sexual abuse stats in the usa are quite high.

could you do w/o the booze and porn forever?

how do you attest that aborigines are affected and not everyone else?

do you truly believe it's the porn and the booze? what caused the porn and the booze in the first place?

where is everyone regarding this thread? i find the topic not only horrific but despairing. does anyone care???? does anyone from australia care to enlighten? any indigenous people who identify here?

Is anyone who replied to this thread actually from Australia or know of Australian History?

as to racism. that means many things to many people. to me, racism is not personal prejudice. to me, we are all racist to some degree in that those of us who are white, even though we did not cause it and did not want it, abuse of people of color did happen and in the infrastructure of societies, not just australia but also usa and although many will cringe, canada as well--there has historically been all WHITE areas who have benefited from the resultant society--even if indirectly. if i live in an all white area with better schools or better health care or being more socially accepted if i am white, i benefit. i may want to share what i have with non whites but nonetheless then it has to come from me and they cannot get it w/o me. now slowly this changes. but i think the point is "not" that the alcohol and porn "addiction" is okay for the aborigines, i think the point is that it is also not okay for the rest of the world. but try changing that by legislating it away. do you really think that the ones making the money on all this are aborigine? why aren't they going after the PRODUCERS of the porn??? see what i mean? that is where the racism lies. we live in a very different culture and paradigm between countries and within countries and often it takes a lot of communicating to see that with the same words, we are saying different things, based upon our different experiences.

My assessment is:

* The focus on grog and policing is correct, but as well as policing there must be a strategy for building indigenous social and cultural ownership.

* Making welfare payments conditional is correct, but the Howard-Brough plan needs to be amended so responsible behaviour is encouraged.

* The land-related measures are clumsy and ideological, but they are not an attempt at a land grab, and the problems with the land measures are nowhere near as high a priority as action for the welfare of children.

* This is not my plan. It is the federal Government's plan. If it were up to me I would do some things differently. But I am not the government and, like everyone, I have to deal with the realities as they are, not how I would prefer them to be.

A few simple questions lead me to the view that decisive action is needed.

First, is the situation of children's welfare in indigenous communities in the NT and the states a situation of national priority? We have just had the Anderson-Wild report on the NT. Similar reports have come down in recent years in Queensland, NSW, South Australia and Western Australia. No one denies the situation is a national priority.

Second, is the situation with children's welfare one of national emergency? Child protection is not like poverty or educational underachievement or general socioeconomic disadvantage. Time and deliberation can be taken when considering and devising solutions to these large structural problems.

But what do you do when a child is being subjected to abuse this very day? What do you do when a child is likely to be abused next week? What do you when the abuse is going to happen the week after next? What do we do when there are scores of children involved across the communities, the states and territories? If it were your child at risk of this suffering, would you think this a matter of emergency?

This is not a moral panic. The abuse is real. This is not a media or political beat-up. The report from Pat Anderson and Rex Wild confirms a reality of suffering. Something has to be done to relieve the suffering now, not in six months, not in two years. Now.

We can't rehabilitate people from alcohol or drug dependence immediately. We can't fix the poor education immediately. We can't fix up the poor health immediately. But we must stop the suffering straight away. Everyone, from the Prime Minister to his bitterest opponents, centres their preferred strategy or response on the fate of the children. No one can escape this fact: the fate of the children is the bottom line. Whatever one thinks of Howard and Brough, their strategy is justified on the basis of the fate of the children.

If not Brough and Howard's plan to stop the suffering, then what alternative plan should be pursued? Here most of the critics fall into a deafening silence. They have vociferous views about what will not work, but they are silent about what will work. So the sum total of their response - "we don't need missionary paternalism again", "prohibition doesn't work", "indigenous people must consent to the changes", "we need more government services", "we have to provide rehabilitation", "we have to deal with intergenerational trauma", "we have to deal with things in a holistic way" - is inaction and procrastination while children's lives continue to be ruined. It is not that the points made by the critics are wrong - they are often correct - but their criticism does not translate and often cannot be translated into action.

I believe the Government's proposal will make a difference in the short term. If one accepts that the proposed measures will save women and children this year, then the bottom line is this: rejecting the Government's emergency measures equates with giving priority to some other issue before rescuing the children.

Does the fact that Howard and Brough are politically motivated in the conception and activation of their plan make their plan unsupportable? Does the fact that there are electoral calculations underpinning this manoeuvre make their proposed intervention wrong? Of course not. I could not care less if the plan is accompanied by political motivations. If the plan is aimed at providing relief from suffering then this has priority over everything.

Grog and policing are the most urgent priorities. The Anderson-Wild report makes clear, as if we did not already know, that there is a direct connection between the epidemic of grog and drug abuse and the neglect and abuse of children. We have always known grog is a problem for our people. But to know that grog is a problem is not enough. Because we have plenty of problems. We have plenty of explanations for our problems. We have plenty of proposed solutions.

If you acknowledge that grog is a problem but you don't give it emphasis, priority or focus, then it is likely you will do nothing about it. This is the story of Aboriginal policy and Aboriginal leadership in this country. We all have said that grog is a problem, but we have not given it the emphasis or priority or focus it needs for us to get on top of the problem. The Howard-Brough plan to tackle grog and to provide policing is correct. However, the plan needs to be amended so that there is a concerted strategy to build indigenous social and cultural ownership.

Howard and Brough need to understand the challenge is this: we must restore Aboriginal law in these communities. We must restore Aboriginal values and Aboriginal morality in our communities. Aboriginal law, properly understood, is not the problem, it is the solution. When I say Aboriginal law, I just do not mean the laws that prevailed in our pre-colonial classical culture, I mean our contemporary values and expectations about behaviour. The old law did not deal with grog, drugs, gambling, money and private property.

These new things have represented a fundamental challenge for Aboriginal culture. Many communities have struggled to apply the values that underpinned their traditional law to these new challenges. We have not met this challenge successfully. We desperately need to. We need to develop an Aboriginal law that deals effectively with these new challenges: grog, drugs, gambling, money and private property.