Archive for the ‘Aboriginal’ Category
Friday, December 26th, 2008
Gavin Lower; 26/12/08
A judge has turned up the heat on South Australia to cover the legal costs set to be incurred by the family of the first Stolen Generations member to receive court compensation. South Australian Supreme Court judge Richard White, in dismissing an application by the widow of the late Bruce Trevorrow to halt the state’s appeal against her husband’s historic compensation victory, said he sympathised with the family’s fears that legal costs would consume the $775,000 awarded in damages and interest. “One can readily understand the reluctance of the present respondent to commit the estate’s resources to the defence of the appeal if the effect will be to diminish substantially the estate’s assets,” Justice White said. He said the appeal court’s job would be much harder if it did not hear submissions from the state and those acting on Trevorrow’s behalf.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Reconciliation
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Thursday, December 25th, 2008
25/12/08
A large amount of alcohol destined for a dry Aboriginal community in north Queensland has been seized by police. Officers pulled over four vehicles early yesterday morning and seized 63 cartons of beer, 70 bottles of spirits, five cartons of pre-mixed drinks and two bottles of wine. The seizure took place on the main access road into the remote Aboriginal community of Pormpuraaw, on the western side of Cape York around 2am. The seizure was made possible thanks to information received from the public, police said. A vehicle has also been seized as a result of the interception.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Drugs
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Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
Justine Ferrari; 24/12/08
The higher than expected levels of illiteracy among Aboriginal children represents more a failure of the education system to teach than of the students to learn, a leading indigenous educator said yesterday. Indigenous Education Leadership Institute director Chris Sarra yesterday welcomed the collection of “tangible” data through the first national literacy and numeracy tests, but he said that what mattered was how thenation responded to the problem. “We cannot walk away from Aboriginal children here,” Dr Sarra said. “From one angle, it can be said that Aboriginal children have failed dramatically, while, from another, it can be said that systemically we have failed Aboriginal children dramatically.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Education
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Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
23/12/08; http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/letters/index.php/ theaustralian/comments/arrogant_and_intolerable
My heartfelt thanks for your editorial (”Doomadgee affair demands an inquiry”, 20-21/12). The behaviour of the police has been arrogant and intolerable, and further encouraged by the government’s seemingly provocative timing in awarding bravery medals to police involved in the riots that followed Doomadgee’s death. Not content with Senior Sergeant Hurley’s surprising acquittal on manslaughter charges despite overwhelming circumstantial evidence, the police are now crowing with delight at the overturning of the original coroner’s findings into the death. Oh really. So are we to believe that the victim inflicted the horrifying injuries on himself?
This whole disgraceful episode has undoubtedly moved public perception of our police force from that of protector to that of ruthless tyrant. Nor is it only Queensland that has a problem: many people have been shocked to the core at the shooting by no fewer than three police officers of a truculent teenager in Melbourne. In Greece, similar police behaviour has led to weeks of rioting; and in Iraq, a journalist protested the behaviour of protectors-turned-tyrants by hurling his shoes at the US commander-in-chief. So I hereby metaphorically hurl my heaviest hiking boots, the nearest thing I have to jackboots, at the heads of our tainted police force and the Queensland Premier who allow behaviour and attitudes in this country that we believe exist only in countries such as Burma. H. Neill; Gold Coast, Qld
Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Death in Custody
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Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
Justine Ferrari; 23/12/08; (2 Items)
The rate of illiteracy among Aboriginal children has been underestimated, with the first uniform national literacy tests showing the proportion of indigenous eight-year-olds unable to read is significantly higher than previously thought. A detailed report of the National Assessment Program in Literacy and Numeracy, released by education ministers, shows about one in three indigenous students in Year 3 failed to meet a minimum standard in reading. But the 2007 report says one infive indigenous students in Year 3 failed to meet the reading benchmark. For the first time, students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 in every state and territory sat the same literacy and numeracy tests in May.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Education
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Monday, December 22nd, 2008
Sean Parnell; 22/12/08
Another independent legal figure may be called in to examine the Palm Island death in custody of Mulrunji Doomadgee, after a judge’s decision last week to order a fresh coronial inquest. But the Queensland Government is unlikely to order a royal commission into the circumstances surrounding the 2004 death, which sparked riots on the island off the coast of Townsville, given two other related inquiries are nearing completion. District Court judge Robert Park last week struck out Deputy State Coroner Christine Clements’s 2006 finding that Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley caused Domadgee’s death by punching him. Ms Clements’s findings, and then director of public prosecutions Leanne Clare’s decision not to lay charges, led the Government to appoint Laurence Street to review the case. That review led to Sergeant Hurley being charged with manslaughter and assault. He was ultimately acquitted.
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Tags: Aboriginal; Death in Custody, Australia
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Monday, December 22nd, 2008
22/12/08; (2 Items)
Having read Natasha Robinson’s Inside Story (”Hopeless days of man lost in system”, 20-21/08) I feel ineffably sad that at Christmas time in the year 2008 we still have such a barbaric situation in a so-called advanced country such as Australia. The picture painted of Adrian Faulton’s plight and the statistics listed in the article on rates of indigenous imprisonment are an indictment of the priorities of both the federal and Norther Territory governments.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, health
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Monday, December 22nd, 2008
Natasha Robinson; 22/12/08
It is the gateway to one of Australia’s most famous tourist icons, Uluru, a red-centre oasis that is marketed as a cosmopolitan, urban slice of the outback. But Alice Springs is in meltdown … Quarterly crime statistics published late last week by the Northern Territory’s Justice Department show that across the Territory, assault is by far the most reported crime, making up 89 per cent of reportable offences against the person. Police blame alcohol. People in the Territory consume, by an enormous margin, more alcohol per capita than in any state. The population stands at about 220,000, yet 47.2 million litres of liquor were bought in 2006-07. And despite the dry community measures undertaken by the federal intervention into remote Aboriginal communities, and some successes by Alice Springs’ anti-alcohol campaigners in bringing their town’s statistics down, the problem is getting worse by the year - alcohol consumption across the Territory has been steadily rising since 2000. …
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Tags: Australia, Drugs, Violence
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Saturday, December 20th, 2008
Natasha Robinson; 20/12/08
As uniformed guards pound the grey concrete walkways of the Northern Territory’s largest prison, a man calls out from the jail’s isolation block. His name is Adrian Faulton. He is a severely intellectually disabled young Aboriginal man from Wadeye with the mental age of a toddler. For months the 25-year-old has been locked in a small concrete cell in A block, the most austere unit of Darwin’s overflowing Berrimah Prison. Mr Faulton is in the care of the Northern Territory’s public guardian. Since the age of 15, he has committed crimes ranging from stealing to drinking in public, escalating as he got older to low-range sexual assault and indecent exposure. During a mostly petty criminal career, the young man slipped through the gaps of the Northern Territory’s under-resourced mental health services.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Human Rights
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Saturday, December 20th, 2008
Lindsay Murdoch; 20/12/08
Health checks in remote communities under the federal indigenous intervention found that 31 per cent of children had at least one type of skin infection, including open sores and scabies. A total of 12,263 checks of children aged 15 or less were made under the intervention and the Medicare Benefits Scheme between July last year and October 17, according to statistics released yesterday by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Children living in communities targeted under the intervention were suffering from 25 health conditions, statistics show. Forty-three per cent of children had at least one oral condition, 38 per cent had a history of recurrent chest infection, 30 per cent had ear disease, 15 per cent anaemia and 16 per cent were due for immunisations.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Children, health
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