Social Justice Commisioner’s speech

Went to the Yabun Festival in Victoria Park to hear Tom Calma, give a speech on his past five years as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner.

Tom Calma. Pic: from HREOC website

He retires from that position at the end of January (this week), so he did a summary of his achievements.

But question time was particularly spiky, with a couple of blokes saying exactly what they thought about Calma’s “shortcomings”. In a verbal sense, it was on for young and old.

I wouldn’t have expected that for a person’s “farewell to the job” speech. I felt the criticisms were a bit unfair, as they were saying they’d wanted more progress, and Calma had already outlined what was achieved and that was the best that he could do. No point banging someone over the head for that.

Continue reading Social Justice Commisioner’s speech

The GFC and how it happened

Went to a talk about the GFC, what caused it and what’s the outlook. It was given by a Socialist Alliance member, K, and there were other contributors. I’ve amalgamated all the info.

Basically, the GFC – which will probably get worse for the next decade at least, started in the 1980s – an era when the mantras were “Greed is good”. Words and phrases such as “impossible” or “can’t be done” were for losers.

Taking notes.

In the US, giant companies such as General Electric (GE) made mechanical goods — washing machines and missiles. But the end of the 1980s, it discovered it could make bigger profits by investing in the financial industry. By the 1990s, GE’s financial arm was making 10 times more than its industrial goods section. GE went into debt because there was a lot of cheap money around to borrow, thanks to developing economies (eg workers in China – paid a pittance – but still able to save.) GE then used these loans to invest in financial “bubbles”, such as the internet “Tech wreck” bubble of 2001 and the recent Home Loans bubble and initially got large returns.

Continue reading The GFC and how it happened

‘Let’s sit around a fire’

Went to a workshop held by Richard Downs, one of about 30-40 Aboriginal Elders who took part in the Ampilatwatja walk-off in June last year – they walked away from their community in the NT to set up camp in the bush. He’s the spokesman for the Alyawarra people  living at the township of Ampilatwatcha, 350 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs.

They’re planning to install a bore and make the camp entirely self-sufficient with solar energy and permaculture.

Richard Downs. Photo: The Juice Media

Everyone wants to go and visit the camp, but he said they can’t have visitors until they’ve got water. Now they’re carting water from the nearby township. They’re looking for donations and are getting some union funding.

Continue reading ‘Let’s sit around a fire’

‘We don’t want your handout’

NT Aboriginal Leaders condemn Intervention, housing program failure

Alyawarr spokesperson and leader Richard Downs, from Ampilatwatja community in the Northern Territory,  condemns the ongoing rollout of the NT Emergency Response Measures. He and other elders walked off their settlement in June last year and started a community protest camp on his traditional country. They’re going to try and use solar power and perma culture etc to build a self-sufficient community, without any government support.

It was covered by the media in July 2009.