"Desperately he watched the walls begin to lean, the floor to tilt. Grabbing a stanchion, he hung on almost calmly as the cabin moved from vertical to horizontal, then into a complete roll. Dust, mud, water, bits of wood, and a few pounds of miscellaneous components showered down on him as he stood, shakily, in the centre of the cabin trying to find enough energy to scream."
Martin Logan.
They're all dogs, she said, as I approached the small huddle outside the train station. You don't have to tell me that, came the reply. I know. She gestured down the block. The streaky boy pushing the pram, nineteen and pale sick with scars up his arms, remained silent. Oh they're dogs mate; they'd do anything. I approached, pushed through, they barely parted for a pedestrian. The sky was closing in but the rain hadn't come, not yet.
Notes for a radio spot:
This story has had widespread coverage in Australia not just because of the horrific details of the case but the political backdrop. The decline in outback communities, with children sniffing petrol, not attending school and being regularly abused or neglected, is widely being seen as a failure of government policy, particularly left wing government policy. Billions and billions of dollars have been poured into the desert sands and the situation for many aboriginal people has simply got worse.
What is most shocking about this case is that it is not an isolated incident. The dysfunction and sexual abuse in remote communities has now sparked direct government takeover of dozens of isolated communities in the north of the country. It brings into stark relief the issues of child protection and the damaging impacts of passive welfare. The abuse and rape of so many of these kids is being painted as the abject failure of political correctness which has protected and concealed these disasters. Child protection officers are being accused of keeping cases from police.
The girl in question was born with foetal alcohol syndrome, making her somewhat intellectually disabled, at Cape York in the far north of the country. She was first abused at the age of five and placed in foster care, but then returned by child preotection authorities to the community, where raped by five boys at the age of seven. She was again removed.
After a number of failed placements she eventually settled and found some happiness with a white foster family.
Defying belief, officers from the Department of Child Safety child forced the child's removal back to the community where she had been raped. The girl's mother pleaded with them that the girl was not safe at Araukun.
At age ten she was raped by six youths three men in their early. She was raped on six other occasions.
The prosecutor of the case Steve Carter, tried to paint the rapes as childish sexual experimentation and described the boys and men involved as "naughty". The girl was reportedly offering sex in return for alcohol and cigarettes. Not surprisingly, the prosecutor has been stood down.
Cairns District Court judge Sarah Bradley, a graduate of the 1970s and something of a golden girl of left wing women lawyers and a public advocate for differential treatment of aboriginal offenders, allowed all nine attackers to walk free because the girl "probably agreed to have sex with all of you." She released six younger males with no conviction and gave three older males suspended sentences.
There's reports in parts of Australia of homes where children have taken the knobs off their bedroom doors to protect themselves. Most of the doors have been kicked in. Those children are not being protected.
Ever since the delivery of a nation transforming report Bringing Them Home, documented in graphic and moving detail the so-called stolen generation, the children who were removed for decades in the earlier parts of last century from indigenous families by charities and the authorities for decades; it has been very very difficult for child protection authorities to remove children from their families. The fear of creating another stolen generation has meant indigenous children are often left in circumstances which would not be tolerated in most Australian suburbs.
Politicians have been accused of instructing welfare workers not to report suspected child abuse cases to police. Police say cases of children showing up at clinics with gonorear or other sexually transmitted diseases are not passed on to them.
The complete collapse of these isolated communities has been going on for years, but has often been hidden from view by a thing called the permit system. I don't think a lot of people realise that there are vast tracts of Australia that with landrights have been handed back, and for outsiders to get in requires special permits and permission and can be quite difficult. What began with such noble intent, the gifting of land and effectively pride, in the end isolated these remote communities from all the benefits of the modern world.
I believe the complete moral and civic, spiritual and physical collapse of these communities, with chaotic scenes of alcohol abuse and child neglect, will be studied by amthropologists with great fascination for decades.
The former Federal Government began what is being called The Intervention in the Northern Territory, with the use of teams including the Federal Police, following a report Breaking The Silence which documented the complete social collapse of these communities. Alcohol and pornography have now been banned or strictly proscribed.
Our new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd met with aboriginal leaders on the weekend has suported the Intervention but said he will be reviewing it closely. The absue of indegenous chidlren is expected to be high on the agenda at a meeting of the Prime Minister and the country's premiers this week.
THE BIGGER STORY:
SMH:
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says he doesn't think his campaign will be hurt by the effort last week by an adviser for rival Hillary Clinton to bring attention to his admitted teenage drug use.
He suggested at the weekend that the Clinton campaign's increasingly negative tenor was a measure of a tightening race.
"I do think that the average American believes that what somebody does when they were a teenager 30 years ago is probably not relevant to how they're going to be performing as commander in chief of the United States," Obama said.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3056283.ece
The new face of America
Once written off, Barack Obama is suddenly surging in the polls and could become the first African-American president . The reason is because he is the only man who can halt the racial, religious and cultural civil war that is tearing America apart.
Andrew Sullivan
Last week was a horrible one for Hillary Clinton. Her husband had thrown a wrench into her campaign to become president of the United States by declaring that he’d been against the Iraq war from the beginning - a transparent fib that reminded many Democrats of the pathological lying of the 1990s.
Two Clinton campaign staffers were then caught sending out e-mails warning that Barack Obama, her main rival for the Democrat ticket, was a closet Muslim. And one of her campaign co-chairmen raised the issue of Obama’s past drug use - something Obama had dealt with candidly years ago. Clinton was forced to apologise and her aide resigned. Grassroots Democrats were appalled at the descent into nastiness. It suggested desperation in the Clinton camp.
But everything came to a head in last Thursday’s Iowa debate between the Democratic candidates. Obama was asked by the moderator how he could claim to represent change on foreign policy when he had so many former Clinton administration officials advising him. Hillary burst into desperate laughter. “I’d love to hear him answer that,” she cackled. Obama paused, then fired: “Well, Hillary, I’m looking forward to having you advise me as well.” The audience erupted. In one moment, the Alpha Female ceded authority to the Alpha Male.
The Washington media are taken aback by Obama’s surge in the polls. They dismissed him months ago, buying into the notion that a Clinton presidency was inevitable. But they can’t ignore the facts in the key states: in Iowa, Obama is slightly ahead and has the organisational edge. In New Hampshire, Clinton’s double-digit lead has suddenly evaporated. In South Carolina, black voters have begun to switch en masse to Obama. It’s still far from over - and no one should discount Hillary Clinton - but the momentum is suddenly his.
