Why I love the Oz! They are Soooo...Grotesque

Quote:Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s contempt for poverty-stricken Aborigines living in outback areas was on open display last week when he was asked about plans by the Western Australian (WA) state government to completely shut down many communities.

“What we can’t do is endlessly subsidise lifestyle choices if these choices are not conducive to the kind of full participation in Australian society that everyone should have,” Abbott told the media in the WA gold-mining town of Kalgoorlie last Wednesday.

To claim that Aborigines are indulging in a “lifestyle choice,” akin to that of layers of the upper middle class moving to an idyllic rural setting, is grotesque. The conditions in remote Aboriginal communities, which lack jobs, proper housing and essential services, are frequently described as “third world” or even “fourth world.”

People “choose” to remain because of the connection they have to family, friends and tradition, and the alternatives are even worse. To move out means, in most cases, to lead a marginal, alienated existence on the fringes of towns or amid unemployment and poverty in major cities.

Yet this is exactly what the WA government is preparing to force these residents to do. It has already made threats to shut down 150, or more than half, of the 274 remote indigenous communities in the state. It will render up to 12,000 Aboriginal men, women and children homeless, driving them into under-resourced towns and urban centres.