The Redfern Riots

Multiculturalism at Work

Article originally written and published by Dr. Ian Spry QC, editor of Australia’s original National Observer, in Autumn 2004.

On 15 February 2004 Australians were surprised and dismayed to learn of racial riots in Redfern, Sydney. It was reported: "At least forty police were injured - some with broken limbs - when up to 150 rioters converged on the area known as The Block, the inner-city heartland for Aboriginal Sydney." During a running battle that lasted nine hours, two cars were torched and Molotov cocktails and bricks were hurled at police. Senior-Constable McGowan, who was hit on the head by a brick, said that he could see rioters picking up paving stones and throwing them at police and that "he was lucky to be alive", and was suffering black-outs through his head injuries. Many of the Aboriginal rioters had come into Redfern from other places in order to participate in the riot. It is of interest that left-of-centre commentators could not restrain themselves from attempting to blame the police. It was alleged that a cause of the riot was the pursuit by police of an Aboriginal who in attempting to escape had had a fatal accident. However the police denied any pursuit by them, and even if there had been a pursuit the accidental death of a fugitive through his own negligence and refusal to stop would in no way be a proper cause for complaint.

What is however evident is that the Redfern riots are a predictable consequence of the multicultural movement, which is opposed to assimilation, and of the lobby groups who set out to blame white Australians for the difficulties that Aboriginals have been creating for themselves. The creation of novel land rights for Aboriginals - for no such rights existed at common law before the Mabo decision - so that those Aboriginals are encouraged to remain in primitive backblock settlements can hardly be regarded as useful. Aboriginals now find themselves ineluctably in the twenty-first century, and it is appropriate for them to develop a responsible attitude towards education and work. Education presents a greater challenge to those who are emerging from a simple and primitive animist culture, and it may indeed take several generations before sufficient adaptation takes place. But adaptation will not take place at all unless there is a change in attitude amongst Aboriginals: they must abandon the culture of complaint and, instead, apply themselves in a disciplined manner towards their self-improvement. Aboriginals must, like everyone else, accept responsibility for their own lives and make rational decisions.

Aboriginals have not been well served by the groups - again left-of-centre - who have attempted to use them as a stick with which to beat traditionalist Australians. It may indeed be questioned whether many of those who publicly represent themselves to be supporting Aboriginal rights - such as the Robert Mannes and the Phillip Adams - are as concerned about the welfare of Aboriginals as they are about vilifying those who do not agree with them.

The Redfern riots should not be regarded as an isolated phenomenon without significance. They represent the fruit of an extraordinarily misguided series of policies, in which left-of-centre groups have taught Aboriginals that they should regard themselves as mistreated and oppressed by our society of today.

Recently Andrew Bolt, certainly the most intelligent and conscientious of Melbourne journalists, reviewed various facts that led to the Redfern riots. An Aboriginal leader, Lyall Munro, addressing Redfern Aboriginals said, "If Palestinian kids can fight… war tanks with sling shots, our kids can do the same". He added, "Who gives a f- about white Australia any more?" Lionel Quartermaine, the acting chairman of A.T.S.I.C. pending multiple rape allegations against the chairman, Geoff Clark, could merely blame government actions; and Ray Jackson, of the Indigenous Social Justice Coalition, blamed the police for "driving up and down the streets" (Jackson has requested the International Criminal Court to try Australians for "genocide").

Andrew Bolt asks,

"So why did we pay big money to a land council and to an Aboriginal Legal Service which not only supports such men, but encourages racist fantasies of tearing us into tribes?"

Before matters become worse, both for the white majority who are the objects of planned aggression and for the Aboriginal community who are preventing themselves from being properly educated and employed, radical steps are needed.

First, there should be a dismantling of A.T.S.I.C. (with, initially, a withdrawing of government funds, so that it is funded by Aboriginals, not by taxpayers) and all other regulatory and social service bodies (one of the most virulent of which is the Aboriginal Legal Service). They should be replaced by two new bodies, and two only.
(a) The first body should be an educational body, with the purpose of inducting Aboriginal children into the general state education services. In view of the backwardness of Aboriginal children, special coaching and guidance would be appropriate. But the subjects taught would be the basic, central subjects that are too neglected today: reading, writing and arithmetic, augmented by science, European and Asian languages, and literature. It would be part of the function of this body to communicate with the parents of Aboriginal children, so that the parents will apply appropriate pressure on their children to co-operate.
(b) The second body should be an employment organiser, which should devote itself to assisting Aboriginals to obtain employment.

Secondly, individual Aboriginals should be provided with a choice. They should be asked to choose between remaining in a primitive animist culture, involving kangaroos, witchety grubs, painted rituals and spears and boomerangs, or alternatively confronting the twenty-first century and leading useful and rewarding lives as do other Australians. Those who adopt the first option, and remain in a simple animist culture, should be provided with medical services and minimal financial assistance (Western money being generally inappropriate to semi-stone age cultures). Those who adopt the second option, and who assimilate, should be treated in the same way as all other Australians, apart from receiving special educational and employment assistance as set out above.

If steps of this kind are not taken we shall see a continuation of the activity of left-of-centre groups who (as their basic but tacit purpose) wish to encourage confrontation and ill-will. These groups, including ill-intentioned individuals such as Robert Manne, Phillip Adams and Henry Reynolds, hurt Aboriginals, but do not care whether they do so. The Aboriginals are, to them, instruments for the promotion of their own personal political agendas. The result of this activity will, if it is not checked, lead to large-scale civil confrontations.