of Swanston and La Trobe Streets, Melbourne at 12 noon. Planning for these rallies has been taking place for some time within Aboriginal communities across the country. Focus will be the non-consultative approach of the intervention and the over-riding of the Racial Discrimination Act to provide the legislative base for the intervention.

~~~
When you can do nothing else: bear witness.

Words fail Miss Eagle

Miss Eagle frequently waxes loud and lyrical on issues affecting Aboriginal people - or rants and raves, depending on your point of view. Miss Eagle is not writing about the trial of under age youth for the pack r-pe of the young girl at Aurukun. Miss Eagle's words would fall like lead into such an abyss. The only insightful material that I have read is by David Martin in Crikey.

David Martin has had close connections with Aurukun for over 30 years, including living there as a community worker for eight years from the mid-1970s, and later spending a further two years there conducting research for his doctoral thesis. He has close family connections with Aurukun, and has raised children there. He gave evidence into the Aurukun hearings of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and provided advice to the Fitzgerald Cape York Justice Inquiry. David is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University and an independent anthropological consultant. He spoke to Thomas Hunter for Crikey.

Miss Eagle finds that First Dog echoes her sentiments. What else can be said that has not already been said? At least until the next time I wax loud and lyrical and rant and rave about racism and governance in Queensland - and remind you, dear Reader, how far away in distance, culture, comfort, and support Aurukun on Cape York is from Brisvegas and its comforts, freeways, casino, ignorance, and failure to listen and to consider!

THE WEEK OF ROOSTING CHOOKS: Friday

The last day of the campaign to-day in what - one way or another - is an historic election. Miss Eagle wound up her small and anonymous role in the campaign with two and a half hours of leafletting in Rowville. To-morrow will be an early start as Booth Captain at Upper Ferntree Gully School for Your Rights At Work and a late finish at Kent Park School, Ferntree Gully for The Greens.

John Howard's career in government is coming to an end with the same cloud hanging over it as it began: RACISM.

There have been countless decisions by the Howard Government which have displayed a meanness to humanity beyond belief. But let's recall the inherent racism of Howard.

• Remember those dreadful political advertisements where Howard was shown with a map of Australia in black and white which purported that 70% of Australia would be in Aboriginal hands under Native Title. A false, racist beat-up.
• Remember his views on Asian immigration and that he had to swallow big and change his tune. Were his original views the views he held in his heart of hearts and he only changed for political expediency?
• Remember how Pauline Hanson was rebuffed so close to election day that the ballot papers could not reflect the fact that Howard had dis-endorsed her? And remember how many concessions were made to racist Hansonite views to ameliorate the near wipe-out of the National Party by One Nation.

The fact is that, under Howard, the Liberal Party is racist. Miss Eagle does not suggest that all Liberals or even Liberal Members of Parliament are racist. Miss Eagle believes that there is a dominant strand within the Liberal Party under Howard which means that racism is always bubbling away beneath the surface and influencing policies such as those on immigration, national security, citizenship, defence, foreign affairs and trade.

Howard and his team have long stood accused of dog-whistling. The term "dog-whistling" derives from the fact that dogs are able to hear high-pitched whistles and sounds that human beings cannot. Dog-whistling in its political context refers to being able to enunciate or signal views in a way that larges slices of the body politic don't detect the full meaning being enunciated or signalled but those who are on the right wavelength do.

So when Howard has slammed into "political correctness", the sub-text or dog-whistle message is that there are all those left-wing people out there who stop us saying what we want to say. What we want to say just happens to be slanderous, libellous, racist, discriminatory, hurtful, unkind and mean but we must have the political freedom to say it. All those politically correct lefties are wrong and are to be despised.

Similarly, Howard despises a black armband view of history. Woe betide the historians who have opened up Aboriginal history to scrutiny and outlined the massacres and other disasters that have befallen Aboriginal people since their contact with white settlers. This sort of activity is to be despised and those who challenge the black armband view are to be rewarded - even unto seats on the board of the ABC.

And now there is the written form of dog-whistling as practised in the seat of Lindsay whose retiring member of parliament, Jackie Kelly, has been such a great favourite of John Howard. Notice that Chijoff, whose husband was one of the ringleaders in this escapade, has not been nor will be dis-endorsed. Howard does not want a repeat of the Pauline Hanson episode, does he. Howard condemns it - and the rest of it is left with the NSW branch of the Liberal Party to deal with. Ethics are not high on the list of the Liberal Party in the seat of Lindsay - and, perhaps, in the NSW branch of the Liberal Party.

So Howard has finished as he had begun - a dog-whistling racist.

Possibilities for Pauline Hanson

Because of the Proportional Representation Voting System, virtually no vote is wasted: votes cascade down like a tower of champagne glasses being filled with champagne and flowing over.

This also means, though, that people can be elected to the Senate on the primary votes of fewer than 200,000 Australians. This is why minor parties love the Senate. It also explains how Australian voters have chosen time and again to hand (but not at the 2004 election) the balance of power in the Senate to minor parties.

The minor parties have to put their hopes in canny preference deals. In the 2004 election, Family First got a Senator from Victoria up with just one per cent of the primary vote. They are clearly desperate to get more people up.

So desperate are they that Family First is doing deals with Pauline Hanson which could see her elected to the Senate.

Heaven forbid that long-standing minor parties - The Greens and the Democrats - who have a history of acting responsibly and involving and interacting with the mainstream polity of this nation should be preferenced ahead of ratbags, particularly ratbags with a racist history.