You thought Teh Voice was defeated? It’s here in many forms. Courier Mail:

A North Stradbroke Island Indigenous elder and ranger who a court found guilty of illegally clearing land at Point Lookout to build a house has lodged an appeal, claiming it was a traditional cultural activity under his native title rights.

In a prosecution brought by Redland City Council, Quandamooka man Darren Burns was fined $20,000 in Brisbane Magistrates Court earlier this year for carrying out a prohibited development on the island.

But he has now lodged a District Court appeal, arguing he was entitled to knock down a swath of trees under his native title rights and was exempt from planning laws.

Mr Burns, a Quandamooka ranger on Straddie which is also known by its Indigenous name of Minjerribah, was found guilty in February of illegally clearing 2900sq m of protected vegetation at Point Lookout.

In a public statement issued after the decision, the council said it acknowledged and respected that native title existed on the site but had brought the case solely to address the unlawful clearing of that land.

“Council takes the unlawful clearing of vegetation seriously and will continue to hold all persons accountable for the illegal clearing of vegetation,” the council said.

But in a District Court appeal, lawyers for Mr Burns have contended that magistrate Ross Mack erred in finding that the Quandamooka man was not exercising his inherent rights under native title to clear the land.

Mr Mack’s finding that Mr Burns was not exercising his rights because he had cleared the land to build a house was irrelevant because he had an existing recognised right under native title to take natural resources, his lawyers have argued in appeal documents.

Lawyers noted that Mr Mack had found that Mr Burns cleared the land for the sole purpose of providing a cleared area on which he proposed to erect a substantial and permanent house for his daughter.

They said the magistrate had conflated the removal of vegetation to build a house with traditional Aboriginal land management practices.

The lawyers said Mr Burns’s case was that burning the vegetation would enrich the soil, and his evidence of plant regrowth had not been challenged in court.

“The appellant (Mr Burns) at no time contended that the ultimate construction of the proposed residence and later use of the land was either a traditional Aboriginal cultural activity or in exercise of any native title right which he had,” the appeal documents said.

“He conceded always that he would, after, require approval for any necessary construction but that he had, up until then, engaged in a traditional cultural activity.”

Mr Burns’s lawyers have asked the District Court to acquit him or order a new trial.

Redland City Council has declined to comment as it is before the court. A hearing has been set down for next month.

Add this to the treaty rubbish in Victoriastan, the now quashed heritage laws in Western Australia, continued halting of vital energy development and mining, you have a problem.
It’s creeping in at all angles.

To good to leave on the old thread.
JC’s Qantas jingle.

I’m here in Stockholm, my bags are in Rome,

And no-one will answer the phone.

My flight will be cancelled, or at maybe just late,

But the choc-chip bickies are great.

Southern Australia is freezing. How can it be so cold in a warming climate?

The Fix is In: Washington State Abolishes Residency Requirement for Voter Registration

Anyone taking any bets on how long it will be before Australia gets the first refugees from the new Brit Labour Government?

Rosie

 July 6, 2024 9:26 am

If Anglicans are enthused about reparations how about returning the churches and cathedrals they stole from the Catholic Church?

St Patrick’s in Dublin can be first.

Then they can work their way down the list.

If they do that they will still have St Paul’s Cathedral. Of Course, the best outcome is reunification particularly now that the Pope has more in common with woke Anglican bishops than with Catholics.

Anyone taking any bets on how long it will be before Australia gets the first refugees from the new Brit Labour Government?

More pasty Brits for Perth?

I believe you’ve been slated by Albo’s benevolent government to receive a more diverse selection from the tide of humanity washing over our land.

The ones Steven Miles rejected.

So, the Brits will be at the back of the queue… whinging.

A visionary takes his people back to countryFor 60 years, this Martu elder has led his people away from towns and back on to country – dry country – because he understands how the non-Aboriginal world works, and why it often does not work at all for his people.
Paige Taylor
10 hours ago

26 comments
Muuki Taylor was born at a waterhole called Wayinkurangu in the Percival Lakes region of the Great Sandy Desert. It was around 1945. As a child he repeatedly walked the entire western section of the desert with his family. They travelled in and out of what was later declared Western Australia’s largest national park, Karlamilyi.
In an interview with Inquirer from his home community of Parnngurr, Taylor speaks in his first ­language – Manyjilyjarra – and his words are translated into English by his young relative Curtis Taylor, an accomplished filmmaker, artist and professional interpreter.

“We were living in our own country; to the west at Karlamilyi is where I traversed the country as a child – where we had bush meat emu, kangaroo and goanna,” Taylor says.
The family also ate kalaru (salt bush or samphire) seeds, witchetty grubs and minta (botanical gum).
Taylor remembers that when they saw an aeroplane, they did not know what it was. They ran and kept quiet in the bushes.
At that point, every person Taylor had ever seen was Aboriginal.
When the first edition of The Australian newspaper was printed in July 1964, Taylor and his family were still living a traditional life in the desert. His people call it pujiman. That makes Taylor a Martu pujiman, revered in the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal world.
Taylor’s knowledge of Martu culture and land is encyclopaedic and rare. He also understands how the non-Aboriginal world works, and why it often does not work at all for his people. He led them away from towns and back on to country in the 1980s during the homelands movement. Living in a bough shed at what is now the community of Punmu, he struck a water bore and helped to build a school and other infrastructure for the other Martu in 1982.

There are now three communities on Martu country – Punmu, Kunawarritji and Parnngurr. They are all dry, by agreement of elders such as Taylor.
As he nears 80 years of age, Taylor can reflect on his achievements, including co-founding a Martu ranger program in 2008 that has become a source of income and pride for families. He did this by establishing Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa, or KJ, in 2008. The organisation employed 513 Martu last financial year – about a quarter of the entire Martu population – as rangers and in other programs.
However, Taylor is not done. He wants to secure the future of the communities he helped to establish. He believes they can and must thrive for the sake of his people.
“Martu, we are at our strongest when we are on our country, far from the troubles of town,” Taylor said in his yearly address to his people, published in the annual report of Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa.
Taylor’s home of Parnngurr is a five-hour drive by dirt roads east of Newman, the mining town built by the Mt Newman Mining Company in the 1960s. Newman is 1200km northeast of Perth. The town is surrounded by mines, including Gina Rinehart’s Roy Hill and BHP’s Mt Whaleback, which at 5km long and 1.5km wide is the single biggest open-pit iron ore mine in the world.
The town is awash with mining money but the town-based Martu are not thriving. No Martu child has ever graduated year 12 at Newman Senior High School. In 2019, the Newman-based head of the local Aboriginal medical service, Robby Chibawe, told police in a sworn statement for the state director of liquor licensing that pregnant women were aware that a baby with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder were born smaller and “we are finding that pregnant women believe this to be a good thing as it makes it easier for child birth”.

“Children aged 12 years and younger are also drinking alcohol, because they are watching their families drink and are trying to get involved with the family,” Mr Chibawe said.
An extreme example of the town’s troubles made headlines in 2021 when an illiterate 17-year-old Aboriginal boy was sentenced to eight years jail for bashing his 18-year-old Martu girlfriend to death with a rock outside a house party in Newman. She had given birth to their son – her second child – a few weeks earlier. The children’s court heard the 17-year-old boy had been a paint sniffer when he was six, was diagnosed with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, had drunk a bottle of Jack Daniels and a carton of beer
on the day of the murder and was in a drug-induced psychosis.
Some Martu families long to leave Newman. They want to take their children to the communities on Martu land – Parnngurr, Punmu (inside the national park) or Kunawarritji – where alcohol is banned and where they will be around elders such as Taylor.
However, housing is in very short supply in each of these communities and the waiting lists are long. Life on their own land is just a dream for them.
In 2023, an audit of the 80 houses across the three communities on Martu land found 40 were “beyond economic repair”. People are living in most of these homes marked fit for demolition because they do not want to move to town.

Taylor is one of them. When Inquirer visited him at his Parnngurr home, the electricity was not working. That meant no airconditioning either.
“They need to fix my house … it’s broken, falling apart. I want a good house like the white people have,” he says.

Odds at Sportsbet:

Michelle Obama 15:1 $50

Gavin Newsome 23:1 $50

Hillary Clinton 71:1 $80

Kamala would be favourite, surely.

Vivek is tipping a Trump landslide that the Dems won’t be able to cheat their way out of. The US cheating industrial complex wouldn’t have attempted the farce of the past four years without having 99% of the news media in their pocket.

Really?

Wisconsin supreme court allows drop boxes to be used in the election. There goes one battleground state.

In Ticking Timebomb news from the Daily Telegraph:

Several groups are seeking help for the child of an Australian foreign fighter over fears he could turn radical after he began “acting violent” in the classroom.

The boy’s teachers, his Sydney family and non-profit organisations over the past year say they have been left high and dry after raising the alarm over his concerning behaviour.

One source, speaking on condition of anonymity, feared he could “go down a radical path” if serious issues in his recovery were not addressed.

While initially adapting well to life back in Sydney when he returned from overseas, those aware of his case said it was only in the past year issues began to arise.

His “violent threats and actions” in school saw several members of the community, including his teachers, come together to ask the government for more support.

When contacted this week the NSW Education Department said there would be “no comment”.

While he did have access to a support team to help reintegrate back into society since he was repatriated, those advocating for him say more was needed after several incidents at school.

Like others who have been repatriated home from the foreign war zone, experts in extremism and mental health were attached to the family in a bid to help the boy adjust to living back in Sydney.

While some of his actions raised concerns, it is understood the boy has no criminal history.

He is one of dozens of Australian children who arrived home from the Middle East in the past few years, after spending some of his childhood in the region during ISIS’ reign of terror.

Those who know the child told The Saturday Telegraph he witnessed some of the worst atrocities committed at the height of the conflict after being brought into the war zone by his parents.

It comes just weeks after the Federal Court separately rejected an appeal that would have seen 31 more Australian women and children repatriated back home to Australia from Syria.

The group of wives and children of ISIS fighters have spent the past five years in the Al Roj refugee camp in northern Syria awaiting news if they can return home.

Their case last year, ran on their behalf by Save The Children, was lodged after a cohort of Sydney-based ISIS brides and their children were secretly extracted from the same camp in early 2023.

Lawyers for Save The Children said the Australian government had a duty to return the second group in the same way it helped bring the first group home.

The lawyers unsuccessfully argued they were being held in Syria only because the Australian government refused to repatriate them despite initial plans to bring them home.

The lawyers argued the government had a moral obligation to return the group who had endured “appalling conditions”.

Deary phucking me.
So what are the parents doing? After going over there then coming back after allowing the child to witness some brutality at the hands of these animals, they expected a seamless transition back into normalcy? Or is this behaviour perfectly normal for them?
No amount of hand patting (HT Knuckle Dragger) from all the support networks will be enough.

It continues:

HOUSING CRISIS

Mr Albanese acknowledged the housing crisis facing many Australians, with young families struggling to buy their first home along with soaring rents.

He said cities such as Sydney needed to embrace higher densities, pointing to the long-neglected “appalling” thoroughfares such as Parramatta Rd as sites that should accommodate more homes.

“This is a problem of neglect of a long period of time,” he said. “We need more, higher density, where it’s appropriate, around railway stations, around transport corridors.

“We want to help developers to build rental homes, particularly for affordable housing.

“We need to take every opportunity to increase housing supply.”

He acknowledged Sydney as it stood might change in appearance, but said that it was the price that had to be paid.

Doxboxes comrade. (Ht John Constantine)
That’s the price! FMD

Right now he and Mrs are evicting their two daughters ready for the new season, so there’s been quite a bit of angst at the Cafe.

We are hoping our pair which occupy the eastern part of our property will finally evict what we think is their first family of youngsters. It is awful how they still allow “begging” from what are full grown maggies.

PoliticsWA News

Fatima Payman: Independent senator gets warm welcome on arrival in WA
Andrew Brown and Rachael WardAAP
Sat, 6 July 2024 10:50AM

Cheering supporters have greeted West Australian Senator Fatima Payman at Perth Airport with the former Labor MP vowing to “serve them as an independent voice”.
The new crossbench senator quit the Labor party this week over her stance on Palestinian rights and freedoms.
Members of the crowd hugged her and cheered as she made her way through the terminal late on Friday.
“I’m ready to serve them as an independent voice, to be their voice in Canberra,” Senator Payman told reporters.

There’s quite a few headscarves and Mo beards in the crowd..