Police killing of Aboriginals will stop when the people make it stop!
Lawyer Teela Reid asks in today’s SMH “How much longer can the law justify the killing of Aboriginal people?”
The answer is easy:
Until the Aboriginal people fully explain to the rest of Australia why they resist arrest when most others don’t and
Until most Australians understand what it would be like to have their homes & land taken; daughters, wives, girlfriends repeatedly raped; sons, husbands and boy friends shot or kidnapped; children kidnapped by government to be sexually and physically abused.
Australian law is not leader-dominated like in Russia. Elected politicians make laws. They do what will get them re-elected. The law is not about fairness or justice. It just has the potential to be, if voters make it so.
The killing will probably not stop until Aboriginals and their supporters persuade a majority of MPs that full compensation is required for the land taken and damage done to them, so that they can then , with their own money, buy homes and land, enjoy good schools, universities, hospitals, health care, mental health care and career opportunities like the rest of us, as their right not on welfare and
Until, if politicians in power don’t do all of that, those voters, go into the 15 or so marginal electorates and campaign successfully against the government on issues of interest to the voters of those electorates, not Aboriginal issues. Then the law and its administration will change and Aboriginal people will not face the same problems.
That is how much longer I believe the killing will probably continue! That is how democracy really works as opposed to the fairy tale. That is why I started the Votergram service in 1986 and recently offered it free to the Aboriginal community, formed the FairGO Voterlobby and Voters Network. In democracy the government does not lead the people. The people lead the government!