New Catallaxy

In June 2010 I had an article published in Quadrant magazine; “The Trumping Factor”. I went back to it because I remembered writing about how those on the left and the right divide more or less uniformly and predictably across numbers of seemingly unconnected issues. To wit: “One of the mysteries of life is that…

Firstly, lets’s dispense with the fallacy that Aboriginals were prevented from enlisting in WW1 and onwards. “Exempt” from compulsory training and service is not the same as “prevented”. I’ve already dealt with this myth here. As for the claim about being denied access to soldier settlement schemes, perhaps Libraries Tasmania (and other interested parties) should…

Following on from my previous post, let’s skip the step of again proving that the existence of Section 127 of the Constitution (in it’s original form) is being sold as proof of Australia’s anti-aboriginal history. The charges against it are varied: First Nations people were ‘dying out’ and, hence, would soon cease to be a…

As you can see from the sample above, the INCLUSION of specific Aboriginal provisions in the original constitution has been sold as a negative, with all manner of accusations and probable anti-aboriginal motivations levelled at them. Not even those paid to populate the Australian Parliament House website can manage to specify why they may have…

It seems almost unfair to include this post in the collection, because the ABC has begrudgingly (very begrudgingly) done my work for me. Mind you, up until just recently, even official government websites were touting it as gospel. Fact check: Were Indigenous Australians classified under a flora and fauna act until the 1967 referendum? SPOILER…

Reference: Australian Law as Applied to Aborigines – Australian Law Reform Commission (Australian Government) With the settlement of Australia came the insurmountable problem of integrating two very different ‘legal’ systems (English Common Law and Native Custom), among a mixed group who had very different expectations and outlooks about right, wrong and barbarity. Can you imagine…

Over the many years of listening to the ever-worsening tales of our forefathers and their supposed behaviours on this continent towards the Aboriginal people, I’ve often wondered about how they could have been soooooo much different to me in terms of compassion. After all, wasn’t it the British Parliament that enacted the Slave Trade Act…