On 14 Oct 2000, at 12:07, Trudy & Rod Bray wrote:
> The Sydney Morning Herald
> Reith's card is nothing to get hung up about
>
> Date: 14/10/2000
>
> By MIKE CARLTON
>
> Just for fun, imagine for one moment that it was a high official of the
> Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission who had flicked the office
> phone card to his son, eventually to run up a bill of $50,000.
>
> Shock horror, the righteous hullabaloo from the Howard Government would be
> deafening. More in sorrow than anger, the Prime Minister would rush to
> appear with a pliant radio host to express his concern at this grievous,
> possibly criminal assault on the public purse: "I've instructed the Minister
> for Aboriginal Affairs to demand the money back."
>
> On cue, the dotty Senator Herron would vow to get to the bottom of the
> outrage, with much solemn blather about "accountability" and
snip...
>
> Paddy's been into Bill's ear again, by the sound of it. Bill Hayden, a
> former governor-general, now Viscount Ipswich, has fired his
> blunderbuss at the Aboriginal stolen generations with noises remarkably
> similar to the pops and bangs that dear old P.P. McGuinness has been giving
> off lately.
>
Viscount Ipswich, I have a vision, a vision of standing outside the
Crematorium when your mortal remains are to go up the chimney. I am in
Command of the Guard of (dis)Honour, and as the smoke rises, the band
breaks into its routine of old TV advertisement musical relief, and I hear
the tune, and the soldiery breaks into guffaws of laughter, the tune is
"Light up a Vscount, a Viscount... "
(you have to have seen TV in the 60s to appreciate it...)
> The two have been close chums since the roaring days of the Whitlam
> government, when Bill was Minister for Social Security and
> Paddy was his minder at the birth of Medibank Mk 1. Over the years they have
> made the long march from Left to Right of your screen, a stately climb from
> the grimy dens of the ALP to the chintz and circumstance of Yarralumla, arm
> in arm and never a backward glance. Recently, Bill was an honoured guest at
> the well-catered relaunch of Paddy's Quadrant magazine, along with a gaggle
> of other louche ex-lefties and, yes, the Prime Minister.
>
> As reported in the Herald on Thursday, His Excellency's address at the
> University of Tasmania, coyly entitled "Core Cultural Values",
My god, who invited this drone? Oh! The university of Tasmania, was this
some sort of a savage practical joke? Its where Henry Reynolds now finds
his Chair. Is this part of a intra academe plot on that sad sad spot?
Anyway, what does this ex-copper know about culture? I guess in Queensland,
only that Mr Justice Fitzgerald wrote an entire chapter (7 or 11?) on the
corrupt "Police Culture" that propped up BjelkeLand for decades.
> was stock standard Quadrant stuff, the white armband view of history. A
> quick summary: Sir Ronald Wilson's Bringing Them Home report has got it
> wickedly wrong. There were no stolen generations; benevolent white folks
> rescued Aboriginal children as an act of mercy and have been scandalously
> traduced for doing so. No need for anyone to say sorry, least of all the
> Prime Minister. It's time your Aborigines stopped whingeing, pulled
> themselves together, showed a bit of gratitude and got on with it, the idle
> buggers.
>
> I think that's about it, although my precis hardly conveys the lofty
> condescension of the former viceroy, muddled monarchist and
> off-and-on admirer of bits of Pauline Hanson.
He is Viscount Ipswich, her Lord of the Manor?
"I don't know who is
> advising indigenous Australians on tactics," he began, grandly
> dismissing any silly notion that the childlike darkies might have a few
> ideas of their own.
>
> And then there is the querulous tone the Viscount has made so much his
> own in his sere, autumn years. Professor Henry Reynolds, the
> acclaimed historian of the stolen generations, has a "rather tattered"
> reputation. Sir Ronald Wilson has given "an extraordinary display of
> legal gullibility"; his report is "seriously flawed, a sad headstone" to his
> public career.
>
> Not nearly so sad a headstone as one I can think of, Bill.
>
Oh well, its to be expected of this drover's dog. Doesn't he make a sound
argument for both the euthanasia of old K9s and the peoples election of our
head of state? Oh! And the condemnation of any political party that would
collude with the East Timor genocide.
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