TIME FOR A U-TURN ON THE ROAD TO HELL

Good intentions may have been behind it, but a disastrous left-wing experiment from the seventies has blighted untold innocent lives.

At the height of the Cold War, in the early seventies, a sinister plot was hatched at the highest levels of the Australian government. Codenamed ‘Witchcraft’, the idea was to submit a group of Australians, against their will, to a collectivist Marxist experiment designed to deprive them of their personal freedom, their will to achieve, their economic independence and their right to full participation in our capitalist economy.

The results were chilling. Within a short time, severe depression, alcoholism, chronic drug dependency, pedophilia and pornography were rife. Drip-fed by the State, the victims developed very few skills, ambitions or hopes of their own. In scenes of deprivation normally only found in isolated corners of the Soviet Union, malnourished children, removed from access to proper health care or education, lived in squalor and disease while their ‘parents’ – often co-habiting in large polygamous groups – succumbed to hedonistic nihilism.

Yet rather than exposing the horror and putting a stop to this grotesque attempt at human engineering and cultural manipulation, all subsequent Australian governments have endorsed and continued this nightmarish socialist experiment on innocent lives. To this day, those subjected to the worst excesses of this systemic abuse lead desperate lives devoid of meaning or the opportunity for personal fulfillment, existing day by day solely on the promise of the next ‘fix’ of alcohol, drugs, pornography or all three.

OK, I made up the bit about it being codenamed ‘Witchcraft.” But the rest is pretty accurate.

The red-faced justification for the disastrous policies of Aboriginal “welfare” initiated by well-meaning public servant and Keynesian economist H. C. ‘Nugget’ Coombs is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. ‘Nugget’, who among his numerous other achievements established the Australian National University and government support for “the Yarts” and the Australian film industry, didn’t set out – presumably - to destroy individual self-esteem and ambition; they were just two of the (predictable) side-effects that his ideas led to. Bizarrely, Coombs even went so far as to praise Aboriginal teenage boys who “roam freely in small anarchistic gangs, acquiring mundane knowledge and skills by observation and imitation with little formal discipline or instruction'. The birth of gang culture in urban Australia, brought to you by the ex-Governor of the Reserve Bank.

Forming his ideas during the Depression and refining them at the London School of Economics under the guidance of Harold Laski, one of the most influential Marxists of the 20th century, ‘Nugget’ was responsible for ending – and demonizing – the previous policy of “assimilation.” Problematic but hugely successful when compared to anything that has gone since, “assimilation” was the (now) politically incorrect idea that Aborigines could be encouraged to get a good education that hopefully led to some kind of a job, that would in turn lead to full participation in mainstream society and eventually the opportunity to purchase property. That this efficacious approach to improving the lot of all other Australians was deemed either not good enough (or possibly too good) for raising the living standards of indigenous Australians was, of course, typical of the inverted racist thinking that typifies so many leftist policies.

So instead, under Whitlam and Coombs, “assimilation” was scrapped and Aborigines – fresh from winning recognition, respect and their rightful place in Australian life at the 1967 referendum – soon found themselves being treated as a cross between quaint museum pieces and Huxleyan drones; denied the opportunity to determine their own lives whilst being left to the mercy of enterprise-sapping government hand-outs, politically-indoctrinated bureaucrats, corrupt tribal leaders and the demon grog. The road to hell, indeed.

Billions of dollars have been wasted paving it, but the pot-holes remain unfilled. From the current government the best we’ve had is an ideologically-inspired, hand-wringing “sorry” and, er, that’s about it.

Which brings us to Noel Pearson, Warren Mundine, Tony Abbott and a cinema commercial for the mining industry.

Mundine was National President of the Australian Labor Party and is a proud member of the Bundjalung people. “My personal opinion is that Nugget Coombs was wrong, and the statistics and the way Aboriginal people live today prove that,” he told Paul Comrie-Thomson on Radio National’s Counterpoint. (Former Keating minister Gary Johns was less diplomatic – labeling Coombs as “off the planet.”)

Pearson, indigenous founder of the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership, is even more damning: “A rule of thumb in relation to most of the programs and policies that pose as progressive thinking in indigenous affairs, is that if we did the opposite we would have a chance of making progress.” He goes on: “Our descent into passive welfare dependency has taken a decisive toll on our people, and the social problems which it has precipitated in our families and communities have had a cancerous effect on our relationships and values.”

Tony Abbott has promised that if elected he “will spend at least a week every year in a remote indigenous community because if these places are good enough for Australians to live in they should be good enough for a Prime Minister and senior officials to stay in."

Spot on, but let’s hope he does more than just visit. An Abbott government should rebuild Aboriginal policy from the ground up, override the Coombs/Greens anti-mining agenda and grab the golden chance that the resources boom offers to dramatically improve the lives, education, job opportunities and prosperity of the next generation of indigenous Australians. Rather than just scrapping the mining tax, ramp up incentives to provide community training and employment. Noel Pearson, Warren Mundine and other role models should be used to inspire pride in Aboriginal achievement through a campaign that promotes – yes, let’s not beat about the bush – contemporary assimilation. “A hand up, not a hand-out.”

Cinema goers are currently being treated to a lengthy commercial by the mining industry that tells the moving story of a young man who trained to be a chemical engineer, detailing his background, his education, and his Mum’s justifiably proud aspirations for his career.

The surprise is that he’s an Aborigine.

DIARY: MOBBED WITH LATHAM IN TORYTOWN

The three girls sitting opposite can’t take their eyes off us. Eventually it becomes too much for one of them (the pretty one) and she saunters over and shyly introduces herself. To Mark, of course, not the rest of us. Mark smiles and shakes her hand, and that’s all it takes for the other two to rush over, pen and napkin poised for an autograph, mobile phones at the ready for the inevitable photograph.

“We really miss you,” gushes one of them. She even grabs his hand. “You should sooo never have quit. You should be the PM, not her.”  The other two giggle in agreement. Mark smiles bashfully and gives a dismissive wave of his over-sized hand. “Naah,” he says in his unmistakable Werriwa drawl, “I had my crack at it.”

An evening with Mark Latham is an enlightening affair. The pub he has chosen is the Kirribilli Hotel in Tory-town, only a stone’s throw from the large house on the harbour he nearly got to call home. He would have fitted in well. The locals can’t seem to get enough of him. A man who introduces himself as “the Mayor of Kirribilli”, and who bears more than a passing resemblance to Ray ‘Rabbits’ Warren, is just one of the many patrons of the pub who finds an excuse to drift over and tell Mark the same two things: how much they like him. And how much they dislike Julia. “Come back, mate. All is forgiven!” he growls, to the nodding approval of those around him. Even as we attempt to leave the pub, Mark is bailed up by more people on the pavement, echoing the same sentiment. Like the best pollies with the “common touch”, he insists on chatting to each and every one of them in turn while the rest of us wait patiently on the sidewalk, shivering.

Over dinner we get the famous “taxi-driver-with-the-broken-elbow” yarn, complete with a visual re-enactment of the bone-snapping tackle and plateloads of humour and self-deprecation. He must’ve told it a thousand times before, but he makes the story sound as fresh as the tuna sashimi we tuck into. The meal is in a Japanese restaurant, around a low table, with dishes intended to share. Mark takes the beef hot-pot and picks up a knife and fork. “What are you lot having?” he asks, tucking in. It suddenly occurs to me that the “handshake episode” that possibly cost him the election was completely misunderstood. Latham wasn’t trying to intimidate Howard. He was probably quite pleased to bump into him and was just being himself - a brusque, forthright, no-frills Aussie bloke.

Also present are Tom Switzer, Michael Kroger, Janet Albrechtsen and former NSW minister Michael Yabsley. Two safe topics of conversation present themselves. One is Michael Yabsley’s passion for the byzantine inner workings of antique lamps. The other is the byzantine inner machinations of the ABC. Sorry Michael, but we’ll have to do the lamps next time.

Five days later I am standing in the foyer of the ABC, no longer contemplating her inner workings, but rather heading off to lunch in Chinatown with an old advertising friend, Paul Comrie-Thomson, who now, along with Michael Duffy, presents Radio National’s Counterpoint program. Paul and I first met filming a TV commercial featuring a dog called Spot Dixon, whose owner had a unique way of getting the gunk out of the corner of the dog’s eye for its close ups. She’d lick it out.

Paul and I had discussed the carbon tax ads on a previous show, where I’d suggested they were nothing more than (taxpayer-funded) highly polished corporate ads for some mob called Infigen. Today we learn that Infigen had debts of $1.25 billion at the end of the 2011 financial year. No mention of that amongst the beautiful imagery and heart-felt eulogies to the wonders of windmills and solar power.

Having never actually listened to Countdown before my first appearance, I made a point of tuning in the previous week. Paul was interviewing Peter Toohey, an academic, about his book called “Boredom: A Lively History.” I listened for the full twenty minutes, convinced I had stumbled upon the greatest comic duo since Derek and Clive, as they managed to turn a lengthy discussion about “how boredom can be good for you” into something that was achingly, compellingly, and utterly, er, uninteresting. Sheer genius.

Paul and I have been exploring the theme of the Truth Well Told, which is the old McCann’s advertising slogan. QANTAS, in their latest campaign, seem to have turned the idea on its head by delivering Half-truths Poorly Told. We reminisce about the days when a QANTAS trip symbolized a rite of passage for an entire generation, as we all headed off to “do Europe.” Hilariously, you could even smoke on airlines in those days, and the in-flight entertainment involved seeing how many tinnies you could skull before you landed in London. That was the real spirit of QANTAS. I can’t wait to see what the “new” one will be.

Listening to the radio on the way home, it’s clear there’s a new spirit in Canberra. This one’s called “defeat”, and it must be hanging in the spring air as visibly as the pollen from the Floriade. “This is a dagger through the heart of the Gillard government,” opines Graham Richardson, as the news comes through that the High Court has pronounced the Malaysian solution unlawful. Some months ago I wrote a spoof article in this magazine about how people smugglers would be encouraged, rather than deterred, by this ham-fisted policy. But even drawing on whatever meagre satirical skills I may possess, I couldn’t have imagined how farcical this whole shemozzle would become.

Come back Mark, all is forgiven.