Mal Brough
FORMER Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough spoke about Toomelah on the 7.30 Report recently.
Here is part of what he had to say...
“Enough is enough. We must change from the ways that we’ve been going ‘cause that has failed miserably. We must put them as children first and foremost, culture second and deal with the atrocities that are happening to Australian children today…
“These people are not geographically isolated, they’re socially isolated, and we are causing that by allowing - forcing them, if you like, if you will - to live in a place with no governance, with little law and order and virtually no self-respect or community respect and then we expect it somehow to work. It hasn’t worked for four or five decades…
“What I don’t think helps here, at all, is laying blame at Liberal, Labor, state, federal, Aboriginal, white. We’ve all stuffed it up. We’ve got it wrong. And what we need to do is admit those failings and say that we dedicate ourselves to protecting Australian children. And once we do that and we set that threshold, we’ll start to get somewhere.
“(We must ask) if they were my children, how quickly would I act to try and protect them? Far more rapidly than we have.
“The majority of people, they want to do the right thing, but I sometimes feel that it’s because of the cringe, the cultural cringe, the worry and the fear of being called a racist that we don’t deal with these people. As children, as Australian children, we somehow deal with them differently and we expect a different outcome and we are getting that different outcome…
“Take heed of those brave enough to speak out, and be heard…
“We can only hope that the fires lit by a bunch of bored teenagers, can light a far bigger fire and ignite a sense of urgency. We must, all of us, act to build homes with hallways which echo with children’s laughter long after we are gone from this world. Enough is most definitely, enough.”