Monday 4th November 1996
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Surely not another Christopher Skase scenario in the making?
Tough Love... Perhaps the most defining news that I have seen in the last week is the issue of "Tough Love" and its positive effects on the community in Alberta. The issue was raised on Channel 9's Sixty Minutes program last night. Even the social workers agreed that "tough love" - a policy introduced by the government in Alberta which has turned the state's deficit on its head - is doing good for the poor.
In summary "tough love" is a policy based on "if you are able to work and you don't - you don't eat..." It sounds tough and I am sure that the social workers in the Australian community will feel very threatened by its success in Alberta.... in fact so successful that a number of other Canadian and American states are looking at adopting it.
To quote an American Indian interviewed on the program, "Tough love is the best thing that has ever happened to the Aboriginals in Alberta because they have stopped drinking and become a valuable part of the community and they know it."
Here is an extract from the above link to tough love....
Why do government welfare programs keep failing? Much of the problem can be summed up in one word: dependency. Government programs reinforce social pathologies they are trying to cure: they pay people for being out of work-and encourage unemployment; they pay people to have children they can't support-and encourage larger welfare families.
Even politicians agree that this one-sided giving is unhealthy. In their rhetoric, they condemn policies of "handout," and extol the virtues of the "helping hand." Yet in practice, program after program turns into another dependency-causing subsidy.
The idea that Hanson or any other ignorant right-winger represents a
majority view was demonstrated as a falsehood in the results of the
Lindsey byelection, in which AAFA scored a pathetically small vote.
Patriotic Australians like me find your sort of racism disgusting. We
fought two world wars to help our nation stay free of dangerous
right-wingers like you. Go bacx to where you came from - we don't want
you.
Apparently the League is spending its own money on printing and distributing hundreds of thousands of copies of Ms Hanson's maiden speech. Eric Butler, the League of Rights head said, "My own view is that her (Pauline Hanson's) maiden speech was a defining moment of Australian history."
This at a time when, according to Human Rights Commissioner Chris Sidoti, Australians were turning their backs against Ms Hanson.
The tourism lobby is also now actively speaking out against Ms Hanson - reflecting the concern that the mainstream media reports on her are having in Asian countries.
The point to recognise about this is that whilst it may be the first time it's ever happened to your daughter, or indeed any one in your family, it is a regular occurrence, possible even daily or weekly if you happen to be aboriginal. This is not to excuse it, but it should serve to remind us what it's like to be on the receiving end and to redouble our efforts to bring together the peoples of this nation in peace and unity.
Time for a quote (from Paul Keating's Redfern Park speech of 10-12-92 at the Australian launch of the International Year for the World's Inigenous People):
"And, as I say, the starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-aboriginal Australians.
"It begins, I think with that act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol.
"We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us.
"With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask, how would we feel of this were being done to me?"
I'm sure you personally, like me, were'nt the one doing the murdering or taking the children from their mothers, however I'm sure you, like me have practised prejudice and exclusion, however unknowingly, and its now time for us to examine ourselves and put ourselves in the shoes of our aboriginal brothers and sisters and see what it is like. You've now seen that through you daughter's eyes.
Please, please learn from your daughter's experience. Don't excuse the behaviour, just remember that if you had been on the receiving end for 200 years, or at least all your life, you'd probably be inclined to act in the same disgraceful way.
It's time to get on with the reconciliation process. It's time for all of us to say "What can I do to help?" and then get on and do it.
Yours most sincerely
Paul Browning,
A simple search on TOUGH LOVE in Alta Vista or Web Crawler will give you heaps of independent research material.
Please do this and then respond "with the benefit of this background information" to our survey...
Do you think that TOUGH LOVE would resolve many of the growing social problems facing Australia?
Please email any views or related information on the above.
If the rate cut takes place investors are expected to flow into the housing market with real estate prices expected to rise quite dramatically after a very long sluggish period in which little or no growth has been shown.
In Queensland rental rates are expected to rise as more Queenslanders choose not to buy their own home. Queensland has the highest rental rate in Australia with 21.5% of homes in the state being rented.
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