One Of Terry's Corners Of the Online World

The Federal government is way behind in the polls. Everyone not in a coma knows that. Now the Howard government has started a crusade against child abuse in aboriginal communities knowing that they'll never have to implement it themselves.

Yes, it's horrible and needs to be stopped, but sending a bunch of white policemen in to enforce it is a short term solution to a lot of years of neglect and abuse. The communities themselves have to be part of the process, the healthcare needs to be improved out of sight and there needs to be an education path for indigenous Australians. Looks like it's going to be Labor's problem to fix because all the Howard approach is going to produce is more confrontation, deaths in custody and alienation of this continent's original inhabitants.

Also, they're going to ban porn. WTF? All government subsidised computers and networks are going to be inspected for downloads of hardcore porn and the cops are going to confiscate any X-rated stuff they find. Yeah, that will work. How much porn can one smuggled DVD hold? How do you stop someone from duplicating it a thousand times? Someone's going to make some money out of bootleg porn. This one's a sop to the religious right in this country. It'll never work, it's a tangential issue that looks good to a certain demographic and five will get you ten that the cops will keep at least some of it for their own personal use.

And let's hope they throw some money at this problem in indigenous communities. doctor_k_ has a lot to say on this too from a health care professional's viewpoint.

On other issues:

There's some life stuff happening for me at the moment which is going to be weird but I'll post about that tomorrow night, maybe.

I've just had my Krups XP4020 espresso machine delivered from the Fly Buys people. Makes great coffee, too. It has been a weird day, but this little pleasure compensates a bit for it.