Hurt feelings

From the judgement of Justice Bromberg in the Eatock v Bolt case:

At the core of multiculturalism is the idea that people may identify with and express their racial or ethnic heritage free from pressure not to do so.

It is great for people to identify with their racial or ethnic heritage as long as that racial heritage doesn't admit them to a neverending stream of publicly funded benefits.

The way to stop this is to cease racially based welfare. Those who need assistance should receive it. Someone living in the city with the benefits and the opportunities available to every Australian should not be entitled to any extra benefit or opportunity based on their self identified race.

I wonder if Justice Bromberg's finding quoted above considers some of the cultural activities of some groups which are incompatible with, and unacceptable in, our communities?

A village for every idiot!

TIMOTHY MCDONALD: Several international indexes consistently rank Australia's major cities as some of the world's most liveable.

But there's no shortage of Australian city dwellers who will complain about the expensive housing, traffic jams and slow public transport.

Professor John Stanley says don't expect additional government investment to come to the rescue.

And big cities bring economic growth, and crime...

TIMOTHY MCDONALD: The report also calls for a whole new way of thinking about cities with a focus on small and manageable.

The director of programs at the ADC Forum Anton Roux says there are economic gains from having a large dense city but there are problems too.

With size comes economic growth but also crime. And once a city gets too large the additional negative consequences start to outweigh the benefits.

He says Australia needs to think very differently about its urban centres.

How big are Australian cities? You can't decentralise if there is no work at the decentralised locations.

You could have this utopia...

ANTON ROUX: Just imagine a network of city nodes, each a few hundred thousand people connected to advanced communications technology and transport access, where people don't need to travel too far from home to find meaningful work, where the society is economically productive and competitive, socially and ecologically resilient, surrounded by lush forests perhaps geo-engineered in large scale reforestation programs to bring increased rainfall and subsisting on vertical agriculture where food produce is grown in multi-storey glass houses.

And while people would live in closer proximity the quality and quantity of their public spaces, parks and gardens would be much greater too.

The Minister for Infrastructure Anthony Albanese launched the report this morning in Sydney. He says the Government will look at many of the ideas in the report but there are others he's not so sure about.

These villages mentioned above seem to be urban villages, so really, there will be the same problems as the city. Besides, if you look at places in Australia like Macquarie Fields and other suburbs out near Campbelltown, particularly the experimental Housing Commission (Government housing), single parent villages (check out Proctor Way, Claymore), which were built with their backs to the street and their front to parkland (a handy escape route for burglars), and filled with single parents*, some lax on discipline, some into drugs, poor**, and/or generally undesirable, what hope was there?

I would imagine that all these years later the single parent family suburbs have changed (I would hope they have!). They were traps for people who found it difficult to get transport to jobs and to find work nearby - they were really out in the middle of nowhere! However, these days the suburbs surround Campbelltown and the Hume Highway has estates all along it.

With the NBN everyone will be able to telecommute, and use their computers to work at home.... well, of course. How many employers will allow that? Not a lot I'd imagine. And the bloke who works in the factory, or the receptionist, they can't work at home.

*I'm not rubbishing single parents, I think many people were trapped in these estates with nowhere else to go and they couldn't better their situations because of their location, lack of infrastructure, etc.

**I'm not saying poor people, or Housing Commission people, are undesirable, but it is undesirable to put them all together in cheap estates miles from work and other opportunities because they may end up trapped in that welfare merry-go-round.

Black Armband retaliation

From Janet Albrechtsen in today's Australian:

Windschuttle undertakes the long overdue task of returning to primary source material. He destroys the central thesis of genocide with reams of cold hard facts. For example, he reveals that the “small numbers of Aboriginal child removals in the 20th century were almost all based on traditional grounds of child welfare”.

In other words, most indigenous children placed in state Aboriginal settlements were orphaned, abandoned, destitute, neglected, subjected to violence, sexual exploitation and sexual abuse or went there with their parents.

More here.

What if that was my relative?

Thismorning there was talk on the radio about looking after elderly people and people who live alone who are not in contact with family and friends.

Now someone's created Neighbour Day.

She talked about the woman who was found dead in her house after two years.... noone noticed for two years. "What if that was your aunt or parent?" HULLO? My Aunt or parent wouldn't be at home on their own for that long at all. (This is the letter to The Age which started it all.)

Some people just keep to themselves. I do get a bit annoyed when it seems to be some kind of reflection on society when people are found in these circumstances. Like I said, some people just keep to themselves.

I have neighbours I'd really rather not have as neighbours!

Sure, throw more money...

THERE ARE no doors, no furniture and bare, dirt-caked walls. The toilet is
broken. Stinking mattresses are strewn in three small, sweltering bedrooms where
at least eight people sleep every night.

Look at the photo, I'm sure they didn't start off this way.

From Andrew Bolt's.