What do people think about the school truancy issue, here is how Abbott proposed to address it last year:
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...to-cut-aboriginal-truancy-20130315-2g66r.html
My take on this is confusion.
Do we force aboriginal Australians to send their kids to school, and if they don't pay a fine, that could only put more stress on the household right and the kids will just suffer more, do we cut welfare payments if the kids hardly ever go, what happens to everyone then? Like really WTF do we do?? Also is it right to force a population of indigenous people to 'live white'? What if they don't want their kids to go to school, what if they maybe do but really don't care and think it's pointless, and don't care if their kids just 'hang out' instead? What if they wanted to live outside of our system and learn to fish and hunt, would that be OK? (I'd be happy to see that personally), but the reality is that some of these parents are so far gone on alcohol and domestic violence (domestic violence on a level that white Australians could barely comprehend) that sending their kids to school is the last thing on their minds, and waaaaaay down in the priority list, after school where are the jobs anyway, the reality is most of the kids will just follow their parents into the same sad lifestyle that sees something like a third of aboriginal Australians dead by their early 40's. These are the issues right?
On top of that there's the grog and violence, we don't have enough resources in remote communities to deal with it. Has anyone here ever owned a pub in a town with a large aboriginal population? A friend of mine just walked out on his, the amount of violence he suffered was completely outrageous .. there wasn't a local police force he could call, he had to keep weapons behind the bar at all times and be ready to use them. If things had gone the wrong way he has no idea what was going to happen to him, he couldn't sleep at night, he looks like he's aged 20 years in 10, now he's happy doing odd jobs even though he's always been a property developer, he lost a lot of money but is happy to be out of there, he hasn't sold the building, he just shut the doors and walked away. He may never find a buyer.
I don't think people get it. Every Australian should travel to remote parts of Australia and just take a look at it, feel it out, take two weeks out of your life and go. Leave the tourist trail and travel off the beaten track, or just go to Cairns, Alice Springs, Darwin and Kalgoorie with your eyes open and at night. We talk the most rubbish publicly when it comes to this issue, because we are at a complete loss now, we thought we were going to get somewhere with it, but now I think it's finally dawned on everyone that we've 'got nothing' .. god only knows where it will end up.
Watch this story die in the next few days as the media starts to feel awkward about it, they don't really know what to say, they can't really publish the kids photos or their names without offending the ways of the Torres Strait islanders so they can't humanise the story, on top of that there are the awkward social issues, and raising the same old problems seems trite and we're weary of it, and we feel so goddamned WHITE when we say anything, so I guess we'll just leave it to whoever can come up with a new policy, if that's even right.
All the policies we've tried so far have all been an epic fail.