I can see there’s been a lot of taxation wasted on your education or lack of it.

Now I know that this will set you off and you’ll feel the need to strive for relevance by spitting back some bit of nastiness or silliness but that’s ok. The rest of us will just get on and try to work as best we can for a better world. I await your vituperative response.

Your not JamesK are you?

The stimulus packages were designed to have people spending to keep retail and tarde sectors aflow in the most populated areas and guess what it worked. Do you even understand any of the money issues you just spoke about.

And as for the race card Thorpe played and you used. The department in charge of Indigenous affairs has a 10% indigenous employment rate, considering that there are only about 500,000 indigenous people in Australia, making up about 0.5% of the population thats pretty dam good.

As for the housing issue. They don’t own the houses they are in at the moment. Thoses Houses, and I use that word very sparingly, are owned by a corporation who didn’t want to loose the right to run them - the Government contracts are fairly large. They need to be taken from this corporation because of miss-management.

What will happen now is they will be on a 40 year lease (worth over $135 million) and any person(s) living there will have to full the standard continutions of a lease. Not a problem for a vast majority of the people who live there, but for the ‘evil minions’ that break the place into pieces can be moved out, thus making a safer place for the majority to live.

How do I know this, wait for it…. because its reported in a varity of newspapers across the country! Try reading beyond the one or two that you do now and you will see. Look for the online verious that cover NT, Cape York, Broome etc.

There is great worth in him making such a speech, because of “the power of celebrity and sport, especially in sport mad Australia”. His opinion carries weight here. And like apartheid South Africa, speaking out about our unfinished business back in the old country carries even more weight (with the colonial cultural cringe in full effect). Big shame job.

Ian Thorpe must not have made this speech lightly. He must know that it would have the content largely ignored by the Australian mass media outlets, and open him up to the kinds of character assassination that always happen in this country when someone in a privileged position dares to shine the light on this issue - Australia’s great untreated, septic, weeping wound (surely at the heart of any notions of nationhood, civilisation, and claims to being a developed country).

I think there are so many great points raised in this speech, eloquently voiced:
“A commitment to the first Australians is well within the means of my country, and this is what I find inexcusable. I am talking about an issue with a solution.”

The Australian government is spending billions upon billions of dollars in stimulus. If this “nation” and government was true in it’s word to address indigenous disadvantage and suffering, then that money could have been put to work for the solution of this issue. It would all still be stimulus, the money gets spent, perhaps more effectively than much of the stimulus package is being spent now. There are plenty of big infrastructure projects needed. We the “settlers” could have done the great work. But the will is not there and it is “inexcusable”.

What makes me very sad is to see what can be accomplished by Australians when the will is there. Look at the Victorian bushfires and the national response.
Imagine if that great generosity of spirit was harnessed for our First Peoples and their even worse predicament ?

And Ian Thorpe speaks directly to the point of the so called “intervention”. A topic that has been willfully obscured by governments and mass media when not deliberately ignored.
“Once more an Australian government has claimed it is doing its best for Aboriginal Australians by taking over their communities, appointing white managers, more government bureaucrats, promising all kinds of things, if Aboriginal people will just sign over their communities under forty year leases to the Federal Government. And politicians wonder why Aboriginal people do not trust them.”

And if you think all Mr Thorpe is doing is talking, read it again, e.g :
“We support pre-schooling, health education, literacy backpacks that let kids carry home reading for the whole family. And we use sport where we can to make a difference.”
And at the end of the speech, a young man who was able to work hard enough to break world records and win olympic gold says:
“I do intend to work hard at this for the rest of my life. That is my promise to you”
Do you doubt his word ?

How many more will speak up and commit ?
Could Australia ever become a healed and mature nation ?

Second, people can take things to place and say things that might make others uncomfortable - but changing things like the truth to be able to do it may not be the right way to do it.

If the comment was made that something is being doen but not enought, thats one thing. To get up and give a speech that really may have made more sense years. Its not a secret, the intervention was world wide news. I don’t really understand this concept that Ian Thorpe has come and brought light to some dark corner that was hide from the people by Government conspiricy - its just not like that.

Billions has and is still going. Effectively the activity of Nation Buildings has happening and it is not fast or easy and in places with de-stablising factors and a lack of security it has a high level of failure.

Australia as a developed nation has a role to play in the rest of the world which it can do because it is developed nation. More attendtion is given to its views, it gets a larger say in matters and is able to train world class swimmers

All the best

I asked about your income in relation to when you were eighteen as I worked and helped at a community football club and that took most of my free time. I was assuming that you achieved a lot for the time and I couldn’t understand how somebody could achieve this, therefore I asked you a question_sorry.

As for shooting the messenger, I did not introduce terms such as “evil minions”, “little whiney detractors” “the ignorant” or “devils playmates”. I asked I believe uncomfortable questions(as any about income/class are) as nicely as possible, without name calling in order to learn how somebody could achieve what you claimed.

I addressed my questions to you as ,except for the name calling, you appeared to actually have some knowledge.

Once again I pose the question

You say lobbying changes things and it may take time but you say that you have been involved since the eighties but Mr Thorpe speech intimates nothing has been done. Has there been change and improvement through the charitable works or no?

I dont know when the first charitable organisation was formed but I’m sure it was long before Sir Bob or Bono.

Once again sorry for asking a question, I mentioned I was confused in the first sentence to try and stress that I was asking not opinionating but I guess I didn’t communicate it clearly enough to you.

In regard to the snap comment, I have as much control over responses other than my own as you do.

I agree with Mr Geelong

Great for you, you did stuff, no one is trying to take than from you

Once again all apologies for being ignorant(read having a differing opinion than you)

All the other guy was question something, and really it was in a pretty nice way and you get all worked up, and yet you question everyone else.

Great for you, you did stuff, no one is trying to take than from you, the guy just asked some questions and isn’t that the point - to ask questions?

I’m sorry you don’t get mention in books or on TV, but by the sounds of it thats not why you did your bit - and before you get angry again - lots of people do that and they just keep going along (also not a secret).

The article is about Thorpes rant about Australia. Maybe the guy want to make a stand, maybe he just took a change to get noticed. The point is that its not a secret, and this undeveloped country is a big part of what made him (I’m sure he pay the AIS back for all the training and travel).

And also, step back beacuse its not about you. I get it you saw things and its pissed you off every since, but its not about you.

So maybe its not really a secret

I am confused by your comments. At eighteen you seem to have been wonderful. The frustration shown by some commentors here is the same you express about Dr Fiona Stanley.

I thought Mr Pilgers series of documentaries for the bicentennial shone a light on these issues so I find it seems odd that in the nineties it was considered irrelevant as I recall we had a Prime Minister who seemed forthright on Blackfella issues in Mr Keating, by your comments you were involved and would know better but I am just relating how it seemed to me.

I cant see how you could achieve what you did at eighteen and still earn a living. It sounds like you didn’t need an income. If so then good for you, some people need to spend a lot of their time surviving themselves and dont have as much time to involve themselves with others lives.

You only seem to quote celebrities as examples of charity work. I would name Dr Hollows before any you mentuioned. Especially Bono who fronts the biggest Dutch band in the world for tax reasons but spends his time telling governments what to do with their money. (They were Irish until taxation on artists was introduced then bye bye.)

The evil minions are perhaps people who question rather than slavishly follow celebrities who try to tell the rest of the world how to live. You say lobbying changes things and it may take time but you say that you have been involved since the eighties but Mr Thorpe speech intimates nothing has been done. Has there been change and improvement through the charitable works or no?

Once again I prefer the shining light on the hill version, make you life and local area as good as it can be and then spread the actions that work around, not he find the poorest of the poor so I can feel superior and have nice photos for my resume.

Wait isn’t spreading knowledge and ideas to expand the platform of thinking on an issue making a difference? Oh no, its only ok if its inline with what you were already thinking, sorry my mistake, where was I…

Michael Jackson, thats really who you want to use as an example. Its just to easy so I’m not going to even bother.

I see your work and spare time went into want you felt and needed to do - good for you. I’m sure an Olympian Swimmer had heaps of time on his hands to do great researh and think long and hard about the issue, looking across the spectrum of options before deciding the only way was to start his our charity, diverty money away from other charities, and wow he still had time to win!

The man should write time management books, since he must have discovered how to put more hours in a week. He could sell them and change the world, then all that would be left to do is sing ‘Good Morning Star Shire’.

But I sure the world you would have created when you were 18, SBH, would be been great.

I think this is one of those issues where ‘everyone is to blame and no one is to blame’. Every single stakeholder is this has planned a part, and that part has generally be in the very grey area of life.

Once again its good see people expand on this - even the female warrior guy (maybe you should ask you mum to hung you more or maybe less). I stand by the comments that Thorpe is kind of an idioit who took and easy (and somewhat cheap) shot at Australia’s Indigenous issues.

The really strange thing is that when you look past this article at what the event was really for, I don’t understand why he though it was the forum for he his, umm, whats the opposite of well though out and research speech? Oh thats right, his Wikipedia based speech.

I like how he started a charty when he was 18. I have never understood these people who continually start charties. Basic economics will tell that a few large charities will do better that more and more small ones (running costs mainly and their reach, not to mention there is only so much money to go around and thining it out isn’t the best move). I get it when it is something that has been ‘missed’ by the major charities. And really lets only think back to when we were 18 - should we really be trying to shape the world as we wanted it when we were 18?