katie_tully said:
I realise there is more to what you were saying than this, but that was the gist of it.
It would be really really nice if equality existed between the various parts of Australian society - absolutely you beaut. However, at this point in time, abolishing the various payments and other help given to disadvantaged minorities in our society will do nothing but entrench the differences between the minorities and the majority as they stand now. Sure, it might be absolutely unquestionably equal in financial terms - but is that all we stand for? Is the dollar the bottom question here?
The answer is no, unless we are all heartless bitches and bastards, which i doubt, even though some of the stuff i read seems to suggest otherwise.
There is a component of fairness. Yes, fairness. Fairness is different from equality in that it looks beyond the here and now, and the fact of the whole matter is that there are major inequalities in our society that are VERY unfair as they stand now.
In the case of our indigenous people: most of them enjoy nowhere near the services, or more importantly, the opportunities, that most of us here bitching about it enjoy.
Katie, your beloved equality and national unity cannot exist when there are parts of the country with third world living standards: life expectancy, substance abuse, poor educational standards, poor health, infant mortality, unemployment, domestic violence - all at far worse rates than in the non-indigenous community. I challenge you to tell me that all these problems are
A) the fault of the laziness/genetic inferiority/etc of our indigenous population and/or
B) that these problems would magically improve by ignoring them and cutting the iniatives that are being taken, and as such by treating the indigenous and rural populations exactly the same as everyone else would solve their problems, the scale and combination of which is unique to this minority and needs to be addressed as such.
And you can't tell me that - it would defy logic.
Ms Hanson's proposals back in 1996 were similarly shortsighted in that they failed to acknowledge the role the government has in helping less advantaged members of our community.
Lazy man's summary of what I just said:
Equality does not necessarily mean fairness.
Our indigenous communities have problems that can't be ignored.