Ross Webster

“Miss Grover left the court without making any comment. She later posted on social media saying she was “absolutely devastated” & that women were being discriminated against. … I also said, “we will all wake up tomorrow & men will still not be women.” An important point.

The murder of little Sharon, the 5yo girl taken from her bed in a 'town camp' in Alice Springs, should be a clarion call for the government. And I have some suggestions. 1. Ban the term 'Stolen Generations'. They are the 'Rescued Generations' - rescued from abuse and neglect. 2. Rescue and remove all children being brought up in substandard accommodation or by those who are too drug or alcohol-affected to provide proper care. 3. Apply the above as it would be applied to white folk in cities, without this nonsense 'cultural sensitivity' which is just a euphemism for acceptance of lower standards that would be unacceptable anywhere else. 3. Cease the notion that they must be placed 'with kith, kin, community or on country' where it cannot be proven that that care is as good as fostering/adoption by others in other locations - and not selected for their race. Too often children are shunted from one form of dysfunction to the next. 4. Demolish all ramshackle 'town camps' and relocate 'long-grassers' into appropriate accommodation within towns. This relegation of out-of-sight, out-of-mind has to stop. 5. Enforce mandatory school attendance with fines, deducted from fortnightly welfare if necessary. Non-attending children are most likely to be neglected or abused. They should be removed from parents who would deny them any sort of meaningful future because they can neither read nor write. This, after all, is passive child abuse. 6. Audit all expenditure on Aboriginal individuals, groups, charities, businesses, land councils and services - including mining royalties. 7. Begin to wean Aborigines off soul-destroying passive welfare that leads to hopelessness, helplessness, depression and escapism through numbing drugs and alcohol. 8. Create meaningful work to assist the above. Thousands of houses require repairs, maintenance, cleaning. Communities need rubbish collection and road maintenance, especially during the wet season, along with self-sustainability: growing fruit and vegetables, rearing chickens for meat and eggs, thereby overcoming the other problems of poor health and nutrition as a result of the cost of remote transport. There are countless opportunities for actual work that benefits the communities, in the broadest sense. 9. Apply the law and sentencing as it would be applied to a white person in a city. Justice is supposed to be blind, so there should be no privilege due to race or hardships during upbringing - we've all experienced hardships. 10. Stop 'othering' Aborigines. We are all Australians. We are all equal. Stop favouring one race over another. It's achieving the complete opposite of what is intended. Here endeth actual truth-telling.