Here’s one for you then “Australian Bureau of Statistics, National Health Survey: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Results, Australia, 2001 notes that 58% of Indigenous respondents did not drink alcohol, compared with 38% of non-Indigenous respondents. 12% of Indigenous respondents were likely to consume alcohol at risky/high risk levels, compared with 11% of non-Indigenous respondents.

Housing gets smashed for lots of reasons, in Wadeye because we built a permanent town and unilaterally allocated permanent rights in a place that two distinct groups of people have shared for generations. In other places we try to force people to live in homes that are environmentally and culturally inappropriate. Ask someone who lives in a modern concrete slab concrete block home in Parap Grove or Palmy (like we insist on building in communities) how environmentally appropriate that kind of house is, then ask them what their A/C bill is, now jam 17 people into each one, who wouldn’t want to kick the frigging windows out? But it’s a lot easier just to say that drunken abos don’t appreciate white generosity and are too brutish to live in proper houses.

The roots of abuse are complex but the roots of the intervention are not. It is about assimilation and land theft. If Howard had any intention to address the abuse of children he would have acted on least one of the Wild/Anderson recommendations. Like the engineer says get informed, read the report (http://www.nt.gov.au/dcm/inquirysaac), help where you can and for christ’s sake stop mindlessly blaming aborigines and telling ignorant racist lies about them.

John reckons that “… our correspondent is shocked with the results of the sexual health screening and cannot undersand the meaning of the test results. Even I as a lay peson know that this means that people with STDs are having intercourse with these infants and children.” However John is reading his own bias into Chris’s observations. Chris does not say or imply that these high rates of Indigenous STIs exist amongst children or under age sections of the Indigenous population. There is no basis for John’s subsequent diatribe.

For example, when John states that “… we have many thousands of non aboriginal people living on the same welfare allowance incomes … but the rates of abuse are considerably less, albeit not nonexistant?” this is plain wrong. The rates of child neglect and abuse amongst non-Aboriginal welfare recipients are not “non-existant”: they are also worryingly high.

John, you should think carefully about your assertions and logic, do better research of the topic, and apologise to Chris and any Aboriginal people who may have had the misfortune to read your prejudiced claptrap.

He is correct.

The basis of Chris Wilson’s assertion that: “The point is that an incredibly expensive intervention had really achieved very little. It had overlooked the very basic fact that remote area medicine and health practice is a sophisticated specialty.” seemingly is a ‘grapevine’ story of an oncologist sending 7 aboriginal children for a echocardiograms with only 1 positive finding.

That in fact is a higher positive finding rate than Sydney or Melbourne but even if it did demonstrate a waste of resources (and it does not), it is just one example and proves nothing. Finally Chris Wilson assertion appears to be counter to the first year government interim report. Lastly the assertion that “remote area medicine and health practice is a sophisticated specialty” is tenuous at best (and I acknowledge that fine and disciplined people are developing it) but even if it were true aboriginal health care child and adult in remote Australia is appallingly poor compared to aboriginal health care in urban areas.

Bob Durnan is experienced, sensible and informed but apart from criticising John I would prefer to hear his thoughts on the article (if he is free to and independent of Chris Wilson).

We told that in years of experience that no child abuse was noted. But the description of the illnesses and afflictions these children are suffering from, all of them predicted but avoidable if appropriate care is given, can only be described as one thing ….. ABUSE.

This professional then criticizes a specialist doctor for referring children for further testing with only 1 positive being found and claims nurses could have done better. Firstly surely it is better for the one positive to be confirmed and then treated. Secondly if this nurse is so concerned that a specialist Doctor could be so inaccurate or wrong, was a complaint made to the relevant medical board and specialist college. Surely this is money where the mouth is time!

We are then told that this whole problem is one of poverty. Can someone tell me why we have many thousands of non aboriginal people living on the same welfare allowance incomes as every other Australian, not to mentioin many millions even billions of dollars being spent on other schemes only available to aboriginal people on top of normal allowances, but the rates of abuse are considerably less, albeit not nonexistant?

Then our correspondent is shocked with the results of the sexual health screening and cannot undersand the meaning of the test results. Even I as a lay peson know that this means that people with STDs are having intercourse with these infants and children. Even if it is accepted that we should not impose our moral codes on anyone else, especially members of another race, the fact remans that such behaviour is against the law. There is an offence of misprision of a felony when someone with knowledge of the commission of a serious offence fails to report it to the authorities. It would appear that this professional has committed that offence because apart from sitting on toilet seats, and these poverty inflicted people may well not have such items, there is only one other way for these kids to have caught these diseases. If this health professional doesn’t know how people catch sexually transmitted diseases it is little wonder that the problem still exists in he communities .

The answer of course is that testing needs to be done and treament given to those afflicted, and bearing in mind that we are talking about infants and children then something needs to be done to prevent the abuse. Oh yes, after all these years that is what the Liberal Government (for whom I don’t normally carry a torch) attempted to do, but this health professional disapproves of that approach.

The time is long overdue for strong treatment. If parents will not or cannot protect their infants and children then the community must. If that means removal of the children from the parent’s custody then so be it. Living in remote areas is no excuse. If immigrants from other countries moved here and tended to live in little enclaves, as indeed they do, and treated their childen like this there would be justifiable uproar. Some of these immigrants and refugees come here no better off economically that the meanest aboriginal family and manage to exist, indeed prosper, with the same social welfare support and payments as are available to any member of the community but they manage not to have these common almost predictable health results. Why is it that such behaviour is allowed to happen because it is aboriginal people doing it?

I am sure I will be branded as a racist, but if pointing out the obvious is racist then I plead guilty. No other racial or cultural group in this Country has such embarrassingly bad child health results. No matter what economic background all the immigrant groups over the years have had, and some such as war refugees have had no better economic status than any aboriginal group, they have never allowed their families to suffer such problems. It can only be because there is a cultural belief in the aboriginal community that such a state of affairs if fine or even desireable that this situation exists to such a degree .

2. If you want to do something to help (and who doesn’t?), then read and understand both the main article and writer #2. Both are intelligent, caring folk with differing views of the world. Having lived and worked in Alice many years back, thye both resonate with me to an extent.

3. If you have a real answer, please get on with it. Those involved most, the children, cannot afford for you to wait. But while you try to communicate and to understand, do not stop others from their efforts, however much they may be misguided.

Communicate! But most of all, remember that communication is a lost art, nevr found in a committee room.

The LCAS report was correct in recognising that communication and confidence building are essential prerequisites for action.

Neither writer seems to have taken the time to do either.