ANDREW BOLT: I’M INDIGENOUS TO AUSTRALIA
Andrew Bolt
Melbourne Herald Sun
September 19, 2007 12:00am
Australia
LIKE most of you, I’m indigenous. I was born here and have nowhere
else to go, Andrew Bolt writes.
This is my home, and where my heart is. If I’m not indigenous to
Australia, I’m indigenous to nowhere.
So you might think I’d cheer at Labor’s promise last week to ratify
– should it win government – the United Nations’ new Declaration on
the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Except, of course, we know Labor is infected with the New Racism,
and still plays off one tribe against another.
In the case of we indigenous Australians, Labor now wants to ratify
a bizarre document that doesn’t just stop at saying some indigenous
people are more indigenous than others.
It also says the most indigenous of us – people born here, like me, but
with some Aboriginal ancestry – can be excused the laws and obligations
that apply to the rest of us. And get extra rights all of their own.
Here’s proof that Kevin Rudd’s new Labor isn’t so new, after all,
exploiting the ethnic differences which divide us rather than
celebrating what unites.
Incidentally, for more proof, see star Labor candidate Maxine McKew,
now fighting Prime Minister John Howard for his seat of Bennelong.
She’s just promised to recognise the "Armenian genocide", hoping to
thrill Bennelong’s 4000 ethnic Armenians.
The nation’s many Turks, however, will be enraged, rightly arguing
that the death of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the wars,
famines and inter-ethnic slaughter of the Ottoman Empire’s last years
was a tragedy, but no state-ordered genocide.
McKew’s promise can bring only strife, but harvesting votes by
preaching old divisions rather than a new unity is an old Labor ploy.
And so we see again with this UN Declaration on indigenous rights.
The wretched thing is actually the work of the UN’s discredited Human
Rights Council, which includes representatives from such beacons of
humans rights as Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba, Egypt, Pakistan and Russia.
Already you’ll have figured this is a document full of empty sentiments
that even its authors don’t believe or most certainly will never
implement.
That helps to explain why the four countries that refused to ratify
it last week are ones that take their word more seriously: Australia,
Canada, the United States and New Zealand, each of which objects that
this declaration puts ethnic laws above national ones.
But Labor’s spokesman for indigenous affairs, Jenny Macklin, can’t
wait to sign, promising "a federal Labor Government would endorse
Australia becoming a signatory".
So what is in this UN declaration, that Macklin later stressed was
"non-binding", that Labor wants to sign us up to? Read closely, because
it’s actually a blueprint for an Aboriginal nation within Australia,
with rights to its own schools, own government, own treaties and own
laws, even if as barbaric as payback:
"Indigenous peoples and individuals have the right to belong to an
indigenous community or nation . . .
"(States must give) due recognition to indigenous peoples’ laws . . .
"Indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their
education systems . . .
"States shall consult and co-operate in good faith with the indigenous
peoples concerned through their own representative institutions . . .
"Indigenous peoples . . . have the right to maintain and develop
contacts, relations and co-operation, including activities for
spiritual, cultural, political, economic and social purposes with
. . . other peoples across borders . . .
"Indigenous peoples have the right to determine the responsibilities
of individuals to their communities."
That last one is oppressive. It says tribal strongmen can tell
Aborigines who want to join the mainstream to stick with the tribe
instead.
Macklin is now insisting she won’t let tribal law overrule the general
law. But why sign a protocol that implies the very opposite? That
supports an Aboriginal nation within Australia? That supports separate
rights and separate development for Aborigines, instead of urging
them to seek a future with the rest of us?
What divisive and racist foolishness. Already we can assume Labor in
office will kill the federal intervention in the Northern Territory
launched by this Government to save Aboriginal communities now drowning
in booze, violence, truancy and unemployment.
It isn’t right, a Macklin will say after the election, that "we"
trample on Aborigines’ rights to their own ways.
And once again the weak will pay for this Noble Savage myth that
Labor still worships: this insistence that Aborigines be a race apart.
They’ll be like the boy of this news story last week: "A magistrate
seeking to preserve an Aboriginal toddler’s cultural identity ignored
warnings from child protection workers and put him into the care of
his violent uncle, who four weeks later tortured and bashed the boy
almost to death . . ."
Preserve the tribe! Never mind the individual. And pit one race against
another. Pit one group of indigenous people against the rest who were
born here, and want brothers, not rivals.