On the ground floor of the Art Gallery of NSW I saw one of the most moving pieces of sculpture I can remember visiting. It did not surpass the sublime La Pieta, Michaelange ...
April 30, 2011
What a combination, but what do they have to do with Blak and Black? To steal a line from Gore Vidal’s Caligula, “everything and nothing”. Nothing, because Blak and Black is a site dedicated to raising awareness about political corruption in Australia and how this impacts on the legal rights of the indigenous peoples of Australia and the Pacific. Everything, because Australia’s child sex-tourism laws are being abused by the ...
April 28, 2011
In the Trobriand Islands the annual yam festival is more than just ordinary. Nick burst out laughing when I told him I was heading for the Trobriand Islands. “I hope you know how to bite off a man’s eyebrows,” he said. He saw the bewildered look on my face. “And eyelashes,” he added, wiping away tears of amusement. Nick was a native Trobriand islander, but he had been working as ...
April 27, 2011
In an opinion piece published in the Age newspaper, Yorta Yorta man Paul Briggs (2006) angrily rejected a proposal by Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough that Aboriginal culture be “showcased” by employing Aborigines from remote communities in five-star tourist venues on the Eastern seaboard. Briggs wrote: The idea caught many a breath but not just because of its patronising nature. The minister had voiced what many Australians think, and ...
April 25, 2011
Lest we forget. It’s three words every Australian comes to know early in life, recited at Anzac and Remembrance Days, or funerals for the most recently deceased soldier. I honour the men and women who served the Empire, an allegiance with Britain or America as much any person, those of my own family included. On the Easter long weekend which coincides with Anzac Day, I was prompted to think of ...
April 24, 2011
The Nine Network’s new factual crime series AFP is rushing an episode connected to the arrest of Tony Mokbel into its first series, which begins on Tuesday. The story had been shelved because of a suppression order that prevented Mokbel being named in the media. That was lifted midweek, the same day as Nine’s launch of the series in Canberra, attended by the producers Andrew Denton and Anita Jacoby and ...
April 23, 2011
Attack is the best form of defence. The people of Yindjibarndi have been doing just that, with the video of the March 16 meeting proving to a be an international success, going viral and spreading word of their impending fate farther than they could have hoped. Social media has truly come to the fore for this outback population. Seeking to put their side of the story forward, Fortescue Metals Group ...
April 21, 2011
“Australians have a great sense of fairness and when you do things like that we say ‘get on your bike, fella’ and get back out again. Don’t take advantage of us”. (David Koch to rioters at Sydney’s Villawood Detention Centre, 21 April, 2011) The above comment by David Koch is interesting given they come from a person whose presence on the shores of Australia owes more than a little to ...
April 19, 2011
Marlon Noble has spent a third of his life in jail, for a crime the victims are unable to recall. What’s worse, Mr. Noble has never been tried. His plight is indicative of the manner in which the Western Australian government views those with mental health issues; some would say, its proof of a system designed to further marginalizes Indigenous Australians, a subtle form of genocide. According to the Mentally ...
April 18, 2011
As a prelude to this post I would like to congratulate former Solomon Islands’ Attorney-General Julian Moti on his win in the High Court. On Friday 8th April 2011 the High Court approved Mr. Moti’s application for special leave to appeal a Queensland Court of Appeal ruling allowing the politically motivated prosecution of him to proceed. While this is obviously good news for Mr. Moti, the Commonwealth didn’t leave the ...
April 17, 2011
There’s a culture up there where young non-indigenous youth actually go out and pick indigenous individuals to physically attack and post it up on YouTube. A 51-year-old Aboriginal man, Mr. Phillips, died in a Kalgoorlie lock-up in the early hours of January 8 after being taken in for failing to obey a move-on order. Mr. Phillips, who had previously had an arm and toes amputated, was found to be unwell ...
April 15, 2011
Prime Minister Gillard signalled during a speech given to the Sydney Institute on Wednesday night that welfare reform was on her agenda, in a big way. “The social and economic reality of our country is that there are people who can work, who do not…. We know there are 230,000 people who have been unemployed for more than two years, that there are 250,000 families where no adult has been ...
April 13, 2011
Following is the text of an press release from the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation regarding the relocation of the video of the March 16 meeting. PRESS RELEASE YINDJIBARNDI ABORIGINAL CORPORATION Roebourne, WA 13 APRIL 2011 Vimeo forced to delete “FMG’s Great Native Title Swindle” video after legal threats from FMG and CEO Andrew Forrest A video exposing the interference of Fortescue Metals Group and its CEO Andrew Forrest at an illegitimate, FMG-sponsored ...
April 13, 2011
Michael Anderson, the last survivor of the four 1972 founders of the Aboriginal embassy in Canberra and leader of the 3,000 Euahlayi, says in a media release that the New Way Sovereignty Summit in Canberra will challenge Australia’s application for a seat on the United Nations Security Council. “Australia does not have the right to be nominated, let alone have a seat there. How can a colonial state of England ...
April 12, 2011
“I’m not sure it’s the law that would do it , it’s more the climate that does it. I’ve been critical, openly critical of aspects of government policy and that’s had some consequences for me, I’m self employed and I’m at a stage of my career where I can withstand the consequences of saying unpopular things, but if I were employed somewhere, if I were at the stage ...
April 11, 2011
Clearly, with the expansion of the AFP under Mick Keelty and with the blessing of the Howard government, the AFP has morphed into something unrecognisable. It’s forgotten its core business and turned into a rogue arm of government at the government’s disposal to help effect political goals. (Susan Merrell Journalist) In the wake of the September 11 and Bali bombings, Australia began to taken a more interventionist approach in dealing ...
April 10, 2011
At the request of one of the people mentioned in this post it has been taken down. We will review this situation and keep you informed of any progress as it becomes available. The video associated with this post was removed by Vimeo on 13 April 2011, after contact from lawyers “… for Fortescue Metals Group and its CEO …” but may still be accessed at this address. Read the press ...
April 7, 2011
A WOMAN charged by counter-terrorist police with plotting a bomb attack was allegedly directed by her boyfriend – a jail inmate serving 22 years for the execution-styled killing of a drug rival. Jill Courtney was arrested and charged with conspiracy to murder, following a series of joint federal and state police raids in Sydney’s south-west on Friday. Appearing in Parramatta Local Court yesterday, the 26-year-old Casula woman did not apply ...
April 6, 2011
A cause doesn’t drive itself. It requires dedication, research and interrogation of facts to sift out the fiction, to find buried lies. That’s what I do. I search and question and sift until pieces start to fit together and in that process, I have realised that my cause is part of something much bigger and much more complex. The issues at the seat of my cause have turned out to ...
April 4, 2011
The Australian Federal Police (AFP), established in 1979, enforces Commonwealth criminal law and protects Australia’s interests at a national and international level. The AFP also contracts out a general policing service to the Australian Capital Territory Government, where it has recently been accused of torture and other human rights violations. The idea expressed by Sir Robert Peel, the father of modern policing in 1829, that police are not merely tools ...
April 2, 2011
Australia is a signatory to two important international anti-corruption conventions: the United Nations Convention against Corruption (entered into force 14 December 2005) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials (entered into force 15 February 1999). In 1999, the Commonwealth Parliament passed the Criminal Code Amendment (Bribery of Foreign Public Officials) Act to implement Australia’s obligation under the OECD Convention. The ...
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