Premier Colin Barnett is happy “native title over the south west has been settled.” He has thanked the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council (SWALSC) for brokering the outcome. However more than 95 per cent of Noongar/Nyoongar/Nyungah/Bibbullman people did not vote. This does not matter to the Western Australian Government. What matters is that […]
March 2015
Opinion piece – The Mabo and Wik decisions have failed to deliver what should have been mandatory to the people as a whole, but in the hands of ordinary people much becomes something else, and often much becomes only for the few. The Native Title Act has degenerated into one of the consummate farces, not […]
Senator Nova Peris is by far the Australian Labor Party’s best candidate for the portfolio of ‘Aboriginal Affairs’ however the portfolio has been steadfastly shuffled to Queensland powerbroker, Shayne Neumann. Mr Neumann is forever and a day behind Senator Peris in understandings and capacity for this particular portfolio. It is an act of racism by […]
As soon as I released part of the list of remote communities – Homelands – to be targeted for ‘audit’ by the Western Australian Government, all of a sudden, ‘leaked’ lists were secured by other media. But the onus of what I argued that my Government insiders had to say was let slide altogether by […]
In October 2014 Scott Morrison the then Minister for Immigration and Border Protection announced that former integrity Commissioner Philip Moss would conduct an inquiry into allegations of sexual abuse occurring at the Nauru Detention Centre that houses detainees refused entry into Australian territories. The ABC report of the announcement of the inquiry said the following: […]
We will be damned by the future if we sit quiet on any dispossession of Homelands – ‘remote communities’ – just as we damn the past for similar brutal dispossessions, for the evil of the Stolen Generations, the Stolen Wages, en masse indenture, apartheid, the lot. The dispossession of hundreds of Homelands, loosely referred to […]
Nearly two years ago I wrote about the potential closure of up to 180 remote communities – homelands – of First Peoples. My insiders’ claims were rubbished and labelled fanciful and conspiratorial. Late last year, the Western Australian Government announced the potential closure of up to 150 communities. The South Australian Premier followed soon after […]
Constitutional recognition is a farce designed to divert attention from the decimation of Aboriginal life through funding cuts and the closure of communities, argues Paddy Gibson On 11 December, Tony Abbott addressed a lavish fundraising dinner, hosted by “Recognise”—an organisation campaigning for recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Australian constitution. Recognise […]
Today is the start of Harmony Week. It runs from today through to 21st March 2015. The 21st of March commemorates the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa where a number of black people were killed under the apartheid laws. For a number of years we “celebrated” Harmony Day on 21 March. After much exhortation from […]
A Wiradjuri Elder once said to me, “There is a sickness in this country, and it is called racism – we stand in it knee deep.” Whether you are Black, Brown or Yellow, the only way you can majorly get ahead in the ways White Australians do is to sing the White man’s song, and […]
General News
- March 9, 2021
Australia’s governments must end health discrimination in its prisons. An incarcerated child must not be a second-class citizen. Nor any adult. We must ask, why are our governments dishing the vulnerable jailed, second-class healthcare? When evaluating the nation’s carceral system, we are […]
- February 2, 2021
When will the cries of the homeless be heard? Is there some sort of grotesque caste system in Western Australia? The anti-humanism is a brutal public spectacle. On the last day of January, the Western Australian Government actuated five days […]
- December 3, 2020
West Australia is the nation’s backwater. It is the mother of injustices, inequalities and the draconian. West Australia and the Northern Territory leave the have-nots that far behind, for many their lot appears irreparable. If there is a Mason-Dixon line […]
- September 22, 2020
There are many faces to homelessness. A 51-year-old woman walked into my Perth office. She has lived thirteen consecutive years street-homeless. Not long ago, she spent eighteen months sleeping her nights in the same park. She is weary, harrowed by […]
- September 3, 2020
Often beleaguered by international aid work I have lifelong been involved in; the increasing unmet needs, the mongrel injustices, I have argued the horrendous lie of our generation is that poverty is being reduced around the world. There are countries […]
- March 10, 2020
Gerry Georgatos – In 2014, I disaggregated to the Kimberley’s First Nations peoples, the nation’s highest suicide rate, one of the world’s highest, at over 70 suicides per 100,000 population (First Nations), thereabouts seven times the national rate. Fortunately, although […]
- February 18, 2020
Gerry Georgatos – More than 51 months ago I wrote an article on the imperatives of forgiveness and redemption. This remains true. We journey together in one form or another, we can either salt the earth or jag the road, […]
- January 29, 2020
By Gerry Georgatos – Trae lost his eleven-year-old brother to suicide. Nine months later he lost his mother to suicide. Trae was the last to see his brother. Half an hour later he went looking for his little brother. In the […]
- January 21, 2020
Gerry Georgatos – Children as young as 9 years have been lost to suicide, three in fact in recent years. Australians should ask, why? Proportionally, more children aged 14 years and less have been lost so far this century compared […]
- December 10, 2019
Gerry Georgatos – A mother suicides, a father suicides, their child was a suicide. Not once has this occurred but untold times. Over the years I have warned of mothers and fathers that would be near certain lost to suicide […]
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