Faces from Day 2 of The New Summit
Prof John Taylor (ANU); Lisa Honan, Eli Gilbert, Liam Ahearn,
Cheryl and Keith Kaulfuss
What a day. I skipped the morning session. Apologies for incomplete reporting. Did the afternoon and evening. Same to-day. Pacing myself in my old age! The afternoon session had an emphasis on The Gap between Aboriginal and mainstream Australians. Professor Taylor gave us statistics and insights but all sorts of turns were taken. In fact, one could say The Intervention - surprise, surprise - took over the discussion. Everything from the Protest House at Amplatiwatj the adverse statistics coming out of The Intervention which show it made things worse to the way in which aspects of The Intervention are about to be imposed on other Australians - providing an indication that Aboriginal people may have been a social laboratory for some very unpalatable interventions the politicians and bureaucrats have wanted to introduce for quite some time.
In the evening, our numbers were somewhat depleted but still a good roll up considering it was a bleak, rainy, July night in Melbourne, school holidays are on with many people out of town, and it was just Friday night when people have other engagements. Those of us who were there left quite stimulated, angry, and discussing what we might be able to do. This followed Chris Graham's presentation - which is the subject of the next post. It was a doozy. The events described had gone 'whoosh' right by a lot of us - but we are catching up now and we are very angry. This will be subject of the next post.
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