He has yet to announce the election date, but yesterday's "pledge" to hold another referendum on the preamble to the constitution has to be seen in the context that we all know that voting time is coming soon. The man is as cunning as the proverbial shithouse rat and today's headlines reflect the naivety with which the media generally receive whatever lies are propagated. So, what do I seen on the front pages today? Something like the conversion on the road to Damascus (where for Damascus you should read the sword thereof, because he sure as hell is going to go down this time).

Well, we should be used to this sort of rubbish by now and we should be a bit more prepared to search for the underlying meaning. In this case, the key words are "special but not separate". In other words, he proposes to have something nice in the preamble that acknowleges that Aborigines were here first and have a special role in the history of this country. From now on, though, the interpretation will be about how that's all in the past - now they have to have private property, monolingual (English) education and be treated like the rest of us. He still won't face the Aboriginal request for an official apology - that would be acknowledging (a) that past governments have in reality practised apartheid and (b) that to compensate for this Aborigines need special (i.e. separate) treatment that will restore self-esteem rather than continue to destroy it. Of course nobody's mentioning the other Aboriginal demand for a Treaty. No doubt he will consult Noel Pearson, but his track record (and that of the Minister) is of ignoring properly conducted consultations.

Howard is despicable. By playing to the general disquiet in the white (urban majority) community about the plight of Aboriginal communities he will try to get a yes vote, first in the election and then on his referendum. Then he will use that as an excuse to expropriate communal lands and give the go ahead to mining companies and property developers - especially where this can occur out among the rednecks, and out of sight of the urban bleeding hearts.

I haven't had time to read "the history wars" that were provoked by the clash between Keith Windshuttle and Henry Reynolds over what the Prime Minister calls the 'black armband" view of Australian history. So I'm not sure what this 'black armband' view is, except that it has something to do with whether massacres occurred or not. Whatever the facts, however, it is the way the results of the debate are used by various political factions that is sickening. This is not learning from history, it is using history to bolster pre-determined views of causes and their policy implications. For the government and its intellectuals this means that by denying the 'black armband' view they can deny the historical causes of the present problem. Aborigines can be treated as non-special. They are the same as all remote communities or all the long-term unemployed. Crime is crime is crime - the view currently being propounded by Costello and Brough (acting PM and Minister respectively).

Racism, like sexism, doesn't have to be expressed in violent terms. It is a deeply embedded mindset that usually doesn't recognise itself. I'm reminded of the old riddle about the father and son who are involved in an automobile accident. The father is killed and the son is rushed to hospital requiring major surgery. In the operating theatre, the surgeon, upon seeing the patient, suddenly announces "I cannot operate on this child, he's my son". It is truly amazing how many people cannot think of the answer to this simple riddle. Perhaps they forget that a child also has a mother or they are just unable to conceive of a surgeon who is also a mother. Who knows? Usually they're highly embarrassed when you tell them the answer.

Now here's a bit of selective historical interpretation by the aforementioned Windshuttle - taken from A Man of Lettuce (the 'cablog' of a Sydney taxi driver), but originally published in The Australian.

The root cause is that white Australia has deprived Aboriginal men in remote communities of their manhood. The instrument we used was social welfare: giving handouts that did not require them to work. The social policy of the past 30 years is the principal culprit...

...The social consequences of this should have been entirely predictable. No matter what their race or where they live, men who do not work have no social status, no sense of self-worth and little meaning in their lives.

Well, Jacob Zuma had a job (oh, but sorry 'she asked for it'). Bill Clinton had a job. All those Catholic priests, scoutmasters, piano teachers... sexual abuse of women and children has never been the preserve of the unemployed. Did anyone notice Zuma or Clinton suffering a loss of 'manhood'?

What does he mean by manhood anyway? Are there no unemployed women in these communities - do they also suffer a loss of manhood because they haven't got a job? Answer is probably no, because according to the likes of Windshuttle, having a family is enough to provide a woman with a deeply fulfilling life. Actually the only thing having a family does is make women more aware that trying to kill your neighbours is not going to solve your problem. Manhood seems to be more of a problem here than loss of it!

Following Windshuttle's logic, the serious part of the problem isn't rape and child abuse so it must be gang violence. OK, before we go accusing all the long-term unemployed of joining violent gangs, let's just note that this is also very much an ethnic problem. Gang violence in Wadeye and in Western Sydney is associated not just with unemployed youths, but with ethnicity. The Cronulla riots were race riots (moreover, it is not clear to what extent the rioters on either side were in fact unemployed). Wadeye is about Aborigines. The cause of trouble in each case is intimately bound up with the particular history of these ethnic groups - it certainly is not anything that is generalizable to the entire population. What both these cases have in common is a long history of racial discrimination - up to 200 years of it in fact. If a particular group of people has a higher than average rate of unemployment, why is it so? Doesn't it have anything to do with taking their land away, herding them into isolated missions and 'reservations' (many were put on 'welfare' more than 100 years ago - not the 30 years that Windshuttle mentions - others were given work to do, but received no remuneration), destroying their existing livelihoods and social integrity, feeding them on rations of highly nutritious flour, sugar and tea, introducing them to alcohol - through which they could achieve numbness - stealing their kids to bring up in white (read 'proper') society (where they often, incidentally, suffered abuse), locking them up for petty crimes and so on. I just feel astounded that some people seem unable to recognise the ways in which not only positive aspects of culture, but also the culture of social dysfunction are handed down from generation to generation. The history of a community does matter, not just what came down in the last shower. Taking history into account is not the same as wearing a black armband.

This is too long already. I meant to write about all the other rubbish I've been reading lately. But I need to get on with setting exam papers!