Letters
Letter to President Bush. (Sent September 2006).
I respectfully ask that you do not proceed with the proposed detainee legislation. I ask that, in keeping with your Country’s great traditions, that the rules of law be honored, to provide a system of justice that is fair and respects basic rights of the individual. The treatment of our Australian citizen, David Hicks, held in detention, without recourse to established legal systems that you have afforded your own accused citizen, brings shame on both our nations. I ask that you withdraw the legislation and allow justice to take its course immediately.
Signed: Julian Wigley.
Counterpoint (ABC) . Kieth Winschuttle and 1 other discuss Aboriginal issues with Michael Duffy.
Posting.
To Counterpoint
Michael Duffy.
I was astounded at the lack of historical insight shown by your two guests. They both should travel more and look at just where people are living in houses in towns. They are usually located alongside rubbish dumps, near sewerage facilities, or on the fringes of towns on land of low economic value. They offered no analysis of why this is the general rule. Nor did they mention that most of the stations in northern Australia, sold for large sums of money to Aboriginal Land Trusts, were in poor condition .
They also neglected to mention that many of the large remote settlements are an artifice of past assimilationist policies. They did not mention the uproar in the Alice Springs community in the early 80’s over the Aboriginal College wanting to establish visitor accommodation for the parents of its students
They offered no suggestions of how to moderate social ills other than the usual bricks and mortar response of providing more hostels, boarding schools and special housing for young people and I assume on graduation from these institutions, financial assistance to enter mainstream society (if they choose).
In the interim I ask:
Where would these additional facilities be built?
Where would visiting families stay when visiting their daughters and sons?
And all this assumes that racism is not as virulent nowadays and pigs might fly.
Julian Wigley.18/7/2004
Dear Editor,
RE: Institutional racism offers simple solutions.
Government policies called by whatever name-protectionist and assimilation policies of the early days of colonisation, up until the 1960’s; self-determination in the early 1970’s; Self-management in the late 70’s and onwards; and now mutual obligation in 2004, are all policies grounded in institutional racism.
It is institutional racism when a section of our society is targeted for behavioural change through the use of regulation or law imposed by government policy. During the 1950’s, in Melbourne, all school children attending public schools, received each day, a half pint of milk to improve their health, support Victorian dairy farmers and change public perceptions about homogenised milk. The policy was aimed at all children, not just children with frail bones or those suffering calcium deficiency.
The Howard government’s policy of Mutual Obligation does nothing to remove the institutional racism that confronts many Aborigines in their day-to-day interactions within Australian society. An immediate consequence of the publicity surrounding the implementation of this recent policy is to reinforce common held perceptions so readily espoused by some Australians that all Aborigines are lazy, dirty and live off welfare…and if they are not living off welfare and are outspoken, they are labelled as opportunists or hucksters, pushing their own political agenda.
Institutional racism must be countered at all levels of our society - in the home, when at the shops, in the street and in all our private and public institutions. A policy of mutual respect may be a good start, after which, mutual responsibilities may also follow. Only then may mutual obligation make some sense.
Yours sincerely
Julian Wigley 12/12/2004
The Age
Letters editor
21/7/05
RE: Editorial Tuesday July 19-Palmer inquiry.
Dear Editor,
Don’t mind you not publishing my letter - but why are you letting Howard’s smoke and mirrors cloud the many issues facing our fragile democracy? Publish the Marr article again.
Your current lead news items are mind numbing:
Howard with Bush; Bush with Howard attending Church; Mrs Howard giving away Argyle Diamonds; Howard and Blair (maybe); Howard and Aussie bomb victims (definite) ; Howard at the cricket (snippet only) etc. He is here, there and everywhere. The man must be on Viagra and most of the media on laudanum or its modern equivalent. Give us a break!
Regards,
Julian Wigley.
PS. A return note from you advising that there were more than 2 responses to the Marr article would also be nice.
28/7/04
Dear Editor
Maybe SBS could send Gerard Henderson and some of his fellow Age columnists a copy of their 2 Part program “The World According to Bush”(Cutting Edge 26/7/04).
These columnists may become less righteous in their defence of the political actions taken by the Bush Administration. This quiet methodical documentary about the American politics exposes the myths and joins many of the dots with clinical precision. This documentary may also help Henderson and others to come to terms with the polemics of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. But then again, if you are a media propagandist, you don’t let the facts stand in the way of the truth.
I hope SBS shows The World According to Bush again as soon as possible.
All the best
Julian Wigley.
The editor
Sunday Age.
27/6/04
Re Michelle Grattan and the FTA
I wish Michelle Grattan would expend more of her considerable analytical energy in separating facts from the nonsense spouted by our politicians. It is time to stop printing politicians’ stock responses eg. “We must do (whatever) because it is in Australia’s national interest” to stitch her stories together. It is time for each issue to be taken up to the politicians and opinion makers.
For starters no one has yet provided an argument against the proposition that
Free Trade Agreements between countries are put in place to provide the rules for the powerful to be free to do what they want.
Maybe Michelle could find out what is “in Australia’s national interest”, instead of continuing to fuel the grubby political machinations of the likes of Howard, Carr or Latham.
All the best.
Julian Wigley