KEY POINTS:
Hone Harawira created a minor flurry this week with his comments regarding John Howard's controversial programme to improve the lot of Aborigines in the Northern Territory.
There would have been a much bigger flurry if Helen Clark had called John Howard a racist bastard, or if John Key had said that if he was an Aborigine man, he'd have felt like going out and bashing someone.
But it was Harawira and really, what else can you expect from him? A charitable interpretation might be that he is a novice MP whose responses are always passionate and earthy; the less favourably inclined might see him as an inarticulate oik who's a liability to his political party. But ultimately, it doesn't matter what Harawira says, what I say, or what Howard says - what matters is coming up with strategies to help the Aborigine people.
The statistics make appalling reading. The sexual abuse, child suicide, mortality, deaths in police custody, the crime, unemployment, the gutwrenching poverty - every which way you read the stats, they show a picture of a people in dire straits.
And there's no doubt, the Aborigines have been extremely hard done by over the years. Successive Australian governments didn't so much smooth the pillow of a dying race, as use the pillow to try to smother the race out of existence. And there is still much more that can be done on a government level but, in the meantime, how do you stop the atrocities going on right now?
Harawira didn't have an answer. He was quick to condemn, but he didn't have a lot to offer as an alternative solution.
And as for the Greens setting up a tent embassy in the Octagon in Dunedin to protest the Howard Government's actions - how absurd. It highlights all that is wrong with flabby lefties. How about taking the tent and pitching it among the communities that so desperately need help? Instead of informing people about Aboriginal issues, how about using that time and energy to effect change in people's lives?
Most of us know that Aborigines have been poorly treated - what's less well known is that between 1996 and 2005, there was a 40 per cent increase in the numbers of Aboriginal children and teenagers killing themselves. Researchers put the increase down to the high incidence of child abuse and domestic violence as well as the brain damage and paranoid psychosis that results from long-term use of solvents.
The loss of land and control over living conditions, the loss of spiritual belief systems, the institutionalised racism that existed for many years - all of this has contributed to the dreadful living conditions of many Aboriginal families. And all of these factors need to be addressed. But in the meantime, the people have to stop turning upon themselves and critically, they have to protect their own children. Leaders within the communities must take responsibility for ensuring that the children are seen as the future, rather than the only living creatures lower than Aboriginal adults on the Australian food chain.
There is much to blame the Australian Government for when it comes to the shocking statistics to do with all aspects of Aboriginal life - but the people only have themselves to blame for the damage they're doing to their kids. And to suggest otherwise would be patronising in the extreme.
