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Letters to the Editor:

The killing of Indigenous rights

The participatory democracy that John Howard chortles about 
looks pretty hollow as far as Indigenous Australians are 
concerned. You might have noticed that he has given his "fair go" 
slogan the boot. He doesn't even bother to pretend any more.

His government's promotion of the idea that "all Australians 
should be treated equally" meant that there would be no 
recognition of past injustices to Indigenous people, no "sorry", 
and no recognition of prior ownership of the land. He has tried 
to wipe the slate of history clean, or to put it more accurately, 
whitewash it.

Now, after this latest federal election, he's even managed to 
wipe out Aboriginal people in the white man's system. Soon there 
will be no Aboriginal members of the parliament. The Democrat's 
Aden Ridgeway, the only Aboriginal person elected to parliament, 
is on the way out as of next July. (Although the Democrats didn't 
do themselves any favours with their unprincipled preference 
allocations and opportunistic behaviour).

The Government killed off ATSIC, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait 
Islander Commission, first by slashing its funding, then hounding 
its leaders through the courts and publicly slandering them. It 
then labeled ATSIC a failure and scrapped it altogether.

ATSIC was the first representative body elected by Indigenous 
people. It is now to be replaced by a collection of government-
appointed "eminent persons", who will sit on a new body, the 
National Indigenous Council, to be headed by an Aboriginal 
magistrate from the Children's Court, Sue Gordon.

But its members will be seen — I think quite rightly — by many 
Indigenous people as lackeys for the Government.

The dispossession of Indigenous Australians makes us a disgrace 
in the eyes of the world. And you don't have to search far and 
wide to see why they have had their rights undermined.

In Cape York last week BHP Billiton attempted to bribe local 
traditional owners during negotiations over mining leases. The 
bribes were so the company could avoid taking proper measures to 
protect the cultural sites on the land earmarked for mining.

Of course BHP denies it, but the Cape York Land Council was 
unequivocal, saying the company had offered up front cash to 
member of the traditional owners to not accompany BHP staff doing 
cultural heritage surveys in the area.

Furthermore, the traditional owners have only four months to 
ensure that BHP doesn't run roughshod over their sacred sites. 
After that the Beattie Government will use its new native title 
laws to give BHP the go ahead.

This is but one incident in the never-ending land grab by the big 
mining companies and pastoralists, aided by governments of every 
stripe.

Marcus Browning
Sydney, NSW 

Can someone tell me at which point in the last election 
campaign did John Howard tell the Australian people that their 
country was to be used as a practice bombing range? As I write 
the Howard Government is hammering out an agreement with the Bush 
administration that will allow the US to test new generation 
weapons, including so-called "smart bombs".

Some will be tested at Shoalwater Bay, in Queensland, already the 
site of war games involving the US and Australian military. There 
are to be experiments with self guided missiles and dummy bombing 
raids into Australia from US aircraft carriers.

More millions of dollars, tens of millions added to the $55 
million already being spent on the military each day, are to be 
poured into these lunatic projects, which can only be seen by the 
nations in the region as preparation for a pre-emptive strike on 
them.

In 2007 Exercise Talisman Sabre is planned for Shoalwater Bay, 
involving 20,000 troops, live bombing raids and amphibious 
landings.

So you can add environmental devastation to the war plans.

There is to be a Combined Training Centre that will link 
Australia to US bases around the world and to the US Pacific War 
Fighting Centre in Hawaii.

ANZUS military advisor Ross Babbage didn't mince words. He said 
last week, "We are making it very clear that when push comes to 
shove Australia and the US Governments operate very closely 
together".

Just who is going to do the pushing and shoving? Which countries 
are building up their military might to unprecedented levels?

Howard has no mandate to commit Australia to such a war. He has 
no mandate to give away our sovereignty. He has no mandate to 
slaughter the people of other nations in our name.

This is the march to "endless war" that Bush has already promised 
the world. The people must rally together to stop it.

Nathan Barnes
Brisbane, Qld

The re-election of George W Bush, the man with the Stepford 
wife and strong "faith" led me to the words of Bertrand Russell 
on religion from Why I am not a Christian — "that is the idea, 
that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian 
religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have 
been for the most part extremely wicked".

I expect the American officer who is going into Falluja too, as 
he said, kill "them" has never read Why I am not a Christian but 
has probably read the Bible.

K — a reader
Sydney, NSW