Working Papers
The working papers collection comprises historical papers as well as current ideas and works in progress on some of the major issues and topics of our times.
Above all the independents will understand that Aboriginal affairs can not be run by super administrators overseeing a series of super departments in Canberra. They will understand there has to be more white and black skin on the table at local levels and that it has to matter to local communities whether public and private investments fail or succeed. They will understand that the Federal government has to stop underwriting Qantas shares by facilitating hundreds of fly in and fly out experts and start to invest in the development of local Aboriginal expertise in remote and regional communities. They will understand that COAG level “closing the gap” performance indicators cannot be an end in themselves. They will also understand that giant corporations in Australia must move beyond their public relations, symbolic campaigns and put some skin on the table in local Aboriginal communities.T
In later life Julie Gillard will think back on 2010 with consternation. Whether she wins or loses the election tomorrow, she will wonder about whether it would have been better to wait for the opportunity to become Leader of the Labor Party and Prime Minister of Australia. Gillard was bred to be ruthless, in deposing Rudd she followed sage Labor advice. But later, and even now, having endured question after question about the fate of Kevin Rudd, her conscience will have been pricked and, most of all, she will wonder whether she was a pawn for others.The
I fear for my country
(released 20 July 2010)
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There are no drug dealers at my door step. Doormen, salesmen and officials do not expect bribes. I do not hear my neighbours fighting through thin walls. I have clean water to drink and fresh air to breathe. I do not see people being shot in the streets. The only guns in my neighbourhood are used to cull foxes and other foreign vermin. The military is not overtaking the governments and the courts. Large masses of our population are not illiterate. I have access to the best health care in the world. All citizens are paid a minimum sum if they lose their jobs and do not have access to paid work. I live in an environment in which it is still possible to feel the wild quality of nature. There are traffic jams, ugliness and urban congestion and all the resulting problems, but we are as yet better off than other world city dwellers. I do not suffer from many of the afflictions that beset many parts of the world. Yet I fear for my country.
Sweet Irene Kahn
(released 9 July 2010)
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When the past Secretary General of Amnesty International, Irene Kahn, speaks she has an incredibly sweet, fluent, pleasant voice. But her sweet words come with a dynamic message. In her interview with Margaret Throsby yesterday she raised several profound questions for Australia. All in the most polite, round about and beautiful way.
John Faulkner was the Labor man who, all in the party, and all in the parliament, respected.
If you want to understand where Julia Gillard’s most strident critics are, come to Sydney. A word of advice to Tony Abbott disappear...
The press pack have passed judgement on Kevin. The bureaucrats so abused by the tyrant Rudd have let their views be known. It was inevitable that Julia Gillard would take over it seems. After all every Prime Minister, apart from Rudd, had been 'normal'. Kevin though, well he was off with the pixies, a one man dictator who’s only friends were God and a cat. By now you will have read the accumulated articles and even seen the circulating videos of Hitler in the bunker transposed with Ruddisms. Pardon me to take a different view. The problem was never Kevin. The problem is the modern Labor Party with its empty heart and gut.
The Federal parliamentary caucus of the ALP are under the spell of a UFO.
After Emancipation: The Pilbara, Australian Aboriginal Economic Development and the Mining Tax
(released 16 June 2010)
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To make great economic advances for Aboriginal people means making those advances in the regions that Aboriginal people live. Unlike urbanized mainstream Australians, 2/3 of Aboriginal Australians live in regional and remote areas of the country. The current mining boom in Australia is an historic opportunity because the wealth is being generated in the heartlands of where Aboriginal people live around the country...
The Luckiest of Leaders
(released 5 June 2010)
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Or why the Australian people are turning against Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott but will not yet vote for the Greens and Democrats.