One Law For All?

Editorial: One law for all
May 26, 2006
Our legal system must reinforce Australian values

LAST August The Australian informed a horrified country of the case of a 14-year-old Aboriginal girl from the Northern Territory who was taken from her home against her will by a 55-year-old community elder, who took her to his outstation, bashed her with a boomerang and had anal sex with her over two days. The sentence for this crime? Due to the mitigating factor of tribal custom, the elder received just one month behind bars. And while Northern Territory Chief Justice Brian Martin, who handed down the original sentence, has admitted his error in this case, the new sentence of three years handed down by an appeals court still feels manifestly inadequate. Last week, in response to this and other outrages, the federal Government called for the removal of Aboriginal customary law from the list of circumstances judges can take into account in deciding sentences for criminals in the Northern Territory. This seems to have run smack into the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act on the grounds that it unfairly singled out Aboriginal tribal law. In response, Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough now proposes that customary, traditional and tribal laws of all stripes be taken out of the sentencing system, saying he does not believe that any sub-group of Australian culture should be allowed to use cultural sensitivity as a defence for criminal behaviour.

This is exactly right. Australian law exists to serve and reinforce the values of the community and cannot bend and twist to treat various groups differently depending on the culture they were raised in. The law must enforce a common set of values and principles. And high on the list of those ideals is the principle that the law is there to protect society's weakest members from the predations of the strong. No one deserves to be sexually assaulted, least of all children, but the evidence suggests that this is happening on an appallingly regular basis in Australia's indigenous communities. Thus the weakest members of society have become the collateral damage of well-intentioned progressives who, after creating a vicious "Big Man" culture in Aboriginal communities through the sit-down money of the welfare state, now seek to preserve it in all its brutality in the name of authenticity. [...] Mr Brough is striking a blow for women and children. In much of Aboriginal society, a culture has developed which allows elders to pick and choose from prepubescent girls. [...] In 2006 much of sharia law as it is practised around the world appears dedicated to turning women into property, first of their fathers and then of their husbands. By excusing violence against women under the guise of any sort of traditional law, the state tacitly sanctions the offence.

Mr Brough is to be applauded for his effort to make sure that the Australian legal system – and not any other system, be it tribal, sharia, or the Napoleonic Code – governs the conduct of all Australians. Despite the complaints of critics, this is not about removing the discretion of judges to hand out what they feel are appropriate sentences, but rather making sure that the law the country's judges apply is solely Australian. Courts in remote areas are replete with stories of judges excusing rapes, assaults and pedophilia through the invocation of the magic words "customary law". [...] No matter which end of the spectrum of seriousness a judge is dealing with, treating Aborigines differently because of their heritage is patronising and counterproductive. Sending the message that certain people are to be treated differently because of the circumstances of their birth denies Aborigines the right to fully integrate and participate in Australian society. By writing the traditional law defence out of sentencing factors, states will send a strong message about lawlessness in Aboriginal communities, which are tragically ill-served by the current regime. Otherwise they will be complicit in yet more crimes against Australia's most defenceless citizens.

One law for all?

Cultural sensitivity toward Anglo-Australians is inherent in the Australian legal system, taken for granted day by day. It is inherent in the white male pioneers who thought up the system, the white male parliamentarians who make the law and the white male judges who enforce it.

Cultural sensitivity toward all other minority groups is to be banned for fear of their innate "lawlessness", their sheer immorality and the danger they pose to "Australian values".

Yes, one law for all indeed. All "Australians" that is.

The moral of the story?
Civil discourse proclaiming justice is but a poor veil for ignorance and racism.

The familiar echo of Aboriginal condemnation

By Jane Lydon
May 22, 2006

In the debate about the abuse of Aboriginal children, we are seeing the re-animation of much older, historical images of Aboriginal neglect and ill-treatment.

After the colonisation of Australia in 1788, Europeans represented Aboriginal gender relations and, especially, the care of children, as disorderly and brutal. Such accounts served to justify invasion, intervention, and ultimately the removal of children from their families.

The horrors courageously made public by Alice Springs Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers are real, and the pain and death inflicted on these small victims must not be denied, yet the way that this terrible situation has been taken up by some commentators, notably Aboriginal Affairs Minister Mal Brough, reveals an insidious colonial legacy that does nothing to tackle the problem's underlying causes.

Rather than acknowledge the longstanding structural disadvantage experienced by remote Aboriginal communities, the complicity of the Australian Government in their creation and neglect, and a national responsibility to make real changes, Brough's immediate response to Rogers' revelations was to announce the existence of a pedophile ring of senior Aboriginal men. No evidence has been produced, and it seems clear that none exists.

Where did Brough's allegation come from? Such a "ring" would, of course, give the minister a convenient solution to his need to be seen to be doing something: an evil group of Aboriginal men, a target small enough to rapidly identify and punish, would serve as a scapegoat and provide a quick fix for his problem. But if we look further back into the long history of Aboriginal-white relations, it becomes clear that such claims have often helped governments to justify interventionist indigenous policies.

Early white observers were quick to condemn Aboriginal society as wild and lawless, underwriting the process of colonialism. Although missionaries emphasised indigenous people's shared humanity, often opposing contemporary scientific racial theorists who argued for their biological inferiority, all agreed in condemning Aboriginal men as oppressors of their women, ignoring evidence for women's status within their own society.

Such views were the basis for confining them on reserves where women, in particular, were the focus of intense scrutiny and discipline. Such perceptions also served to justify taking indigenous babies and children from their mothers: as we now know, a long-term and systematic official practice with devastating consequences. More recently, historians of the "stolen generations" such as Anna Haebich have shown how similar images of neglect and disorder were used as the basis for child removal as recently as the 1970s.

The causes of these entrenched problems in many Aboriginal communities are complex, and the solutions will not be easy or certain.

The search for answers is not helped by political claims, from those who should know better, that reiterate the same old ideas about Aboriginal culture as inherently abusive - a notion explicitly rejected by several Aboriginal leaders over the past two days.

This is a terrible episode in Australian history, and the central fact is that every Aboriginal child is precious. What is needed are more perceptive analyses of these troubled communities - best of all, from listening to Aboriginal people, who have been trying to address these problems for a considerable time.

Jane Lydon is a research fellow at Monash University's Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies.

A Cartoon on Costello

A Deathly Silence

Reporter: Quentin McDermott
Broadcast: 15/05/2006

In the hours before he killed himself in April last year, Campbell Bolton wrote a long note in which he told his family how sorry he was for the pain he was about to cause them. "It fills me with grief when I think of what I have done to you," he wrote.

Nobody doubts he meant it. But, absorbed in his own pain, 17-year-old Campbell could not have comprehended the intensity and the breadth of suffering that he would inflict on others... his parents and brother, veering between sadness and anger, his extended family, friends, his school community, and the anonymous strangers - the emergency and morgue workers who had to handle his shattered body and tell a mother her son was dead.

"He didn’t have any idea of the grief," says Campbell's grandmother. "It's like a ripple in a pool, throwing a stone in a pool."

Now think of hundreds of stones being hurled into a pool, and the ripple effect. When Campbell Bolton died he became one of about 2,000 Australians who deliberately kill themselves each year, a tally that exceeds the huge but humdrum toll of road deaths. On average, one young person, like Campbell, dies by suicide every day. They're statistics to most people - but not to loved ones and the countless others who are touched by suicide.

Four Corners looks for insight into this social catastrophe by exploring the promising life and wasteful death of Campbell Bolton. On the surface nothing was wrong; Campbell came from a high-achieving, middle-class family with no background of drug abuse, violence, psychiatric illness or divorce.

He was a funny, charismatic and extremely clever young man. "Come speech night, he's basically falling over with prizes," a friend says. In Campbell's last months, however, as HSC exams approached, his academic performance slipped dramatically. No one could tell what was wrong.

This Four Corners report does not seek to answer exactly why Campbell ended his life. However it does identify some issues that were occupying him, including hissexuality and an acne problem. It now seems, with benefit of hindsight, that Campbell also had an abstract, intellectual attraction to suicide.

In making this program, Four Corners has sought to avoid glamourising Campbell's death or apportioning blame. Without the courage of Campbell's family, friends and school, the program could not have been made. All who knew him are victims of his death.

"The reason we're doing this program is that there's a deathly silence around suicide," says Campbell's mother Merridy. "Everybody's shocked and everyone says, 'Oh isn't it terrible'... but then the conversation stops."

I watched this program last night and i admit it was slightly disturbing but incrediably insightful. So if you don't have time, please make some and read at least parts of the transcrpt here.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

Tussle over images worth their weight in gold
By Dan Silkstone
May 15, 2006

FREED miners Todd Russell and Brant Webb are locked in a fight with mine management over potentially lucrative video footage and photographs taken during their confinement.

The footage, which could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars as part of a media deal, is being held by the mine's managers despite repeated requests from the two men, sources have told The Age.

Video and still images were taken by the miners with a camera supplied by rescuers and used during the nine-day rescue operation to monitor their well-being and the effect of drilling and blasting on their surrounds.

Both men are trying to negotiate deals with commercial television networks. The hours of footage and dozens of photographs would be extremely valuable but could diminish the value of their story if they were released or sold to a rival network.

The two men are believed to have requested the footage almost immediately after they emerged from the mine on Tuesday.

Mine spokesman Mike Lester said the images were being withheld because a coronial inquiry was under way, not because the company wanted to profit.

"The mine has to work out legally whether or not they can release anything," he said. But Mr Lester confirmed the mine had received offers. "Virtually every media organisation has asked for it," he said. "Not everyone has offered to pay."

Celebrity agent Max Markson, who left Beaconsfield yesterday after failing to persuade the two men to sign up with him, said the footage and pictures were highly sought after.

"It depends how good the quality is but it would give great footage for the TV. People imagine what it's like down there, that's human nature. Now they can see for themselves."

Australian Workers Union secretary Bill Shorten said the pictures and footage should be handed over immediately to the two men. "The images belong to the blokes and if there's anything in that footage that makes the company look bad then the blokes should have it anyway."The spat comes as the battle for the miners' story intensified.

The miners have appointed an agent, Sydney lawyer Sean Anderson, who also represents several Seven Network personalities. Some newspapers reported yesterday that the Seven Network had tabled a $2.75 million bid to each of the miners.

Seven News director Peter Meakin did not deny the mooted figure but said speculation that the pair would feature on Sunrise was wide of the mark.

Speculation that the deal included tie-ins with international media, including The Oprah Winfrey Show and American 60 Minutes, was also inaccurate, Mr Meakin said.

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Todd Russell and Brant Webb emerged without a scratch (figuratively of course) and with millions on the horizon. Don't you love that these guys are probably better off after being trapped in a mine for 2 weeks than they were before?

Viva Capitalism!

The Origins of Religion...

According to Danae...

Be Warned!