an unemployed chap’s swansong or, Vale the Democrats

“Past Government policies of removing children from their homes, families and country has had a devastating effect not only on those directly removed, but on their families through generations and on whole communities both Indigenous and non-Indigenous,” Senator Bartlett said.

“My aim in getting this legislation examined by a Senate Committee was to put the issue back on the political agenda and provide some much needed focus to the debate. This has certainly been achieved.

“It is a positive move that the Committee has heard the overwhelming evidence provided to the Inquiry about the importance of reparations and has taken a broader look at what needs to be done to address the needs of the Stolen Generations.

“Evidence provided to this Inquiry produced a superior model of reparations to the one contained in my Bill, and I wholeheartedly endorse this measure and encourage those who support proper compensation to adopt it as part of continuing to campaign on the issue.”

Daily Telegraph

By the time the parliament rises for the winter recess Andrew Bartlett will be out of a job, he will be relying on the very generous superannuation package to continue living in the style to which he has become accustomed. That does not mean that he has entirely given up on futile gestures and parliamentary games that are so beloved of the Latte Left. There is no better example of exactly what I mean that his last ditch attempt to raise the issue of  monetary compensation to the so called “stolen generation”.

This is a futile gesture because neither Labor nor the Coalition are willing the write the sort of blank cheque that Bartlett’s scheme would require nor are they willing to accept the almost non-existent standard of proof  in documents  like the   Bringing Them Home report that the nearly former senator repeatedly cites in responses to commentators in the Telegraph article. No responsible government, of any flavour , is going to open the treasury to claims based on unsubstantiated hearsay or pay compensation to individuals who have been legitimately removed because of parental neglect and abuse. The precedent would just horrendous  for the future of good financial governance and it would open the floodgates for claims by the far greater number of white children who were also forcibly adopted just because their mothers were unmarried. Then there are the child immigrants who were sent to this country in the wake of WW2 … the list of possible claimants is endless.

The Democrats are now politically dead, in fact for the last few months they have been like the “undead” of a Zombie movie wandering around trying to pretend that they are alive, nobody has been fooled by their mournful cries, their attempts to get one last bite of the largess of the women’s magazines or of their last attempts to make the latte sippers like them. By this time next year, politically, they will be sharing the fate of  an aged  piece chip paper, slowly fading under the mulch of someone’s garden.

Cheers Comrades