The Sydney Morning Herald "Kookaburra" 5/8/2000 No love lost By Thursday afternoon, after four days of nipping and tucking policy, Labor conference delegates were clearly getting tired. On the issue of mandatory sentencing, for example, most could not even raise the enthusiasm to say yea or nay when Barry Jones asked for their vote. He called for those in favour, and after a long silence a solitary voice said "yes". No-one disagreed with the motion. Jones declared it carried "one-love". End of extract and...... ALP asked to say sorry From AAP 05aug00 10.30am (AEST) A PEAK Aboriginal legal services group has asked the ALP to apologise over bowing to pressure to support mandatory sentencing in Western Australia. The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services Secretariat has called on ALP politicians to apologise to hundreds of Aboriginal people who they say will be targeted by police and imprisoned. Western Australia-based Nailss representative Dennis Eggington says reconciliation is now well and truly wrecked. He says Aboriginal people see politicians caring more about getting votes from rednecks than about social justice or removing discrimination. Mr Egginton says nothing was said during the ALP conference about reducing high rates of discrimination in housing rentals, arrests of indigenous youth and juveniles, imprisonment for minor offences and deaths in custody in the aftermath of the Royal Commission. Last week's Australian Labor Party national conference in Hobart cleared the way to support mandatory detention for serious property crimes, but resolved to oppose mandatory sentencing for young offenders. -- ********************************** 'Click' to protect the rainforest: Make the Rainforest Site your homepage! http://www.therainforestsite.com/ ********************************** ------------------------------------------------------ RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." RecOzNet2 is archived for members @ http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznet2%40paradigm4.com.au/
