I’d like to acknowledge the traditional
owners of what was, is and always will be Aboriginal land, the Ngarigu, Ngunnawal and
Ngambri peoples, and their Elders, past and present.
I’d
also like to acknowledge that, while former Prime Minister Kevin ‘selfie-doesn’t-seem-so-cute-now’
Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations was a bloody good start, it was not
followed by enough action (a bit like the Southern Stars, Rabbitohs, Waratahs and
every other fucking sporting team I follow) so let’s start by fixing that.
Because
until we fix the relationship between our First Nations peoples and the rest of
Australia we will remain a broken, dysfunctional society where, due to repeated
foot-stamping and willful ignorance and neglect, if you are born Aboriginal
your life-expectancy is more than 15 years less than the rest of the population
and you are at least 10 times more likely to be in prison.
All
research says, unlike the paternalistic intervention in the Northern Territory
and the Orwellian-named Stronger Futures, the best-placed people to help
Aboriginal people are Aboriginal people. So let’s ask the elected representatives
of the peak Indigenous body what they want.
The
National Congress of Australia’s First Nations peoples – it’s your job to tell
the Government what to do, and it’s our job, as servants of the people, to do
it.
Let’s
also have a look at what’s working in Indigenous health – the National
Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation and its members have been making real
inroads into improving health so let’s throw a shitload more money their way.
And
while we’re at it, let’s go some way to addressing the massive
over-representation of Aboriginal people in our prisons. Firstly, funding to
Aboriginal Legal Services is also going to get a shitload more money.
Then
we’re going to implement justice reinvestment – we’re going to spend a fucking
massive shitload of cash on programs for young people, encouraging, helping and
supporting them in whatever ways they need so they can make an informed
risk-benefit analysis about leading a productive and helpful life compared to
fucking up.
Next,
we’re going to make it harder to become a criminal by getting rid of some of
the more bizarre and illogical criminal statutes.
We’re
going to legalise marijuana and decriminalise all other drugs and tax the hell
out of all of them. From now on you can make your own decisions about what you
want to put in your bodies without government interference but you will pay through
the nose (or gullet or vein, depending on your poison) for that privilege. If I
have to deal with reality with only Socialist Chardonnay as a crutch, I don’t
see why the rest of you consciousness-altering fuckers shouldn’t stump up for a
fun tax too. (Obviously, we’ll need to come up with a better name than ‘fun
tax’.) Anyone currently in prison for possession is to be released immediately.
But what are all these newly-emancipated
people going to do for work?
Well, they’re going to look after our
future. They’re going to have the option of joining the workforce for the
Better World programs, where they can train to be anything from construction
workers (bags being in a photo with those guys so I can borrow one of their
hats) to build solar farms, plant turf on every possible roof, decommission all
of Australia’s coal-powered stations and lots of other awesome ideas – to study
science at uni so we can continually reprove the earth is round to make Clive
Palmer finally shut the fuck up. (We will keep his dinosaurs though, as a
constant reminder of how fucking stupid, yet funny, rich people can be).
And speaking of stupid – the economy.
To pay for all these programs and other
awesomely good and progressive ideas as they occur to me, we’re going to tax
the absolute fucking hell out of the rich. We’re going to tax those bludging
born-to-rule silver-spooners so hard they’ll be sending up smoke signals of
piles of burning cash on the altar of capitalism and sacrificing their
first-borns to the gods of greed in the forlorn hope of making repatriations
for two centuries of self-interest. We’re going to make those fuckheads yearn
for the days of a mining tax on super profits.
Rich companies, rich people – I don’t
fucking care, they’ve had it far too fucking good for far too fucking long and
now it’s time they learned Australia is more than their own personal quarry
because the minerals belong to all of us, so it’s only fair that the rest of us
see at least some of the profits.
And if any one of those whinging
revisionists so much as breathes in to complain they’ll be packed off to Manus
Island before they can even say ‘the 457 Visa scheme was a great idea’.
And, for every whining billionaire that we
export, we’ll import 10,000 refugees, building a new industry – compassionate
humanity.
For that we need a smart, caring, educated
populace – and thank fuck we have that.
Note: 'shitload' and 'fucking shitload' are technical terms used in economics.
