‘Choice’ at gunpoint

[catsidhe]

Money not motivating factor behind lease signing: Brough

Mal “They're like children, honestly!” Brough has signed a 99-year lease deal with Galarrwuy Yunupingu over his people's traditional land. Money was not a part of the negotiations, says Brough, only the opportunities available to his people.

Well, yes. But don't make the mistake of thinking that Yunupingu went into this bright-eyed and optimistic. As is usual with Propaganda, the kick in the tail is not omitted, but is buried in the penultimate sentence, where it is hoped no-one will get around to reading it. Quote:

“He is being given the option of compulsory acquisition under the Northern Territory intervention or signing over to a 99-year lease.”

That's a hell of a ‘choice’, isn't it? Yunupingu signed that lease under extreme coercion: sign, or lose your lands altogether. Sell your birthright to the government in return for the right to continue living there, or else we'll take it anyway, and you, and your people, are fucked.

Yes, I can imagine the discussion about the opportunities available to Yunupingu's people: be a shame if we were forced to turf them off our land once we are forced to evict you. 'Course, if you signed this little piece of paper, none of that need happen, does it?



And, of course, the ABC displays its Stalinist left-wing bias again, sucking up to the left-wing bleeding hearts like it always does, making things so unnecessarily difficult for the Government.

Wait, what?



That dull drumming sound you hear is me beating my head on the desk. Again.

Comments

Actually

[erudito.livejournal.com]

The reporting by the ABC is not very good, since the government action is not given any context. So it comes across as just random bastardry.

Re: Actually

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

No reporting that I have seen has given this any context. (Apart from “Ha! The Government WINz0r! Take that you lazy bleeding-heart lazy-Abo-lovers!!!”, which doesn't exactly help.) The line I quoted from Jon Altman was the most cogent piece of context I have seen anywhere, in fact. And it rated precisely one line in one summary on-line.

And that night on the 7:30 Report, Yunupingu opened his mouth, and Mal Brough's voice came out, it was spooky. Because the context given was all “How the kind and benevolent government won over a reflexively obstructionist barrier to Progress,” with little actual detail of what Yunupingu's concerns were. But no, it must be the ABC's fault. Evidence that any of the others are any better? Why would that be relevant?

And when the event is given context, that context indicates that Yunupingu was deliberately and specifically worked on to weaken any criticism, and gut any opposition, certainly any organised opposition. That indicates to me a systematic, methodical act of bastardry.

Because, this was all about the CHIIIIILDREN!!! Remember? So, how many cases of Child abuse has this invasion discovered? Um, precisely none. Some others have been uncovered and prosecuted in this time, sure. But by regular coppers, not the OMFG Special Forces. And what process is being seriously expedited? Not local clinics, or provision of resources for schooling (while there has been some action towards getting the children to go to the schools they've got), but the wholesale ‘reform’ of land rights? That's going gangbusters.

But no, seeing any sort of ulterior motive would be simply unfair.


And another thing: maybe I'm just blindingly ignorant, and everyone else sees this as a trivially obvious detail, not worth mentioning, but who is leasing to whom? Has the government acquired the land, and is supplying a 99 year lease back to the inhabitants for some kind of (possibly nominal) rent, or does the local Aboriginal Corporation still retain title, and the government is leasing the land and on-leasing it to people so that they can own their own homes, &c.?

It seems a fairly important detail, but no-one, anywhere, to my knowledge has explained it. Not the (Stalinist) ABC. Not The Age. Not eh Cheersquad in the Herald-Scum or the Oz.

Somehow, that's the ABC's fault as well.

Re: Actually

[erudito.livejournal.com]

I am happy to agree that the general quality of Oz journalism is not very high. The failure to provide any context is a longstanding and besetting sin.

It would be nice to argue that the ABC journos stopped looking for further context because it would blunt the "it was forced" point. But I suspect it was just general superficiality. In a choice between malice and incompetence, go for incompetence I say.

So why exactly are we required to pay for yet more not very good journalism?

After all, a fundamental justification for public broadcasting is to provide what other sources don't. Which they haven't. Hardly for the first time.

Re: Actually

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

The ABC was the only organisation to do, to my knowledge, any context searching. No-one else mentioned the ‘take what we offer, or else’ nature of the ‘negotiations’. No-one else went to anyone with an informed idea of what was going on. (Policy- and social-wise, anyway. When there were commentators, and there were many, they were talking about the political ramifications: does this ringbark any opposition to the ‘intervention’? Does this mean that the Government is winning over even the more obstructionist Aborigines? &c. Not so much ‘what was the context of the deal?’ or ‘was that community actually in need of any intervention in the first place?’ or ‘what might be ulterior motives, and how could we tell if they came into play?’)

So 1) the ABC's letting out that this had nothing to do with the well-being of Yunupingu's people, and a lot to do with the politics and strategy of forcing the intervention on people who don't want it, is because the ABC went and asked the questions, even if they haven't followed up on it. (And for all I know, they are, in the background.) And if it wasn't for the ABC, we wouldn't even know that.

Do you really think that if the ABC went away that the quality of reporting would go up?