It’s just the world’s oldest culture again

Is there a special unit somewhere dedicated to constantly producing new and ever more imaginative stories for the Aboriginal industry? Because someone has to come up with the bullshit that somehow becomes commonplace for the media-political chatterbox classes.

Whether it is the repeatedly debunked myth that Aboriginal people were classified as ‘flora and fauna’ or the myth of the ‘stolen generations’, these ideas solutions seize the small minds of the chatterboxes in a serial manner. ‘Welcome to Country’, ‘First Nations’, Dark emu – no nonsense is so obvious that they do not repeat it with idiotic solemnity.

And then there is the ‘oldest living culture in the world’.

Not only is this claim demonstrably false, to the extent that it means anything at all, but it also begs the question: what is there to celebrate about a literal Stone Age culture?

Certainly not the endemic violence.

As the Northern Territory welcomes a new government that has promised to crack down on crime, the focus is on urban Aboriginal youth: criminal gangs who break shop windows, steal cars and threaten to use guns.

The Country Liberals promise to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 10, so that children are held accountable for the enormous harm they cause. They also want to reintroduce spit hoods and appoint truancy officers to ensure Aboriginal children attend school.

It raises questions about a more problematic group: Aboriginal men in their 20s, 30s and 40s. They were children not so long ago, but now judges are being told they are beyond redemption as valuable members of society.

The inner-city chatterboxes, with their well-played examples of Dark emu and the memorised ‘traditional’ speeches for every occasion, can deny all they want that there is a violence problem in Aboriginal culture, but the grim statistics do not lie.

These men repeatedly beat and mutilate. They have a long history. They do not correct prison games. They have children and those children follow the same course.

For all their talk of ‘femicide’ and ‘gender-based violence’, the left clearly couldn’t give a damn about the horrific violence inflicted on Aboriginal women and children. When a group of NT Aboriginal women travelled to Canberra a few years ago in a desperate plea to be heard, not a single Labor or Greens politician bothered to even turn up.

When the Howard government responded to the Little Children are Sacred report with a series of practical measures to reduce alcohol abuse in Aboriginal communities, the left cried racism. The Albanian government made removing the measures its first priority.

It is even beginning to look like there is a protection racket for violent Aboriginal men.

In the Territory Courts, where there is a swinging door of repeat offenders, there is a sense that help can’t come soon enough, but even if it did, it wouldn’t make a difference. Chief Justice Grant said he had to apply a deterrent value when sentencing a sadistic dog Adam Britton up to 10 years and five months imprisonment, with a non-parole period of six years. But it is not as if the public needs to be reminded not to rape and kill dogs. As for telling Aboriginal men not to harm women and children, judges have been shouting into that void for decades.

Then there are the High Court’s 2013 ‘Bugmy principles’, which state that where evidence of serious childhood neglect can be established in repeat adult offenders, this should be given weight in sentencing. The practical result of this seems to be that Aboriginal men convicted of the most appalling violence against Aboriginal women are repeatedly given lenient sentences, only to get on with the bashing.

Every man has the same story, but the only difference is the nature of the attacks.

Dead or drunk father, dead or drunk or disconnected mother, barely educated, wandering youth, drug addicted since teenage years, ignoring bail, ignoring prison, capable of extreme violence against women and each of them became a father himself during a brief period of freedom.

The wealthy, urban-based apparatchiks of Aboriginal Industry can blame ‘the legacy of colonialism’ all they like, but anyone familiar with the historical and archaeological literature should be well aware that Aboriginal violence is nothing new. Nor can it be blamed entirely on poverty: abuse is disproportionately high across all economic quintiles of Aboriginal Australia.

So far nothing has helped. What now?

Jon Tippett KC, the Northern Territory’s leading criminal defense lawyer, says (…) it’s time for brave people to try new things and be tough. And be prepared to fail, and then try different things.

“It’s going to be a tough one,” he says. “If there’s no parental supervision or interest, young people may have to go to jail. Ten-year-olds may have to be put in an environment where they’re fed and they’re going to school.

“It’s all well and good for parents in Palmerston or in communities to scream about their children being taken away. But you parents don’t send them to school. You don’t feed them. You don’t bathe them or clothe them. They have scabies. You don’t do their health care. They are underweight and their cognitive abilities have suffered because you don’t look after them.

“It’s a choice. Either you take care of them, or someone else will. We may do it reluctantly. But these children deserve to be raised in a first-world country that gives them a chance at life. If you’re not going to do it, Mom and Dad, we will.”

We tried – and all we got in return was a sackcloth and ashes from the so-called ‘Stolen Generations’, which might better be described as the ‘Saved Generations’.

Nothing will change until the world’s oldest culture joins the modern world.