A new sandpit for long side discussions, idees fixes and so on. Unless directly responding to the OP, all discussions of nuclear power, MMT and conspiracy theories should be directed to sandpits (or, if none is open, message boards).
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John Quiggin 
Go to YouTube. Search using the using the words “leyonhjelm aboriginal”. It should be the first hit. If you can share the result here that would be helpful because I can’t for some reason.
@TerjeP
Doesn’t make any sense to me. I have no idea what you are facepalming about.
It really would be better for you and lots of other people who might want to have sensible discussions here even if it is a Sandpit, if you completely ignored me. You are not quick on the uptake are you?
Now my instructions on how to find the video are also stuck in moderation. Maybe the last name of the senator is blacklisted. 😦
@TerjeP
One of mine got stuck in mod also. Don’t take it personally. It’s *not* all about you.
But please no more David videos. Don’t you people write anything? Can’t you refer to a text that can be read?
I made a remark that was clearly sarcastic and you took it as literal. Hence the facepalm. Just to spell it out I do not want to pass a law defining the colour green. I thought that should have been obvious from the context.
^ success
It was not me that brought up his speech for discussion. It was you.
@Ikonoclast
go to aph.gov.au and at the top of the page you will see the house of reps on the left and the senate on the right. Click “Hansard” (in this case for the senate) and you can search for anything. If you type in his name it will bring up the results. In this case, the second result is what you are after – his speech in full as held on the public record.
He said, in part:
I’ll get eternal mod if I put a direct link, but if you do the search you’ll find the whole thing.
I’ll try to post the direct link.
@TerjeP
Did you miss the point that corporation’s do want to own colours and deny us the freedom to enjoy these things.
And you still have not explained why it is a bad thing for this recognition to be made legal? That is the most important problem for me to try and understand. The move for recognistion in the constitution is quite obviously, from my learning and actual experience working with and knowing blackfellas a good thing for everyone.
What harm will it do to you?
Ok, I have found Leyonhjelm’s speech but first a note about moderation. Two links will get your comment stuck in moderation. If you use the reply button this creates a link and this link counts towards the grand total of two links! I have fallen foul of this trap myself in the past. Maybe we could call it “One weird trap that gets your comment stuck in moderation.” 😉
Now, on to Leyonhjelm’s speech. At one level, all I can say is I disagree profoundly with him. His rationales seem plausible on the surface but I sense an undercurrent which denies disadvantage and previous injustice. Injustice (especially that of dispossesion) does pass down the generations. The lives of subsequent generations are made poorer and more difficult (or even impossible in many cases given increased mortality levels). Endemic and systemic injustice of this form requires comprehensive recompense and remediation.
I wonder at the “spirit” of Leyonhjelm’s approach. Where one is dealing with a person or persons severely wronged, the adoption of a legalistic “letter of the law” approach can be rightly characterised as mean-spirited and ungenerous. One would wonder why a person in a relatively privileged positon in society, as Mr. Leyonhjelm is, feels impelled to be mean-spirited and ungenerous.
In such cases, of persons severely wronged, it is better ethically and for social harmony to if anything, err on the side of generosity. Generosity goes some way to ameliorating past severe wrongs.
To cavil about wording such as “first occupiers” versus say “previous very long occupiers” (up to 40,000 years or even 60,000 years is an extremely long time compared to civilized human history) is to exhibit a “legalistically expressed mean spirit”. That is how I would legally/ethically characterise it.
To be accepted as “first occupiers” or “original occupiers” means a lot to aboriginal people. An alternative wording could well be found if legalistic objections are raised. I would suggest “Ancient, venerable and extensive occupiers, improvers and managers of all of Australia before the arrival of white settlers. The aboriginal nations’ historic lives and traditions in Australia extend far earlier than all written records of all human civilization. This is attested to by aboriginal tradition itself and also by extensive western scientific archeological and anthropoligical studies.”
In other words, when mean-spirited legalists like Senator Leyonhjelm want to make difficulties I would answer their legalistic quibbles and strengthen the generous and respectful recognition of a people all in one swoop. The aboriginal people have been generous, long suffering and peacable to date. What possible reason can anyone have to keep treating them meanly? Actually, I know the reasons but I won’t express them here as it will come across as a personal attack on TerjeP when I don’t mean it to be. It would be an attack on Leyonhjelm’s politics though.
@Megan
Leyonhjelm says:
Which, quite bizarrely entirely misconstrues the role of the legislature which is to legislate on the basis of known and agreed facts. He conflates legislating on facts with the idea of a Royal decree as to what the facts are.
God alone knows what the law school at Macquarie University taught him for his Bachelor of Law degree but if this is his understanding of the law in relation to the legislature then I am not surprised, and I am a little relived, that there are so many law grads driving taxis. Talk about intellectual rubbish.
He, and his cultish devotee Terje, see themselves as defenders of freedom but what they are defending is their right to hold on to the shared delusions characteristic of a folie à deux.
The syndrome has been well explored in the cinema:
Seems apposite.
I don’t sense that undercurrent. Do you have ESP?
Another childish remark.
I’m aware of that issue. But it doesn’t explain some of the comments that end up moderated.
t
@jungney
It doesn’t even pass the logic test.
That “they” were here “first” is an accepted fact. “Who was here “first”, “them” or “us”?
Correct answer: “They were”.
Leyonhjelm’s “conjecture” is that maybe someone was here before them, maybe. In which case, ‘so what?’ These other putative people can, if they still exist, take that up with the Aborigines.
To cut to the chase, perhaps the real reason there is a lobby pushing for native title to be convertible is so that it can be mortgaged and sold – which will have the practical effect of extinguishing it.
Terje,
should Aboriginal people be compensated on just terms for the theft of their land? What is the LDP policy on this.
@TerjeP
did not you have a sense that Yanis Varoufakis was a good man or something like that. I do remember wondering and asking – as is my wont – how rational was that feeling. Do you have short term memory loss or are you just a common garden variety hypocrite?
I’m still sputtering and spluttering from the Mar 5/6 comments…
Every time some government somewhere grants title to a block of previously unowned land, nature is being privatised. Every time some government somewhere gives lien to hunt/fish/pluck on some land/lake/sea somewhere, nature is being privatised. Species: RIP. We have made quite a fist of it so far, and if 250 years of capitalism has failed to construct a viable model of trading in nature, one which doesn’t result in species extinction rates so high that this era is now considered the Sixth Extinction Event on the paleological scale, well, the empirical evidence of it being figured out in the next few decades is running about nil. Dodo nil.
@Donald Oats
Good on you for a succinct and articulate response to the Mar 5/6 comments which didn’t leave me sputtering, but overflowing with words and anger at such willful ignorance.
There’s an interesting bit of analysis in The Graud arguing that ‘if the environment remains a left issue then we all are doomed’. Because the tribal right sees it as an identity issue rather than a survival issue. I don’t agree with all of it, but …
http://tinyurl.com/medf73c
…I’m unconvinced that there is way, in time, to accommodate the needs of the ‘tribal right’ as to the urgency of the problem. There’s been a long conversation in the US among political and social psychologists about the way that the right and the left have different brain structures which structures disadvantage the project of saving what life we might on this planet.
(No link to that otherwise Das Automod).
My own view, at this moment lacking in popular support, is that soon we will be able to subject all people to a brain scan to determine whether they have a communalist mindset or an individualist (frightened) brain after which scan those incapable of communal thinking can be consigned to the dust bin of history or to the compost bin, whichever is more ecologically sustainable.
It’s a sad idea, losing all those entrepreneurs and start up kinda guys, but a limited society guaranteed to provide survival of life, all of it, is better than the extermination of all of existence that is guaranteed if the brain dysfunctional continue to run the joint.
What’s the big deal here? Terjep supports Mabo bu thinks it is a weak form of property right; he acknowledges aboriginal dispossession but doesn’t support legislation of symbolic stuff like recognition of prior ownership. This is bog standard right wing ideology but it’s hardly harmful. Libertarians always come unstcuk on native title issues and I’m quite surprised to see terjep accepting a legal notion of shared ownership. The language of “upgrading” native title is slippery stuff often used by right wingers to extinguish title but terjep has qualified it suitably. Short of getting him to actually write legislation and explore its consequences I don’t see how you can ascribe anything harmful to his ideas.
Terjep, what does your gun nut senator want to do with native title?
I have previously said I think terjep’s opinion on guns, race and crime in America are racist, coming as they do straight from the pages of Reason. It’s nice to see he’s a bit more nuanced about race issues in his own backyard! But it’s all irrelevant, we won’t have a society to debate racism within if we don’t do something about global warming and on this issue terjep and his allies continue to be suicidal, and want to drag the rest of us down with them.
@TerjeP
To quote Peter Cundall, in Australia during summer the correct colour of grass is brown.
@Faustusnotes
It’s deeply harmful to Aboriginal people. Not to Aboriginies, as Terje has referred to First Nation’s Peoples, which term they find deeply offensive. Look it up.
It is deeply harmful, as I said. If you don’t understand why then your best option is to stf-up and find out why before you express more uninformed opinion.
I gave this some thought. It was a case of hypocrisy. My apology to Ikonoclast. It is reasonable that he shares his intuition even though I personally think his intuition is wrong.
I don’t know any gun nut senators. Are you refering to John Howard?
@jungney
Oh. As a Gubba, I see I made the same error.
I often listen to Tiger Bayles on 98.9fm Brisbane (9am and repeated at 7pm). He has a great show called “Let’s Talk”, archives can be heard online at 989fm.com.au.
He prefers “First Nations People”, he once devoted half the show to the topic. His view was that “Aborigines”, “Aboriginal”, “Indigenous” were all bad usages. Pleasingly to my ear, everyone on the show usually uses “Blackfellas” quite regularly and casually.
I can’t remember who, but someone here mocked or pulled me up for using “First Nations” one time.
There is no LDP policy on this issue.
My personal opinion is that compensation often needs to be handled case by case. Conflicting land title claims are messy things and I don’t think you can make a blanket ruling. Although you may be able to be more broad brush with regards to certain catagories of land such as crown land. For the most part I think this is how things have been handled in the last few decades and I don’t see any obvious way to improve on this aspect of the process.
But as I said earlier native title is a pretty weak form of property right. It often just amounts to a caviet. I’d rather see public lands privatised by assigning full property title to relavant groups and individuals. And whilst we are at it the state should hand over the mineral rights, and the right to clear vegetation also so that the owners have full control over the land and it’s use.
@TerjeP
No ESP needed. I sensed it from the studious way he avoided it.
fn:
“I have a question for the pro-GMO crowd here, who also usually sneer at organic food. Given the central role of agricultural use of antibiotics in the growth of antibiotic resistant bacteria I have a question for the pro-GMO crowd here, who also usually sneer at organic food. Given the central role of agricultural use of antibiotics in the growth of antibiotic resistant bacteria, especially in the USA and UK, and the impossibility of doing anything about it legislatively (there is a good recent box article on the topic) do you advocate the consumption of only organic meat until the legislative process changes? How does this issue affect your view of organic food more broadly?”
So I’m supposed to eat organic meat because of something that is supposedly happening “especially in the USA and UK”?
Hilarious.
The ABC last year re Australia:
I will continue eating intensive factory farmed animals and caged eggs as per usual until I see a strong and sustained consilience of the science telling me I shouldn’t, for whatever reason.
I will also studiously avoid organic food (other than the home grown variety) as it is an immoral waste of resources as well as an attempt to gentrify the food supply.
JQ,
I’m wondering if “Candy Pants” was most recently banned as “Paul Keating” after a brief stint as “The White Mouse”…..etc?
@Megan
I often use the “First Nations Peoples” and “Aboriginal people”. I’m unsure how acceptable Koori is to those who are Murri so, unless I know the the specific identity of a person, I avoid these terms. Flinders has a guide for all this (pdf).
@Megan
I’ll keep watch on this. Candy Pants, please be warned that any personal criticism of anyone from you, or any other violation of policy, will result in an immediate ban, including disemvowelling or deletion of past comments.
Regarding Terra Nullius, the French also had explored the opportunity of colonising Australia. Indeed, the Frenchman Baudin wrote to Govenor King
Later Bautin died; it’s said that Napoleon was unhappy missing the opportunity to have him hung for failing to claim Australia.
@jungney
I hope I am not being inappropriate to anyone when I use the term ‘blackfellas’. I have had conversations with people, friends and colleagues, who said they like that term and prefer it to Indigenous or Aboriginal person. They call me whitesheila.
@Julie Thomas
I doubt it. It seems to me to be a widely used and accepted colloquialism. If its ok for the Warumpi band its good enough.
People do worry about how to refer to Aboriginal people and it is an important thing to sort out because talking about ‘them’ is happening even out here, with some interest and a lack of the usual resentment and irrational dislike is happening.
But my neighbours do worry about calling them blackfellas, they are shocked if I do it and are worried that it sounds racist. The way I see it, it depends on what you are saying and how you say it – it’s the context and the meaning of what you say that is important – not whether you use Indigenous or Aboriginal or blackfella.
It’s a good thing that my neighbours are interested in understanding the problems now whereas before the election it was all their own fault. Perhaps there is enough distance between this generation and the generation that did do the stealing and killing that it will be possible for them to rise above the resentment they feel at being ‘forced’ by the left, to feel ashamed of their people and their culture and consider the other side of the coin.
This was interesting on RN this morning. “Professor George Williams says there still remains discriminatory racial references in the Constitution.
He joins RN Sunday Extra to explain the symbolic and legal importance of recognising Indigenous Australians in the Constitution.”
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/sundayextra/845-segment/6269792
Thanks for the link to George Williams. It a relief to hear someone with such global knowledge address the issue.
Language does depend on context, always. When I worked in child protection, I was assigned to work with a Dharug man. After we had cemented a good relationship he said to me that for the first six months in the office his non-Aboriginal co-workers looked at him as if they were wondering “what’s that n*gger doing on the wrong side of the counter?”
Depends where you are, who you’re with.
First off, thank you TerjeP, for your pithy and to the point response to my hypothetical.
On a different topic altogether, I am bemused and disappointed in the LNP for defunding many community assistance initiatives, plenty of them being essential. It they hadn’t done this, I wouldn’t be ambivalent about the elevation of Rosie Batty, for her work is exemplary by all accounts; the issue is that the LNP first set about defunding/cutting positions and grants across regional and outback Australia, then gives prominence to a campaigner for helping women who have violent partners. This taking then giving is really destabilising, and yet it is the standard practice now. What are the LNP cabinet ministers thinking—do they think if they magically put something back (after the redundancies have happened, after the lights have been switched off), the situation is reversible and can return to the status quo? I wish!
Candy pants is clearly a sock for paul keating et al. Same arguing style, same writing style.
Terjep, cute. You know I am referring to leyonjhelm. What’s the ldp position on native title? Have you considered the possibility that your case-by-case approach if handled properly in courts willing to recognize forms of native title would probably cost the country a lot more than an administrative solution?
Also it sounds like your individualistic court-based approach, based on recognition of pre-invasion property rights, could be vulnerable to resolution by some form of treaty. I am surprised by that. Do you support the concept of a treaty? Do you think a treaty would have been an honorable approach if enacted earlier (say, early last century)?
I indicated earlier that an administrative solution (ie broad brush) might make sense in certain categories of title conflicts. eg crown land.
If two parties with title over the same land want to resolve it through some agreement then that is always an option. But the courts are not going to generate a national treaty.
In New Zealand there was a treaty and I think it would have been a good thing in that instance if anybody bothered to honour it. I don’t support the concept of a treaty in Australia today. And in the 1900’s I can’t see the case for a treaty being any better.
Should there have been a treaty in the 1700’s? Perhaps. But I think the cultural mismatch in terms of what “property” meant was perhaps too extreme for it to happen. It’s an interesting hypothetical.
It’s worth noting that traditional Maori and Aboriginal cultures are very different to each other.
I’ve heard some suggest (not in this discussion but elsewhere) that the Europeans deliberately brought smallpox to Australia. I think the idea that it was deliberate or malicious is somewhat ludicrous. However it does seem likely that smallpox (and other European diseases) were catastrophic for the natives. Killing 50% or more of the population. I doubt that signing a treaty with a few white settlers was high on the “to do” list of aborigines at the time. And the aborigines around Sydney cove were in no position to sign a treaty relating to the entire continent. I doubt they knew what the continent of Australia was anyway. Or who it was they would be signing on behalf of.
TerjeP, smallpox was brought delibrately to Australia by Europeans in a bottle in 1788. In 1789 Australians were dying in huge numbers from smallpox. That bottle is the only reasonable explanation for the outbreak of the disease as it could not remain endemic aboard a ship for the duration of the journey.
Ludicrous is too strong a word. But the idea has problems. Not least of which is the reaction of the British on discovering the outbreak. Which seems to have been one of surprise.
@TerjeP
Why? Why do you think the idea is ludicrous?
@TerjeP
Oh, ludicrous is out, is it? Now we read that ‘the idea has problems’ in which you claim that the British were ‘surprised’ on ‘discovering the outbreak’. A source for that ‘surprise’ claim? Some suggestion as to other ‘problems’ with the idea? If ludicrous is too strong a word, then what?
Biological warfare, as practiced in the US, seems possible in light of chemical warfare (arsenic) practiced by colonials.
Not to get side tracked into yet another new discussion my point was that there was minimal scope for a treaty in Australia. Maybe things would be better now if things then were done differently but that is pretty much the case with everything in history.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/was-sydneys-smallpox-outbreak-an-act-of-biological-warfare/5395050