Comment
North Coast news daily:
netdaily.net.au
Will the original settlers accept us?
Volume 30 #29
December 30, 2015
Media fixations I am happy to report that Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber failed to make the list of the top ten mentioned issues in the Australian media for 2015. That is very reassuring given the potential of social media fixations to drive the news these days. Not even cats falling off kitchen counters got a rating. According to the ‘media intelligence’ group iSentia (isentia. com), Syria and Iraq topped the list, and terrorism would have been included in that ranking, with radio at 203,709 mentions being the most obsessed medium with that issue. Climate change came fifth on the list, with domestic violence next. It says a good deal about the Australian psyche that the Cricket World Cup was above them in fourth place. Interestingly, the press mentioned climate change the most, while radio, television and the internet went for Syria and Iraq. How obsessed with the so-called Middle East we are when Indonesia is burning forests and oppressing Papuans in our neighbourhood and the Chinese tiger is waking from its slumber. Social media is a battle for marketing prominence, its influence spilling over into the other media. It may not be possible to find out what is really ‘trending’ online as the content providers shape your exposure to trends to suit their marketing needs. It boils back down to us as trend-seeking individuals asserting what we think is important for the health of the planet – which may not include the current economic fixations, see page 12 – with a few kittens and unicycling pandas thrown in for light relief. Otherwise, to paraphrase Neil Postman, we will have amused ourselves to death as a species. Michael McDonald
The Byron Shire Echo Established 1986 General Manager Simon Haslam Editor Hans Lovejoy Photographer Jeff Dawson Advertising Manager Angela Cornell Production Manager Ziggi Browning
Nicholas Shand 1948–1996 Founding Editor
‘The job of a newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.’ – Finley Peter Dunne 1867–1936 © 2015 Echo Publications Pty Ltd – ABN 86 004 000 239 Mullumbimby: Village Way, Stuart St. Ph 02 6684 1777 Fax 02 6684 1719 Printer: Fairfax Media Brisbane Reg. by Aust. Post Pub. No. NBF9237
Seasons Greetings We would like to take this opportunity to wish all our patients a joyous Christmas and a New Year filled with peace and happiness. We are grateful and honoured for your support and look forward to caring for you and your loved ones dental needs in the year to come.
Call 02 6685 1264 6/18 Mullumbimbi St, Brunswick Heads
w w w.brunswickdental.net 10 December 30, 2015 The Byron Shire Echo
M
alcolm Turnbull was working this Christmas, at the Wayside Chapel lunch among other places, which was both personally worthy and newsworthy. But we hope he also had a few moments of his own, with the truffles Bill Shorten predicted, because however merry his Christmas may have been, his advent was pretty underwhelming. The big moments of December just did not capture the imagination as they were meant to. His much-heralded Innovation Statement was big on sizzle but a bit short of a sausage or two, and was also crippled by not-so-friendly fire from Mal Brough and Ian Macfarlane. The Paris climate summit also a had a pie-in-the-sky feel about it: the activists thought it was an agreement but not a solution, while the sceptics derided it as a waste of time and money, if not a plot to cement the United Nations as a one-world government. COAG came and went without either an agreement or a solution; Scott Morrison said he’d come back in March. And then he unveiled MYEFO, a litany of gloom and doom he was unable to dispel; there was a fair bit of spin, but not even the faintest sound of jingle bells. So our great leader, the man who has been anointed to redeem us from the toils of Tony Abbott, will have to come up with a few agile resolutions for the new year. And he could do worse than revisit an idea of his predecessor – no, not the ones the Murdoch press keeps flogging, but one of the few progressive programs of the
last couple of years: Aboriginal reconciliation. Of course Abbott did not initiate the idea: it has been around, on and off, since the last couple of centuries, and it has always been difficult, divisive and controversial. Many Indigenous Australians reject the mere concept: what do you mean re-conciliation? There was never any conciliation to begin with. But Abbott, to his credit, was determined to try and get back on track; his selfstyled title of the Prime Minister for Aboriginals did not
green. If something was to be done, it would have to be something serious; at the very least, the references of race in the body of the document would have to be abolished or amended. This was simply unacceptable to the conservatives – the real conservatives, who were interested in preserving the status quo at all costs. Real change, they insisted, would be too risky – it would produce a lawyers’ picnic, by which they meant they would fight to the death (and of course in the
For the hardliners a treaty under any name implied a form of Aboriginal sovereignty. by Mungo MacCallum deliver much in the way of tangible reform, but it could not be denied that he had a genuine sympathy with the people concerned, and developed real friendships with some of the most passionate people within the movement. His starting point was to go back to his mentor, John Howard, who wanted to revise the preamble to the Australian Constitution, a task in which, as so often, he failed dismally. Abbott wanted at least an acknowledgment of the previous occupation of those who had been around for some 60,000 years. But it quickly became apparent that not was not going to be sufficient. What was the point of changing the Constitution to admit the bleeding obvious? You might as well run a referendum to assert that the sky was blue and the grass was
Dear Man, You are the active pole on earth and needed like the sun – shining with honest care, in love, on to a woman. She is like the earth – she receives, she gives, she knows. We are this beautiful life. In this self-made world man learned to show off, it is easy for you but are you brave enough to stand up for love? Be true – be simple and give your honest love and care and make sweetly and rightly love to her. It is a woman’s delight and need to grow with you and glow in love. It is your most fulfilling task. For this to be, you will have to give up selfish, restless sex. Be still, drop your demand, enjoy moment to moment life. Love life. Do you excite yourself with sex-thought? It overstimulates you. It makes you dishonest in love, so you just take, but you should ask and learn to give right love. We are influenced as a child... take a drug, get used to sex, be sexy, show off, be greedy, give your attention to the newest invention, get excited... nothing will be good enough for long and such greediness supports the sex business. Worldwide he manipulates young women to play sexy for him, to be his sex object and if she makes sex with such a selfish demanding ungiving man it makes her like him. Infected and made discontent, both feel dependent on stimulation, for in truth they have not made love and so they say ‘let’s have some fun with a drug...’ Hey man, give up, you can’t just take what you want, you can’t just take love! You have to give to a woman. Life’s love is her gift to you, if you have earned it. A woman today can be honest to man. If he is not honest, do not give to him, wait until he demonstrates true love. If you are honest, moment to moment and give to what is good and right, you simply feel well from the inside. With such a woman of love, you will listen to her carefully. Love is easily broken, it has to be made fresh, new, no other body belongs to you. Each of us has to stand up for love. Life felt inside is reflected in beautiful earth, universe – I belong to you. From a Woman.
courts) to prevent the outcome the activists wanted. And so, yet again, the outcome was sent to a committee, in the expectation that whatever was put the to the referendum would be so inoffensive that no rational opposition would emerge. The ambition for real reform was not always so timorous. The 1967 referendum, whose 50th anniversary Abbott hoped to emulate with his own agenda, was an overwhelming success. And soon afterwards, the movement for a formal treaty, along the lines of the New Zealand Treaty of Waitangi, began to gain ground. One of the main players was the great public servant H C (Nugget) Coombs; his idea was for a Makarrata, a settlement to give legislative force to the rights of Indigenous Australians. It grew and then subsided over the years,
the most recent manifestation in the anthemic song from Manduwuy Yunupingu in the Yothu Yindi band. But for the hardliners, a treaty under any name implied a form of Aboriginal sovereignty, which they regarded as out of the question. And there was a more practical problem: the sheer diversity of the Indigenous nations. It has been estimated that in 1788 there were 273 separate languages spoken in Australia and there are still a great many different tribes and cultures extant. To bring them together as a united voice makes the formation of the European Community a doddle in comparison. And this has also bedevilled progress towards the current negotiations. Black politics are at least as passionately debated as white politics, and even harder to assemble into anything like a coherent whole. So anything other than a pointlessly anodyne consensus looks as improbable as ever. Perhaps it is time to think laterally: Ted Egan, the former Northern Territory Administrator, bush balladist and tireless advocate for the Indigenous cause, suggests that we should scrap the whole idea of acknowledging Aboriginal Australia and instead accept an acknowledgement from them to us, the new settlers. The original inhabitants could offer a gracious welcome to the immigrants, who would be invited to accept it with similar grace. It is a wonderful, daring idea, but perhaps a little too innovative even for our agile prime minister. But if Malcolm Turnbull is yearning for excitement, I am happy to give him Ted Egan’s email.
Are you a responsible, peaceful, joyful, simple and supportive man who is willing to serve in the restoration of love on earth? I have seen the Light so very bright. Honesty and Love make us grow and glow in consciousness.
Byron Shire Echo archives: www.echo.net.au/byron-echo