‘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

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?