All over Aboriginal Australia everyone knows that Labor is good on symbolism, changing laws and big program-atic spending and bureaucratic decisions but Labor is not good at empowerment of grass roots communities. It is not good at cutting through red tape to make things happen. On the other side, the Opposition has the opposite problem. It is prepared to take action but it still works with an assimilationist mentality and that was very clear from Brendan Nelson’s speech yesterday and is also clear from the Northern Territory Intervention. It does not support a vision of sustainable Aboriginal communities, except those components which match non-Indigenous sentiment or understanding. A joint party political exercise will be especially positive in bringing about constitutional change in this country but we cannot expect leadership from politicians about what is needed within Indigenous communities; that would result in just another Indigenous social policy disaster.
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