...and while we're at it can we also have National Just Take A Look At Yerself Month!
Yep, I get the miseries just thinking about us and me and you too. We're nice folk, aren't we? Ordinary every day folk, aren/t we? Even those of us who are rich and inhabit exclusive clubs thinks we are nice and ordinary and every day, don't we/you (tick whichever is applicable)?
Then why do we let so many crook things happen - to our land, too its people, to its animals, to the planet?
I am hopping mad at the in the face actions of the Victorian Government. Now I can't say I am lining up to vote for any of the other parties who will put themselves up at the Victorian election due late next year. But how can the current mob justify some of their decisions? Can they just stand back and take a look at themselves?
Perhaps this blog ought to lead the charge with a Just Take A Look At Yerself category, so here goes the first entry.
The Victorian Govt has done yet another deal with Crown Casino. I reckon one morning we will wake up and find that where we live is no longer called Melbourne. It will be called Crown Casino City - and (surprise, surpise) the community will have had no say in it at all. This latest deal will do what so many have done before it. It will increase the tax reaped by our gambling addicted government.
Now some of us might think that this means more money to do more and better stuff. You jest, don't you? If there was to be more money directed to more and better stuff, then why is the Victorian Government defunding Reconciliation Victoria? Oh sure, the Victorian Govt has tried to redirect RecVic so that it can receive much reduced funding from Aboriginal organisations. RecVic, in my view quite rightly, refuses to take this path. It refuses to take money from the Aboriginal pot - a pot which never has enough resources to do what needs to be done.
But have a look at the sort of spirt, the sort of ignorance that lies behind this. You will recall, dear Reader, how the former Australian Prime Minister used to speak quite often about "practical reconciliation" while dodging things like an Apology to the Stolen Generations. Now, considering the disrepute into which Aboriginal policy under the Howard Government fell, you would think that no politician worth his or her salt would want to use the term ever again in living memory. Nup! Yer wrong, aren't yer. Richard Wynne, the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in the Labor Government in Victoria, said on 5 May 2009:
...the Brumby Labor Government would build on the National Apology through practical reconciliation, such as support and training for Indigenous Victorians and additional measures to help close the gap in life expectancy.
Clearly, we are being taken for mugs. Aboriginal people are being taken for mugs. Australians who want a greater understanding of and role for Aboriginal people and culture in Australian life are being taken for mugs. They think we can't join the dots. But, Mr Wynne and Mr Brumby, we join the dots much better than you - because you let those dry, sterile, non-productive words of "practical reconciliation" through. You have let them through to wound once again.
Just take a look at yourselves.
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