Stupid accusations of racism from the arty-farties

They are so pathetic that they need to denigrate ordinary people in order to feel good about themselves

NATASHA Puatjimi doesn't fit the script. Well, not the script that's waved at us by film director George Miller. Miller, you might recall, claims there's a very good reason Australian films bomb at the box office. "Australia at its heart is so racist that I don't think we can stomach it." It's odd that being bored through the floor by angsty films such as Rolf de Heer's Bad Boy Bubby - blurbed as the story of "a 35-year-old man-child, confined his whole life by his domineering mother, who uses him for sex, to a two-room tenement apartment" - should be hailed by Miller as proof of racism.

That seems about as strange as .... well, as a Tiwi Islander girl like Natasha this week beating 170 boys to be voted best and fairest of the Yarra Junior Football League under-13 competition.

But the even greater mystery is why Miller and so many other artists and ideologues insist on believing we really are sick-makingly racist. How glibly - and often - that preposterous claim is made. "Racism is as Australian as lamingtons," sneered art critic Robert Hughes, author of the bad-us history The Fatal Shore. We're so racist we "invite the region's contempt", sniffed former diplomat and arts bureaucrat Alison Broinowski.

Racist! What a cop-out that gleeful slur has been for those who'd rather abuse than understand. Who'd rather preen than confront an awkward truth. Here's how it's worked.

Pauline Hanson's one million votes? All racists, you were told. And don't dare ask who those voters were truly rejecting. (Hint: think not poor blacks but powerful whites.)

The "stolen generations"? Oh, just priests, nuns, welfare officials, police and politicians being as racist as always, school textbooks preached. Don't even start to look at what hell those children were "stolen" from.

The Cronulla riot? Yet more racism, you silly person. And if you ask what so provoked the crowd, you must be a racist, too.

And now again, yet more lines from this same tatty Miller script. Listen to them. The National Sorry Day Committee dismisses the Howard Government's $500 million intervention in the Northern Territory's sickest Aboriginal communities as just proof of "the intent for the dog of 'white supremacy' to return to its vomit". Muriel Bamblett, of the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care, waves it off as politicians "blowing the dog whistle of racism" because - note - "the Australian public are too racist and too uncaring of indigenous children" to give real help.

As I said: straight out of Miller's script. But now the big question: Is there actually a part in that script for Natasha Puatjimi? Can Miller fit in a part for a girl who is in fact one of those very same "indigenous children" from the Territory, who we are supposedly "too racist and too uncaring" to help? I'm sure you know of Natasha already. After all, we at the Herald Sun thought you'd be so glad to hear of her success that we ran her picture and story on our front page yesterday. As did The Age. The television stations, led by men with an anxious eye on what makes viewers reach for the remote, similarly decided - unanimously - Natasha's was a story the public would love.

Believe me, if these ratings-driven robots shared Miller's venomous view of Australians, they'd never show so much eager footage of a black girl making good. Not to a land fierce with rednecks. But while you've heard Natasha's story, you may have missed some details that help to make my point - that in her trophy we see reflected an Australia brighter than is modish to admit. Take, for instance, how she came to be in Melbourne. A Melbourne woman, Fiona Hogan, met Natasha's parents while working at a Tiwi Islands medical clinic and was asked if Natasha could stay with her in Melbourne to get a better education.

Think, also, of the other goodwill Natasha has been given. Her Ivanhoe club last year offered her an exchange, and now that she's in Melbourne gave her a chance to shine as ruck-rover. How much goodwill? On trophy night, said Natasha, "everyone was looking at me and when they read out that I got 27 votes I heard the most cheering ever". By the next morning she was on radio, confessing that her favourite player was Essendon's Adam McPhee, and within hours she was at Windy Hill, having a kick with him and a chat to coach Kevin Sheedy, who has done so much for Aboriginal players.

Tell me again, Mr Miller, that ours is a country sick with racists and show me in your script where Natasha fits in. How many other signs have there been of our essential good nature? Only the wilfully blind could miss them.

Many of you will have your small proofs, as I have mine - like the day Danny, my best friend at Tarcoola Primary, was made captain of our sports team and carried in triumph on the shoulders of my father and another teacher when he sealed our win in the carnival against Cook and Kingoonya. Oh, I forgot a small fact that was then inconsequential: Danny was Aboriginal.

But almost every day come more stories - usually underreported - to show that for every racist you could drag out to damn, there are dozens of the decent you could instead praise. Here's one of the latest: when the Government said it was going in to help the Aboriginal children of the NT's worst camps, more than 500 doctors, nurses, dentists, psychologists, surgeons and the like rang a hotline to see if they could help. Free. More than 100 volunteers have already now gone to the Outback to serve - in this intervention vilified as a "genocide" and a proof of our "racism".

So a plea: can our artists stop pinning on us this badge of undeserved shame? Can our preachers stop celebrating a wickedness that isn't really ours? Can our writers define us by the many, not the few, and write instead a story that sees us more as we truly are: not perfect, but not that bad, either? In that revised script for Mr Miller, let's have that scene in which Natasha holds up her trophy to a cheering crowd. And let's have Miller, with all his art, shoot it in a way that makes clear the truth of that happy moment. Which truth? That it wasn't Natasha alone who won that trophy for the best and the fairest. A small bit of it - the base, maybe - was shared by us all.

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No-debate abortion law changes in Victoria

ABORTION is a divisive issue, and rightly so. It compels us to interrogate matters of life and death. It is silly to say that it provokes just intense feelings. Abortion usually provokes the most intense feelings. It is also wrong to assume that voters are irrevocably separated into two camps. While individuals disagree about what the law should allow, no one can deny that we are at least united in the belief that abortion is important.

However, whether you are pro-choice, pro-life or undecided, if the politicians get their way there will be no choice for voters regarding Victorian abortion law. This is because, pending the outcome of a Victorian Law Reform Commission review announced this week, John Brumby's Government will change the Victorian Crimes Act so as to decriminalise abortion.

The Liberal Opposition supports this attempt. Such a move would represent the most serious disturbance of abortion laws in almost 40 years. We are right to ask, then, what led to this historic shift in policy? Certainly, you would never have known about the proposed changes if you had relied on the Victorian ALP and Liberal websites in the lead-up to the most recent state election. Keyword searches of both returned zero matches. Abortion was also not mentioned in any public campaign material or major policy documents.

Why not? Who decided that one view in this fraught debate was the right view for all voters? The electorate has certainly never unambiguously agreed to a change in the law along these lines. Perhaps it is a pragmatic matter, something like "now or never"? It is not hard to guess why a politician might prefer to attempt radical change by stealth.

The US state of South Dakota voted in February 2006 to ban all abortions, followed by the African nation of Kenya. Isolated instances, sure, but in many places, for the first time since the turbulence of the 1960s and '70s, clear majorities have indicated a deep unease about abortion. Even in liberal New York state, Hillary Clinton, usually billed as a pro-choice warrior, has said that "every abortion is a tragedy".

Many Australians who once supported, or still support, the idea of a "woman's right to choose" now find their certainty challenged by the modern abortion industry. Some cannot believe that at certain large hospitals abortions outnumber live births. Many others are unwilling to accept that abortion is a "routine medical procedure", pointing to its harmful effects on women. Many of these people are feminists. Others are pro-lifers newly sensitive to the suffering of that other putative victim of abortion: the mother.

Also increasingly, voters, especially young Australians, find the argument for the sanctity of human life compelling. Abortion is wrong, they maintain, because it is the wilful murder of an innocent human being. Even pro-abortion advocates usually agree that a move towards less regulation is a step in the wrong direction. Comparable jurisdictions are introducing tighter restrictions. Britain is reducing the time allowable in line with medical advances with premature babies. Other places are adding parental consent and other notifications. In a 2004 interview with the Sunday Herald Sun, Governor-General Michael Jeffery expressed these mainstream sentiments when he said 100,000 abortions a year in Australia were too many and that "we all have to work together to keep it at an absolute minimum".

Whatever your stance, this clearly makes a lie of Brumby's claim to be motivated by the need to bring Victorian laws into step with "community sentiment". The sentiment is against an increase in abortions. Certainly, it would be wrong to conclude, as Brumby's actions imply he has, that the abortion debate has somehow ended. It remains as contentious as ever. Similarly, the fact that senior ministers just this week refused to support a private member's bill that would have wrought a similar change on the law reinforces that public attitudes are not as settled as Brumby's move implies. If they were, no member would be scared of the backlash his vote (either way) might unleash. It also indicates that politicians have serious doubts about the issue on the level of conscience, surely something that must not be arrogantly side-stepped.

If there is indeed growing public sentiment against abortion, or at least against any move that might increase the number of abortions in Victoria, and a majority of parliamentarians are unwilling to vote for the change, why is it still being considered, let alone treated as a foregone conclusion? This situation cannot stand. Brumby must allow the voters to express their will through the ballot box, or at least allow members to vote with their conscience on the private member's bill. If the initiative fails either test, and so far the move to decriminalise abortion in Victoria has failed both, he must shelve his plans. Not least because any shonky Victorian change along these lines would, presumably, provide a precedent for similar changes across the country.

Indeed, at this time, the law in NSW and in Queensland is almost identical to the Victorian law on abortion. The unfairness visited on Victorian voters could spread across borders. Such an outcome would represent, surely, one of the most anti-democratic outcomes in Australian history and it would apply to an issue that most of us consider crucial. This is not a scenario anyone, regardless of his or her views, should prefer.

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The Leftist solution to health-service shortages: More bureaucracy

Kevin Rudd has started to show his interventionist side. The toon below notes that the State governments would be glad to unload responsibility for their problematical hospital systems onto the Feds



VOWING to take personal responsibility for fixing Australia's public hospital system, Kevin Rudd has given away his administrative bent, backing it up with a small carrot and a big stick. In dollar terms, a pledge to spend an extra $2billion over four years is small change in the context of the total healthcare budget. The potential meat in Labor's plan is the establishment of a National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission to sort out the cross jurisdictional healthcare mess that allows each level of government to blame the other for its shortcomings. The proposed reform commission will negotiate a framework to clearly define the state and federal responsibilities in healthcare.

On one hand, the Opposition Leader's plan could amount to no more than an election-year promise that lacks substance and is designed to foil John Howard's opportunistic pledge to prop up a small Devonport hospital in Tasmania as part of a strategy to muscle up against Labor state governments. On the other hand, Labor's plan could represent the first concrete evidence of the highly interventionist style we could expect from Mr Rudd.

Mr Rudd has a history of heavy involvement shaking up health and education bureaucracies from his time as former Queensland premier Wayne Goss's top public servant. As well as cutting back public sector spending, Mr Rudd helped create a 10-year plan to refurbish Queensland's major hospital buildings. His process-driven reform pedigree is showing in the proposed reform commission, to be established in the first 100 days of a Labor win. Labor has pledged to provide financial incentive payments to state and federal governments who deliver better outcomes to patients. The big stick is the threat of a commonwealth takeover of Australia's 750 public hospitals if state and territory governments can't agree to a national reform plan by mid-2009.

Mr Rudd has proposed a referendum to secure a public mandate for any takeover, after which local communities would have a direct say in management of public hospitals with responsibility for the quality of patient care and funding resting with the commonwealth. In a Whitlamesque refashioning of commonwealth responsibilities, states would effectively be cut out of the loop on health. Mr Rudd says this would put an end to the blame game between Canberra and the states on health and hospital funding.

Mr Rudd has taken personal responsibility for the plan, declaring that as prime minister the buck would stop with him. While Queensland Premier Peter Beattie was quick to welcome a commonwealth takeover of what has been a continuing political train wreck for his Government, other state leaders were not so quick to embrace it. West Australian Premier Alan Carpenter rejected the plan, saying he did not believe the federal Government could do the job better than the states. South Australian Premier Mike Rann pledged to work with Mr Rudd to eliminate duplication and plug gaps in service delivery but stopped short of endorsing a commonwealth takeover of responsibility. So did Victorian Premier John Brumby, who said it was a good plan but a takeover would not be necessary. NSW Premier Morris Iemma said he welcomed a more results-based funding system.

While another bureaucracy is the last thing Australia's already cumbersome public health industry needs, properly focused, a reform commission might well be necessary to find what has proved to be an elusive solution to an obvious problem. As it is, the commonwealth is accused by the states of avoiding its responsibilities in aged care, leaving elderly people stranded in public hospital beds. The states are accused of shunting hospital costs from hospital budgets onto commonwealth-funded GPs. The public is wise enough to know that however healthcare is delivered, the full cost comes from the public purse.

The sensible thing is to make the healthcare system as streamlined and efficient as possible. This includes encouraging those who can afford it to take out private hospital insurance to take pressure off the public system. It includes making sure the public properly understands that the Medicare levy at its present level funds only a small fraction of the total healthcare bill and that, because of the enormous sums involved, no system will ever be capable of providing full treatment on demand for any ailment.

No one understands the political ramifications of taking the eye off the public hospital ball more than Mr Beattie, which probably explains why he was quick to support Mr Rudd's plan for a commonwealth takeover of responsibility. Queensland's health dilemma is made more acute by the fact it has a rapidly growing population, including many retirees to remote coastal locations where few if any health services are available. The reluctance of other state leaders to lose direct control will hopefully ensure they will co-operate with the reform commission process.

Traditionally, health is recognised as a strong suit for Labor. Mr Rudd appears to have embraced the challenge and deserves encouragement to get it right. It would be disappointing, however, if Labor's promise turned out to be little more than the creation of a new body designed primarily to strengthen Canberra's hand when it comes to indulging in the blame game with the states over health.

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Absurd government water-storage failure

Greenie-influenced Leftist politicians have repeatedly backed away from plans to build badly-needed new dams

DESPITE the best winter rainfalls in eight years, southeast Queensland's dams have barely registered an increase in storage levels. The strong winds that have buffeted the southeast coast eased today, but rain continued to fall, particularly on the Sunshine and Gold coasts. Since 9am (AEST) today almost 40mm fell at Maroochydore and over 50mm at Noosa Heads on the Sunshine Coast. However, the Wivenhoe, Somerset and North Pine dams received an average of just 1mm of rain overnight and today, SEQWater said. Since rain began falling in the southeast region on Saturday, the storage levels have risen by just 0.05 per cent to 16.77 per cent. "It appears we have once again got to a stage where our catchment received a solid soaking, but follow-up rain needed to trigger significant inflows has not eventuated," SEQWater operations manager Rob Drury said. Since June 1, almost 150mm was recorded across the three dams, the best falls since 1999.

"On the positive side, this winter has delivered a major unexpected bonus - the best winter rainfall in eight years, adding an extra one-month supply to our dams," Mr Drury said. State Emergency Service (SES) crews are continuing the clean up after this week's strong winds, which gusted to more than 100km/h in some parts. More than 200 SES volunteers spent today clearing fallen trees and debris, and repairing leaky roofs on the Sunshine Coast, although heavy rain in the area slowed their progress. Electricity provider Energex said up to 4000 homes on the Gold Coast remained blacked out today, with crews working to restore power as soon as possible.

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