The Mean Generation

I rarely take the time out to read an entire article in the Age, more often than not they're too long. But I made an exception for the one on the cover of the Saturday Extra entitled, The Mean Generation.
If someone could dig up the link from theage.com.au I woud be most grateful as I feel its well worth the read for all of us.
Although I'm not an outgoing Labor supporter I do feel that a lot of the "Liberal" Party's polices are well, less than desirable, fucked is a word that comes to mind more often that not.
The said article basically discussess how as a result of Llberal Party policy Australia as a nation has lost a lot of compassion for those far less fortunate than ourselves. The journalist(Robert Manne) cites two prominent examples of this.
The first being Australia's changing perceptions of refugees, specifically those involved in the Tampa incident. That since the events of late august the Navy is determined not to let any refugees set foot on Australian soil. Public perception seems to be that these people aren't real refugees but queue jumpers who throw their children overboard and that genuine refugees are far better mannered(even if they are muslim). And that as a result so many Australian's look down on refugees with disdain and disgust.

In John Howards Australia then, refugees from the most brutal regimes on earth can be described "repulsive" and "disgusting" human beings on account of their desperate acts and impudent desire to have a life

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The second event mentioned in the article is the Liberal governments proposal to erect a monument/memorial to the stolen generation. However no mention of the stolen generation will be made instead they will be refered to as , "the seperated". According to the Liberal Party the stolen generation is no longer an issue and the term is an anachronism which has been resolved in the winds of time. The memorial is to contain sensor activated panels of archival images of aboriginal children playing and singing in foster homes and schools. The main concern with this is the way it attempts to whitewash Australia's past and avoid inhumane wrongs committed.

In John Howards Australia the cause of reconcilliation is pursued by the erection of a memorial where the Aboriginal people use to express their collective tradgedy is deliberately suppressed; where the image chosen to display the suffering of the stolen generations is one of happy children at play; and where the government does not even bother to consult with the indigenous victims of the policy memoralised.

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If anyone could post the link I'd be very grateful. It's an excellent article that I think everyone would benefit from reading. Sometimes I think a lot of us forget how lucky we in fact are. We seem to take self-determination for granted and never stop and think how hard it must be to leave ones home and risk you life in doing so for a chance for something better. It's particularly easy for many to cast harsh judgement of those in need from the relative comfort of the middle class.
[This message has been edited by Prometheus (edited 03 November 2001).]

Little jonhny aint very compassionate when it come to dealing with heroin addicts either...
A lot of them need some help more than they need a kick in the ass.
*shrugs* I dont know politics, but i know what i dont like, and thats little Howard.
Come to think of it i just dont like politics altogether
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You must have smoked some bad granola.

^^^^^
I think this is a problem, no disrespect meant Twigz but if people don't take enough of an interest in politics politicians can exploit that and use it to their own advantages. Democracy can't work properly unless voters make an effort to be informed. I think the general apathy towards politics exhibited by so many is a tremendous shortcoming of our system and if anything is a fetter to political development. That's one of the reasons shit like I already mentioned in my other post is allowed to continue.
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One more hour.

Its like Ralph Nader's saying: If you dont turn on to politics, politics will turn on you...
[This message has been edited by -Thoth (edited 03 November 2001).]

YOur right prom, i should take more of an interest, and i do try sometimes..
But i find it hard to pay attention when they are probably not going to do what they say anyway...
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You must have smoked some bad granola.

And as Robert Mann said in that article, "I will be voting Labour, but with a very heavy heart"

Even after 350 asylum-seekers drowned off the coast of Indonesia, the number of people opposing all boat arrivals inreased (link).

The sad fact is that over 50% of Australian people don't even know that Australia has a written constitution!
Great article.....!

The sad fact is that over 50% of Australian people don't even know that Australia has a written constitution!
Great article.....!

i find that we are a very mean generation.... young people are being as conservative as their parents are when it comes to immigrants.... as well as blindly supporting our politicians in the "war on terriosm"....
it saddens and shocks me to hear my friends talk of afghani's (in afghan and on boats) as they are not human, as if they choose to harbour terriosts
people i think (flame me if you will, i will just ignore you ) generally have their heads up their asses.... they never try to look at both sides of a picture, and are very closed minded with narrow self intrests at heart... they never stop to think they could of been born in afghanistan and that a person over there is STILL A PERSON...
people are evil
(no its not a blue monday for me, i havent dropped for a bit... i just think the world is fucked)

Well all im going to say, is that, ERRR labour sucks arse and i dont want that big Jabar the hutt, lookalike Kim beazley running this country.. Look where labour got us ten years ago.. A massive 30billion dollar debt.. While Liberal have managed to repair labours F7Ck ups and get us back in surplus. Now you want to go throw the country back down the girgler?
Ilegal immergrant issues and appologies have nothing to do with anything, there just beaten up media issues, and dont contribute to how the country runs.. IMO, people should be looking at how the country in managed finacially. This is whats inmportant..
PS (I totally dissagree with us having to say "sorry".. This was not our genertation and it will be our generation and generations to follow that has to pay the few bilion in compensation (that will go on for another 100years or so)
Liberal all the way, and bring back JEFF!!!

re: Labor's debt. that was called a global recession. it followed after one of the longest periods of growth in recent decades. that was called "the 80's". Labor governed between 1983 and 96, and the economy kicked arse for most of that time. no offense Chem, but you've been suckered. by the coalition.
re: the Coalition's human rights record. the current government has sucked the humanitarian soul out of our country, a country that was BUILT on refugess. it disgusts me that people can ignore the things the government does to refugees, to aboriginal people, to universities, to low-income earners, to drug addicts, to the healthcare system, to the environment. it disgusts me that Australians care more about some fiddled budget surplus than about actual issues. and it disgusts me that australians would consider voting for a government with no agenda, a poor human rights record, and an entirely negative outlook based on defense against some "threat" from foreigners.
there is not a snowflake's chance in hell that i'm voting for Howard, because i want a progressive Australia. i don't want to be a part of a nation of arseholes and xenophobic economic rationalists.
PS twigz: that's why you get involved. if more people paid attention, politicians wouldn't be able to get away with it when they try to pull a swifty

chem night: That is one of the most flawed, backwards arguments I have heard in a while.

PS (I totally dissagree with us having to say "sorry".. This was not our genertation and it will be our generation and generations to follow that has to pay the few bilion in compensation (that will go on for another 100years or so)

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Do you have any idea the suffering that has been caused because of OUR race. It doesn't matter whether it was our generation or not, the damage has been done, and now it is up to US, the people responsible to try and rectify the situation. Looking at basic human rights issues from a purely finiancial view won't fix anything. These are peoples we have toyed with. Money can't fix the damage we have done, but it may be able to help some of the colateral damage we have helped contribute to.
argh...

Play nice kids.....
I totally agree with you DQ. You too Horsey.
You only have to look at the Libs advertising campaign. It's pathetic. Full of half truths,lies and misrepresentations.
Ah politics. Such a noble pursuit!
Finn

Re: that wasn't our generation.
Try reading Manne's issue of the 'Quarterly Essay'. Systemic child removal ran through to the late 1960's, with some individual cases occuring well after this. This is not some far off, 'let the past lie' period- most of our parents voted for governments supporting such policy and legislation.
We are the sum of our past.
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"...Clevinger was dead. That was the major flaw in his philosophy..."

I couldn't agree with you more DQ!!
Whatever happened to compassion in our society? It seems like now it's every man for himself, when it comes to issues like these.
As for the election all I know is that I'm not voting for Howard!!! I'm still undecided about if I'm going to vote for Beazley though, maybe I'll see what the Democrats and the Greens have in their agenda's.

The oft-quoted phrase - "a man who isn't a socialist at 16 has no heart, a man who isn't a conservative at 36 has no mind."
The good ole liberal beat-up - thankfully not everyone is 16.
I really don't have strong feelings for either of the major parties, and short of wasting my vote on the democrats or worse, I see the liberals as the lesser of two evils.
Re: both the perceived major problems - reconciliation and the boat people. What solutions do you propose? Solutions that will not cost millions upon millions of dollars and will not be an affront to the people that elected you in?
That's what you have to remember - politicians may lie, people may be idiots, and the world may be unfair - but at the end of the day - the government is the mouthpiece for the majority of people in this country, elected to spend the national purse in the public interest, and if there is a line that is chosen through policy and it is supported through elections, then unfortunately or perhaps fortunately, that is the line that will be followed.
As much of a non-pc thing it is to say - I prefer to cover my own ass before the rest of the worlds. And you are lying to yourself if you don't feel the same way. Taking money out of other areas - education, health, aboriginal funding, roads, federal infrastructure, etc to fund reconciliation monuments and committees and to house and process thousands of refugees may be a nice thought - but if it means that public hospitals get worse and waiting lists increase, the level of public schooling and tertiary education drops and costs rise and the quality of our infrastructure is diminished – ie it starts affecting your life negatively - will you still back these ideas?
That is the question you are faced with - a lot of people complain till they are blue in the face - but being a politician is about providing answers to the problems that face our country. The answers may not appease everyone in the world, or even everyone in our own country, but these solutions are provided as the majority dictate and we have to accept that. I feel the people that provide the best answers and have Australia's best interests at heart are the liberals. I don't usually discuss my political affiliations in public (sex, politics and religion and all that) but those are my views and they make sense to me... hopefully they do for enough people on election day.
Boobs.

SupaspeeD - thats right on the ball.
You guys keep going on and on just like the media. Boat people and reconciliation are hardly issues that are inmportant to this coutries running. Its fine for the more compassionate around us to feel the need to do something about these issues, but i am more economically minded. Call me anything you like, but i feel no need to appoligise for something i never did.. And i do not feel obliged to help the boat people. (who mind you have $10000 each to get over here - hardly peasents)

Do you have any idea the suffering that has been caused because of OUR race. It doesn't matter whether it was our generation or not, the damage has been done, and now it is up to US, the people responsible to try and rectify the situation. Looking at basic human rights issues from a purely finiancial view won't fix anything. These are peoples we have toyed with. Money can't fix the damage we have done, but it may be able to help some of the colateral damage we have helped contribute to.

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HEY I AM AN INDIVIDUAL, what my so called "race" does or did has nothing to do with me as far as im concerned. Going by that thinking we should just blow the shit out of Japan, cause there race tried to take over the world way back, and lets wipe out afgansitan, cause there race terrorised us. Im sorry but we are all responsible for own OWN actions.
And if you didn't know it, aboriginees (even 1 / 16th) aboriginees already get benifits over the normal Autralian citizen. I also regard this as unfair. Where are the benifits for the anglo Australians or any other race for that matter, who are at or below the poverty line..

yossarian.lives
Try reading Manne's issue of the 'Quarterly Essay'. Systemic child removal ran through to the late 1960's, with some individual cases occuring well after this. This is not some far off, 'let the past lie' period- most of our parents voted for governments supporting such policy and legislation.
We are the sum of our past.

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Yeah but if this all goes down now, it will not be them paying the majority of the compensation. It will be us, and as i have stated I will be held accountable for my own actions, not those of anyone else, including my parents.

it disgusts me that people can ignore the things the government does to refugees, to aboriginal people, to universities, to low-income earners, to drug addicts, to the healthcare system, to the environment. it disgusts me that Australians care more about some fiddled budget surplus than about actual issues.

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Maby they dont ignore, maby they are put in their place. Maby if we all had lived through something like the great depression, you would understand why our parents, grandparents etc etc, put the IMPORTANT ISSUES first. Which is the running of the country, cause thats what a government is for. One point i agree on, is the environment, but this needs noc'd up on the world wide agenda, cos this is something that will effect all of us, but has nothing been done about in reality.
It discusts me that people could ignore the REAL ISSUES, like international trade, import and export, economic growth, budgets, unemployement. All the stuff that keeps this coutry ticking along smoothly, and growing. Instead they put these stupid media beat ups at the front of the gullables mind when voting.
Oh and i am an avid supporter of privatisation. The government suck at running businesses, so why throw money down the toilet.
Connecting.....
Connected at 28000 bps...
Waiting for response flames...
[This message has been edited by ChEmIcaL_NiGhT (edited 05 November 2001).]

Hey Chemical Night - Liked your seconds post, sounded very reasoned (even though I disagree with most of it, it's nice to get an conservative view that doesn't come across like a rabid One Nation supporter being kicked in the nuts).
However, I'm going to use one of your major points against you (well, not just you... ... but most of the people who have been sucked by the Liberal's propaganda).
Think, when you vote on Saturday, about who you're voting for. Are you voting for a party who has cynically played the "race card" for all it's worth - demonising refugees as "queue jumpers", using the most cynical methods available to drag disenchanted One Nation supporters kicking and screaming back to the liberals - you claim in your post above that these are the "real issues" - no, they're not. The REAL ISSUE is why there are refugees in the first place, and why they're coming to Australia. Somehow, the "issue" has been twisted and bastardised into a "flooding of Australia" with "illegal immigrants". NOT refugees, but "illegal immigrants". Even the term refugee has become out of fgavour since the liberal's cynical vote-buying program started. You think of refugee and you think of someone deserting a country which was dangerous to them. You think "illegal immigrant" (as the Liberals have so successfully forced us to) and you think of people with money paying "people smugglers" to bring them over, and... take Australian jobs... marry our daughters... form ghettos, and every other negative racial stereotype you can think of.
It's the LIBERAL party who have convinced Australia this is occuring, and it's one of the lowest things that a political party can do - playing the race card for their own vote - demonising other people, in MUCH worse positions than us - in order to win an election.
Labor hasn't fared much better - they've been too scared to openly knock Liberal policy on this one, for fear of losing too many "afraid-of-the-asian-boogeyman" votes. However, they have better green & education policies, and economic management is higher on the agenda than it ever has been (see the labor states handing of their economies, esp. Tasmania - a previous basket case. The old argument that Labor will screw the economy holds no water).
Oh well, I've ranted enough and prolly havce much more to say but I'm scaring people off.

"rock job"