examples:

(1) National Archives of Australia CRS F1/0 Item 1960/320

(a)Report on Patrol Lake Mackay Area June / July 1957

(2) National Archives of Australia CRS F1/0 Item 1962/1843

(a) Report on Fieldwork west of Papunya June-July 1962

(b) Desert Pintubi contacted 1962/1963

(c) Report on Patrol west of Papunya August 1963 by Jeremy Long

(d) Report on Patrol west of Papunya April 1964 by Jeremy Long

Movement back to Kintore Ranges really started Christmas 1979

From the early to mid nineteenth century, when the Aborigines were herded off their lands, the common pattern was for them to settle around religious missions. Between the 1880s and 1920s these were taken over by the governments’ Aboriginal Protection Boards, which basically had the right to control every aspect of life, such as coming and going, work, wages, housing, you name it.

By contrast, the history of the welfare state with the rest of society largely starts with the old age pension in about the 1920s and the dole in the 1930s. It wasn’t until Whitlam in the 1970s that the single mothers pension came in. It was never the case with mainstream society that living off the government was the norm for the majority, but with Aboriginal society we are looking at a society that has been under pretty much in a state of full wardship under government tutelage – socialism – for over a hundred and fifty years.

Looking at Aboriginal society, does that have some explaining power?

Commonwealth and NT government provide public money to various organisations to construct buildings, eg housing, withOUT requiring leases for the land.

Can you get a loan from them so as to build a house on land you do not hold a lease or title to ?

Land Trusts refuse issue leases for land with houses or units constructed as issuing leases provides tenants with legal rights and responsibilities.

Do not give people enforceable legal rights and responsibilities, they may use them !

A “Traditional Owner” has no right for their family or friends to live with them, or visit them, in their home whilst they live upon their “Traditional Homelands”.

I think most libertarians are okay with localised laws. Centralised power is principally what they oppose. I’m all for devolving most law making powers and most government related activities to local government. Of course libertarians will still routinely oppose local laws that are stupid and some may even support the use of central government to dispense with such stupid local laws. In the USA for instance locally imposed rent controls in many cities were ended by the use of state laws that prohibited such local rent controls. Personally I think it was a good outcome for the people in the cities involved but obviously it was not consistent with the idea of regional autonomy in such matters. I have argued previously that the minimum wage in Australia should be decided at the local level. However I still oppose the minimum wage and if central government prohibited minimum wage laws entirely I’d be hard pressed to object. The main power that I am quite consitently in favour of devolving to the regions is the power to tax and spend. In terms of federal systems I quite like the fact that the EU concedes no powers of direct taxation to the central EU pseudo government. All powers of taxation in the EU remain with the regions (nation states). It is a pity that other federal systems such as Australia and the USA did not follow this path.

As for the right to secede I think that an ideal constitution (ie one we will never have) would provide some mechanism by which a subset of the national population that is resident within some geographically continuous region might elect to secede. However it would not be specifically included in the constitution to serve one specific racial or ethnic group. If Queensland or Tasmania or Northern New South Wales wants to secede from Australia I think there should be a mechanism for it. However given the opportunity to rewrite the constitution it would not be high up on my list of reforms. And within a federal constitution I’d generally be happy enough to limit the ability to secede to actual entire states and to provide some separate mechanism by which the people of a state could decide to split into two separate states.

Regards,
Terje.

I wasn’t advocating anything, merely explaining that Australia could have different laws in different regions (or even different laws for different people) and still provide for full participation within an essentially capitalist system. Personally I think the racist elements of the constitution should be abolished exactly as you propose. However I also think that the aged pension is discriminatory because it is based on age not need. Lots of old people are capable of working.

Regards,
Terje.

No offense, but Jews have Israel, Muslims have quite a few countries in the Middle East and Scandanavians already have their socialist paradises living under Scandanavian law.

Aboriginal peoples have no land on which they have the option of practicing their own traditional law. Nothing about the landmass of Australia says that it has to be one continuous mass. Aboriginal independence would mean it would no longer be part of Australia, it would no longer be part of our community, our legal, political or economic structure.

“Different communities living under different laws is a vision of hell.” You mean like Canada and America? Or Thailand and Cambodia? Or Germany and Switzerland? There’s plenty of countries sharing land borders- I’m talking TOTAL independence with their own geographic area, own laws, own society, own culture, own economy. It’s a simple solution, but the mining companies may not like it. Hopefully we’d have both free trade and free immigration between both nations.

I’m not talking about allowing low-income ghettos in Sydney to live their own laws on child molestation, though. I think offering full independence is a more libertarian option.

Of course, a more effective solution would be a proper federal system (including the Northern Territory being given immediate statehood) and more power being divulged to local levels. Why is the idea of local laws so scary to most libertarians? We already have local laws for dog walking, skateboarding and graffiti- it’s not that much of a step to decentralise more control to the local level.

In answer to DavidL — yes (kinda), I think Muslims should be able to get together on their own private property, set up the rules over that property and then pursue their own lifestyle. The same applies for Jews and even Scandonavians.

We already have a system similar to this for aged people (retirement homes) and hippies (communes). Israel has the Kibbutz and in American they have the Armish. I like diversity.

I would like to see federal control decentralised to the States. Preferably it could then be decentralised to the local level. And better still would be that power is decentralised to the people… who could get together in voluntary society which ever way they see fit.

There are two issues here… One is whether we should experiment on 90,000 aboriginals with socialism — leading to poverty and death. The other issue is whether we let aboriginals have an extra $10 in welfare.

I think the first issue is of HUGE importance. If there was a reform package that included ending socialism but offering some extra racist welfare, I’d take it in a heart-beat. Socialism isn’t funny. It’s not cute. There is no greater thing we can do in any situation then end socialism.

Of course, I’d prefer total equality. But in order of priorities, ending socialism is 100 times more important than ending Abstudy.