“Adding a new level of fear and uncertainty onto that with the findings coming out of a royal commission is going to harm the community as well as the industry,” [CEO Clarence Village Ltd Duncan McKimm acting as an apologist for the aged care industry in The Daily Examiner ahead of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety]
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Saturday 29 September 2018
Quotes of the Week
“There are some
people who seem to find it a very funny circumstance that last week, in full
daylight, and in a main street of Cooktown, two black troopers, with their
clothes in the same condition as those of a clumsy butcher’s apprentice, fresh
from the shambles, exhibited a naked black girl, not twelve years old, as their
newly caught prize. This young slave, taken by force . . . has since been
transferred, either for payment or as a gift, to a citizen in this town, whose
property she has now become. What were the circumstances that attended, or
immediately followed, her capture we do not know, nor do we very much care to
inquire ...” [ Journalist
& author Carl Feilberg writing
in the Cooktown Courier in January 1877 ]
“Adding a new level of fear and uncertainty onto that with the findings coming out of a royal commission is going to harm the community as well as the industry,” [CEO Clarence Village Ltd Duncan McKimm acting as an apologist for the aged care industry in The Daily Examiner ahead of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety]
“Adding a new level of fear and uncertainty onto that with the findings coming out of a royal commission is going to harm the community as well as the industry,” [CEO Clarence Village Ltd Duncan McKimm acting as an apologist for the aged care industry in The Daily Examiner ahead of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety]
Labels:
aged care,
Australian society,
history,
human rights,
racism,
royal commission,
violence
Tuesday 21 August 2018
William Fraser Anning - an ugly aspect of far-right politics in Australia
The Sydney Morning Herald, Fraser Anning |
William
Fraser Anning then a member of
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party was declared elected to the Australian
Senate on 10 November 2017,
as a replacement
for the recently disqualified dual citizen Malcolm
Ieuan Roberts.
Less than
seven months later he had joined Katter’s Australian Party.
In the 2016
general election Anning had received a
grand total of 19 votes (59 if transferred votes are counted) out of a possible 2.72 million Queensland ballots cast. The Queensland electorate had firmly rejected him.
Hansard shows that at 17:06pm on Wednesday 14
August 2018, nine months after taking up his seat, Anning made his formal First Speech on the floor of the Senate.
This is how The
Sydney Morning Herald reported this speech on 14 August 2018:
Queensland senator
Fraser Anning has praised the White Australia Policy and called for a
plebiscite as "the final solution to the immigration problem" in the
most inflammatory maiden speech to an Australian Parliament since One Nation
leader Pauline Hanson's in 1996.
The Katter's Australian
Party senator, formerly of One Nation, used his first speech to the Senate on
Tuesday to lament the demise of "our predominantly European identity"
of the 1950s and '60s.
The
Guardian’s opinion
piece on 15 August 2018 pointed out the dangers before us:
Fraser Anning is in the
parliament by accident. Having fluked his way into the Senate chamber because
One Nation needed a replacement for Malcolm Roberts, he now wants your
attention, and judging by his
performance in the Senate on Tuesday night, he doesn’t care what lines he
crosses to get it.
What we are witnessing
in national politics is the latest manifestation of Australia’s cultural
cringe. Far right political operatives, and the media voices prepared to give
them succour, are importing the nationalist debates that have sprung up in the
shadow of the global
financial crisis – the biggest economic dislocation since the great
depression.
We are building our own
tinder box, bit by bit.
Debates about race, and
sovereignty, and immigration have caught fire elsewhere because of deep
resentments felt by the losers of globalisation. Australia
didn’t suffer the biting effects of the global financial crisis, and the
prolonged economic downturn that followed it. By comparison to the visceral
experiences elsewhere, in this country we experienced a chilly, stiff breeze.
Notwithstanding these
facts, we are importing the outrage consciousness that exists elsewhere,
validating it, willingly projecting an alternate reality onto our own domestic
circumstances as a grotesque form of entertainment.
We are building our own
tinder box, bit by bit.
This would be pathetic.
Almost laughable. Except in terms of race and politics, we are now in the most
explosive period we’ve been in since John Howard sailed into choppy waters with
his feelings on Asian immigration in the 1980s.
There is nothing to
laugh about. Right now, there are all the ingredients of a perfect storm.
The first ingredient is
a fractured bunch of far-right leaning political voices in mortal competition
with one another for votes. The last 24 hours has been a public competition
between Anning, and his new running mate Bob Katter, and One Nation, for
attention. Anning and Katter apparently want to establish a new beach
head, charting
territory where Pauline won’t follow. Just let that happy thought settle on
you for a minute or two.
The second ingredient is
a polity profoundly disaffected by the repeated failings and default narcissism
of Australia’s major party politics, frustrated by their congested cities and
low wages growth and by governments who spent more time fighting their
fractured internals than navigating the future. The third is a
disrupted media landscape where conflict – the louder and more notorious the
better – is hard currency.
Fraser Anning used his
first speech to parliament to spin his own obscurity into notoriety: to try on
a troll suit in full public view.
The
Monthly spoke of Anning as "unrepresentative", "accidental swill" on 15
August 2018:
Fraser Anning’s
execrable first speech in the Senate yesterday, proposing a “final solution” on
Muslim immigration, marks a new low for Australian politics, but assuredly not
for long. Things are likely to get worse before they get better, as a bunch of
illegitimate right-wing nobodies in the Senate compete for race-hate shock
value in the lead-up to the next election. The combination of a double
dissolution in 2016 and the citizenship crisis has burdened us with the least
representative Senate in living memory. The crossbench is populated by senators
who won on the donkey vote, defected, were elected on a countback or were hand-picked
mid-term and are yet to face the people. Most face electoral oblivion in 2019.
We are used to hearing of “unrepresentative swill” in the Senate, where one
vote, one value has never applied, but a record number of our current senators
literally don’t deserve to be there. Call them accidental swill.
Anning’s speech, in
which he called for a return to the White Australia policy, did not come out of
the blue. We have been building up to this steadily. From Pauline Hanson’s
return to parliament, to Tony Abbott’s dog-whistling on immigration policy, to
Peter Dutton’s attacks on “African gangs”, to Andrew Bolt’s comments
about Chinese, Cambodian, Indian and Jewish communities“changing
our culture”, to Sky News airing an interview with neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell, the
trend is clear: we are sliding ever-faster down a slippery slope towards an
ugly, divisive race-card election.
Although his
formal first speech was somewhat tardy, according to They
Vote For You Anning has been busy voting strongly in support of:
On 14 August 2018 lawyer Richard McGilvray, an adviser to Senator Anning, resigned his position in protest.
Posting on Linkedin that: "I do not condone SenatorAnning's speech. His reference to 'the Final Solution' was not something I had seen, heard of, or discussed prior to his remarks last night and as a consequence, within hours of Senator Anning's speech, I resigned my position effective immediately. I'd like to thank many of you for your messages of support and encouragement this morning."
As is to be expected Anning's speech has been fact checked and found to contain numerous errors.
To date, Senator Anning has not issued an apology for elements of that speech.
Saturday 11 August 2018
Tweet of the Week
we interrupt our slide towards a racist surveillance dystopia to bring you this surprisingly honest government ad: https://t.co/TKG1mYyFzn— Scott Ludlam (@Scottludlam) August 2, 2018
Labels:
racism
Saturday 23 June 2018
US President Donald Trump takes a well-deserved hit in the cojones
This little girl couldn't fight back against the full weight of Donald J. Trump's cruel racism.
Time magazine cover for 2 July 2018 issue |
Until an American late night show expressed its opinion...........
If only real life delivered such swift justice for little children.
Labels:
Donald Trump,
immigration,
racism,
US society
Thursday 14 June 2018
The journey towards a name change for Coutts Crossing begins.....
In November 1847 Clarence Valley grazier Thomas Coutts disgruntled by what he thought was a failure of local authority to act on his complaints, angry that his cattle herd had diminished over the space of eight years allegedly due to cattle theft and irritated at the size of his wages bill - all of which he blamed on local Aboriginal family groups living on 'his' property - decided to take action.
According to media reports at the time it soon became common knowledge that Coutts "had poisoned some aborigines" and this was eventually reported to the Commissioner of Crown Lands who, after visiting the group who had been given poisoned flour, hearing their account, arrested Thomas Coutts based on an affidavit sworn by one of his servants.
On the 17th January 1848, Thomas Coutts was committed for trial by Forster and Mylnes, local Justices of the Peace, on a charge of wilful murder, and was sent to Sydney for trial before the Supreme Court.…… On the 10 May the Attorney General decided not to proceed with the case due to lack of evidence and Coutts was discharged.
Stating; "there is not sufficient legal evidence to sustain the prosecution although I am sorry to say that the suspicion is very strong that the prisoner is not guiltless of the dreadful deed charged against him.....This is one of the many cases from which the defect of the present law, in excluding altogether the evidence of the Aboriginal natives, is apparent."
Stating; "there is not sufficient legal evidence to sustain the prosecution although I am sorry to say that the suspicion is very strong that the prisoner is not guiltless of the dreadful deed charged against him.....This is one of the many cases from which the defect of the present law, in excluding altogether the evidence of the Aboriginal natives, is apparent."
Coutts Crossing could
have two names and a memorial to the 23 Aboriginal people murdered by the man
the town is named after, following a meeting called to discuss proposals to
rename the village.
Prospects for a name
change for the village have gathered pace since Daily Examiner indigenous
columnist Janelle Brown’s article two weeks ago detailed how colonial settler
Thomas Coutts murdered 23 Aboriginal people with arsenic-laced flour he gave as
payment for work on his property at Kangaroo Creek in 1848.
Yesterday, about 40
people – indigenous and European – met at the Gurehlgam Centre in Grafton to
discuss the next steps in proposing a name change for the village. The meeting
did not produce formal resolutions, but the debate uncovered key areas to work
on.
These included a
proposal to include a traditional twin name for the village and to build a
memorial in the village for the victims of the atrocity.
“I didn’t know I would
get the amount of kick back from the article,” said Ms Brown, who led the
meeting.
“But it’s good. It’s
time to have these conversations and look at things like a name change for
Coutts Crossing.
“What happened at
Kangaroo Creek was a horrendous thing and not good for the Clarence Valley.
“It’s not good for a
town to be named after a mass murderer.”
She said research into
Gumbaynggir language revealed the original name for the area had been Daam
Miirlarl, which meant a special place for yams.
However, she was
reluctant to push this name as an alternative until there was further
discussion among indigenous people about it.
Coutts Crossing resident
Cr Greg Clancy said yesterday’s meeting was an initial step to move toward a
name change.
“It’s not something that
is going to happen next week,” he said.
Cr Clancy also made an
apology for the deputy mayor Jason Kingsley, who was also the council’s
delegate to the Aboriginal Consultative Committee. He said working through the
council committee could be the best way to bring the push for a name change to
the council.
Cr Clancy said the work
of local historian and environmentalist John Edwards left no doubt Thomas
Coutts murdered the 23 Gumbaynggir people with poisoned flour.
“In his book The
History of the Coutts Crossing and Nymboida Areas, the chapter on the Kangaroo
Creek massacre has all the transcripts from the court case,” he said.
“Its evidence is
conclusive, but the case could not go ahead because the court at the time could
not hear evidence from Aboriginal witnesses.”
The current owner of the
property on which the massacre occurred, John Maxwell, had nothing positive to
say about the original owner.
“What he did was cynical
beyond belief,” Mr Maxwell said. “To poison 6kg of flour and give it to people,
knowing they would take it home and kill a huge number more of their family, is
too terrible to consider.”….
Labels:
Australian society,
Clarence Valley,
crime,
history,
murder,
racism,
reconciliation
Tuesday 3 April 2018
NSW Bar Association: “As members of the legal profession, we know indigenous Australians, proportionately, are the most incarcerated on earth. This diminishes us as a nation.”
The Australian, 29 March 2018, p.6:
As members of the legal
profession, we know indigenous Australians, proportionately, are the most
incarcerated on earth. This diminishes us as a nation.
Sovereignty and
dispossession, recognition and representation of interests: they are different
facets of the same problem. It is something that we, as lawyers, have a duty to
help solve. It is because of this duty that the legal profession welcomed the government’s
reference to the Australian Law Reform Commission to examine, among other
issues, rates of incarceration for the indigenous.
The Pathways to Justice
report of the ALRC represents a comprehensive blueprint to address the shameful
over-representation of indigenous people in our prisons. Swift and decisive
action is required from commonwealth, state and territory governments to ensure
its recommendations are implemented.
ALRC recommendations
relating to sentencing and bail regimes, the repeal of mandatory sentencing
laws, an effective justice reinvestment framework, culturally appropriate
community-based sentencing options, and so on, are all aimed at how
substantive, not just formal, equality before the law can be achieved for
indigenous people. All recommendations are supported by the NSW Bar Association
as important initiatives which will contribute to addressing Aboriginal incarceration rates.
The NSW Bar is pleased
the ALRC supports establishment of indigenous sentencing courts including the
NSW Walama Court. The Walama Court is critical in reducing indigenous incarceration.
The model involves community participation and greater supervision, resulting
in reduced recidivism and increased compliance with court orders to better
protect the community. It is not a “soft on crime” initiative but rather a more
effective manner to supervise offenders post-sentence which would enhance
rehabilitation and prevent re-offending.
At this stage the NSW
government has not allocated funds to establish the Walama Court in the 2018-19
financial year, despite the fact it would have long-term economic cost savings
for NSW as fewer indigenous people will be imprisoned and rates of recidivism
would be reduced…..
Australian
Law Reform Commission (ALRC) Pathways
to Justice–Inquiry into the Incarceration Rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Peoples (ALRC Report 133) Final Report, published on 28
March 2018.
ALRC "Pathways to Justice—An Inquiry into the Incarceration Rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander P... by clarencegirl on Scribd
Thursday 29 March 2018
Mainstream media continues to amplify racist dog whistles in 2018
In September
2017 the Nursing and Midwifery Board of
Australia (NMBA) published the new Code of Conduct for Nurses and Code of
Conduct for Midwives. The codes took effect for all nurses and midwives in
Australia on 1 March 2018.
These codes
set out the
legal requirements, professional behaviour and conduct expectations for all
nurses and midwives in all practice settings.
The new codes
for nurses and midwives can be found here.
These codes
passed without much comment until far-right Senator Cory Bernardi began to bay about “political correctness” on
31 January 2018 and claim that Nurses must acknowledge
white privilege and voice this acknowledgment if asked.
According to
ABC Media Watch
he was followed by the Murdoch media running with this blatant dog whistle,
followed by Andrew Bolt, Peta Credlin and various radio shock
jocks.
Misleading
media coverage culminating in a truly appalling piece of journalism by Channel
7 which elicited this response…………..
Luke Pearson writing at @IndigenousX on 24 March
2018:
“BUT FIRST TONIGHT, THE
CONTENTIOUS NEW CODE TELLING NURSES TO SAY ‘SORRY FOR BEING WHITE’ WHEN
TREATING THEIR INDIGENOUS PATIENTS..
That’s how Today Tonight Adelaide
began last night.
Catch Up: Having to apologise for being white – the controversial new code for nurses treating Indigenous Australians. #TTAdelaide pic.twitter.com/yViiqkw67F— TodayTonightAdelaide (@TodayTonightSA) March 23, 2018
It continued:
“Now, it’s the latest in a string of
politically correct changes for the health industry, but this one has led to
calls for the Nursing Board boss to resign.”
It was followed by a five minute story
with the new code being condemned by someone you’ve probably never heard
of, Graeme Haycroft,
explaining that: “According to how the code is written, the white nurse would
come in and say, ‘before I deal with you, I have to acknowledge to you that I
have certain privileges that you don’t have” followed by Cory Bernardi calling
it divisive.
It goes on in this vein for a full
five minutes before it cuts back to the presenter, who finally says, “The
Nursing and Midwifery Board has told us that the code was drafted in
consultation with Aboriginal groups and has been taken out of context as it’s
not a requirement for health workers to declare or apologise for white
privilege”.
And just to reinforce that point, the
entire premise for the segment was false. There is no requirement for nurses to
apologise for being white, which would be very awkward for the more the more
than 1500 Indigenous nurses across Australia, and the countless others who also
aren’t white to begin with. But, even for the nurses who are – THERE IS NO
REQUIREMENT FOR THEM TO APOLOGISE FOR BEING WHITE.
So, why on Earth would Today Tonight
run such a story?
Why would they base a story off the
demonstrably false allegations of this Graeme Haycroft person?
To answer that, it might useful to cut
back to a 2005
Sydney Morning Herald story about Mr Haycroft:
“A member of the National Party and
the H.R. Nicholls Society, he (Mr Haycroft) boasts that, because of a tussle he
had with the Australian Workers Union 15 years ago, the union does not have a
single member shearing sheep in south-western Queensland today.
Now he runs a labour hire firm with a
thriving sideline in moving small-business employees off awards and collective
agreements and onto the Federal Government’s preferred individual contracts,
Australian Workplace Agreements.
…Mr Haycroft’s business stands out
because he is targeting lower-skilled, lower-paid workers, often with poor
English – the people unions say have much to fear from individual contracts.”
Cut back to 2018, and Graeme Haycroft
now runs the Nurses Professional Association of Queensland, which promotes
itself as an alternative to the Qld Nurses Union.
So, a man with a long history of
fighting Unions, who ‘saved’ the mushroom farming business by showing
businesses how to move “small-business employees off awards and collective
agreements and onto the Federal Government’s preferred individual contracts,
Australian Workplace Agreements.”
According to the 2005 article, “Mr
Haycroft said workers had been more than happy to sign on, most with their
penalty rates, holiday pay and other conditions being rolled into a flat rate.”
“However, [there is always a
‘however’], Mr Haycroft was stripped of his preferred provider status with the
Office of the Employment Advocate on Thursday, after a Sydney picker, Carmen
Walacz Vel Walewska, said she was sacked after she contacted the Australian
Workers Union for advice on AWAs.”
With that track record, it’s hard to
imagine why nurses would want to leave their current union in favour of his
‘professional association’.
It seems as though, once again,
Indigenous people have become a political football and a convenient scapegoat
for issues that have nothing to do with us.
Queensland has a long history of
political success found through anti-Aboriginal sentiment, so what better way
to undermine a Union and recruit new members to a professional association than
to accuse the Union of ‘racism against white people’ and ‘political correctness
gone made’ by spreading the blatantly false and misleading accusation that
white nurses now have to apologise to Aboriginal people for being white?
And just like Dick Smith’s
anti-immigration campaign, Blair Cottrell’s anti-African ‘community safety
group’, and Prue McSween’s call for a new Stolen Generation, it seems Channel 7
is always more than happy to ignore the facts and sensationalise issues about race
and racism.
There is always one more
thing.
We, and others, will soon publish
articles explaining what the Code of Conduct actually calls for, and explain
why cultural competence and cultural safety are important (editor’s note: we
did, here’s
one of them), but I can’t help but be reminded of this quote from Toni
Morrison:
“The function, the very serious
function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps
you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you
have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says
your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that
it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you
have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will
always be one more thing.”
So, instead of working on the very
real business of ensuring best practice within the nursing industry, our
Indigenous experts in this area will have to take a few days away from this
important work to explain that no one is asking for white nurses to apologise
for being white.
Just like we have to explain that not
all Aboriginal parents abuse their children, or that we don’t want to steal
white people’s backyards, or that we had (and have) science, or that Australia
wasn’t Terra Nullius, or, as Malcolm Turnbull suggested last year, that
acknowledging Indigenous history and addressing the issue of colonial statues
and place names across Australia is not a “Stalinist exercise of trying to wipe
out or obliterate or blank out parts of our history”.
So long as Australian media and
politics finds value, profit and opportunity in promoting racism, there will
always be one more thing.
So, I might as well clear up a few
others while I’m here, and empty a few more buckets out of the endless ocean of
racist misinformation.
Child abuse isn’t a ‘cultural’ thing.
Police are not scared to arrest
Aboriginal people out of fear of being called racist.
We don’t get free houses.
Aboriginal people using white ochre on
their faces in dance and ceremony is not the same thing as white people
dressing up in blackface.
We don’t get free university.
The Voice to Parliament is not a third
chamber of parliament.
We are not the problem.
Anything else?
We aren’t vampires?
We don’t shoot laser beams out of our
eyes?
We aren’t secretly developing a
perpetual motion machine that runs on white tears?
I’m sure I, and countless others, will
undoubtedly need to keep adding to this list because, as Toni Morrison tells
us, there will always be one more thing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Do
nurses under the new code have to announce their ‘white privilege’ before
treating indigenous patients?
It is not a requirement of the codes of conduct for nurses and midwives
to announce or apologise for white privilege. Any claim that nurses and
midwives need to announce or apologise for white privilege is completely
untrue. The recent criticisms from Mr Haycroft are based on completely untrue
statements. The requirements for nurses when working with Aboriginal and/or
Torres Strait Islander Peoples are clearly outlined in section 3.1 of the code.
Are nurses encouraged to
announce their ‘white privilege’ before treating indigenous patients?
No.
Is there any requirement
to acknowledge or announce ‘white privilege’ before treating a patient?
No.
Can a nurse be sacked
for NOT declaring or addressing their ‘white privilege’ to a patient?
No.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUSTRALIAN NURSING AND MIDWIFERY
FEDERATION, AUSTRALIAN COLLEGE OF NURSING, AUSTRALIAN COLLEGE OF MIDWIVES AND
CONGRESS OF ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER NURSES AND MIDWIVES
JOINT
STATEMENT, 23 March
2018:
In response to Graeme Haycroft’s recent
comments, we welcome the opportunity to provide further information on how
important cultural safety is for improving health outcomes and experiences for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
It is clear from the 2018 Closing the Gap
Report tabled by Prime Minister Turnbull in February 2018 that Aboriginal
and/or Torres Strait Islander Peoples still experience poorer health outcomes
than non-Indigenous Australians. It is well understood these inequities are a
result of the colonisation process and the many discriminatory policies to
which Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Australians were subjected to,
and the ongoing experience of discrimination today.
All healthcare leaders and health
professionals have a role to play in closing the gap.
The approach the NMBA has taken for
nurses and midwives (the largest workforce in the healthcare system) by setting
expectations around culturally safe practice, reflects the current expectations
of governments to provide a culturally safe health system. (For more
information please see the COAG Health Council 4 August 2017 Communiqué).
Culturally safe and respectful
practice is not a new concept. Nurses and midwives are expected to engage with
all people as individuals in a culturally safe and respectful way, foster open,
honest and compassionate professional relationships, and adhere to their
obligations about privacy and confidentiality.
Many health services already provide
cultural safety training for their staff. Cultural safety is about the person
who is providing care reflecting on their own assumptions and culture in order
to work in a genuine partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Peoples.
Nurses and midwives have always had a
responsibility to provide care that contributes to the best possible outcome
for the person/woman they are caring for. They need to work in partnership with
that person/woman to do so. The principle of cultural safety in the new Code of
conduct for nurses and Code of conduct for midwives (the codes) provides
simple, common sense guidance on how to work in a partnership with Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. The codes do not require nurses or midwives
to declare or apologise for white privilege.
The guidance around cultural safety in
the codes sets out clearly the behaviours that are expected of nurses and
midwives, and the standard of conduct that patients and their families can
expect. It is vital guidance for improving health outcomes and experiences for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
The codes were developed through an
evidence-based and extensive consultation process conducted over a two-year
period. Their development included literature reviews to ensure they were based
on the best available international and Australian evidence, as well as an analysis
of complaints about the conduct of nurses and midwives to ensure they were
meeting the public’s needs.
The consultation and input from the
public and professions included working groups, focus groups and preliminary
and public consultation. The public consultation phase included a campaign to
encourage nurses and midwives to provide feedback.
The Australian Nursing and Midwifery
Federation, the Australian College of Nursing, the Australian College of
Midwives and the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and
Midwives all participated in each stage of the development and consultation of
the new codes. The organisations strongly support the guidance around cultural
safety in the codes for nurses and midwives.
Lynette Cusack Chair
Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia
Ann Kinnear CEO
Australian College of Midwives (ACM)
Kylie Ward CEO
Australian College of Nursing (ACN)
Janine Mohamed CEO
Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives
Annie Butler A/Federal
Secretary Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation
Labels:
health,
media,
racism,
right wing politics
Thursday 8 March 2018
International Women's Day, 8 March 2018
A voice I am listening to on International Women's Day 2018.....
IndigenousX, 7 March 2018:
“Racism is one that all women in the women’s movement
must start to come to terms with. There is no doubt in my mind that racism is
expressed by women in the movement. Its roots are many and they go deep.”
– Pat O’Shane
Those words were written
by former magistrate, First Nations woman Pat O’Shane more than two decades ago
and yet still represent an uncomfortable truth for mainstream feminism. Similar
criticisms have also been made by First Nations women like Jackie Huggins, Judy
Atkinson and Aileen Morton-Robinson and are revived and re-spoken by younger
feminists like Larissa Behrendt, Celeste Liddle, Nayuka Gorrie and many more
who continue the fight to hold mainstream feminism to account.
The roots of racism
within mainstream feminism are still there, under the soil. But that’s not to
say there haven’t been changes in the mainstream feminist movement. Rather than
outright denial on racism and how race impacts gender, an even more damaging
phenomenon has taken hold: co-option.
Intersectionality,
grounded in critical race theory, is now used by many white feminists but has
been watered down to a buzzword: a superficial display of “inclusiveness”
whereby it is used to deflect rather than interrogate the way race impacts the
lived experience of gender, class, gender identity, sexual orientation and
disability. An example of this, is the way Aboriginal women are consigned
to a footnote with no context in articles about domestic violence, aligning the
staggering statistics with the continuing colonial portrayal of the Aboriginal
‘other’ as inherently violent.
Much like International
Women’s Day, which has become a day for corporates and fancy breakfasts that
few women outside of the upper and middle classes can attend – the term has
been re-purposed to fit into a limited type of white feminist thought.
Over the years, I’ve
spent a lot of time being angry at the failings of white liberal feminism,
largely because it is the type of feminism that finds the loudest voice in
mainstream media. Because it has this voice it has become synonymous with
‘feminism’, despite the movement itself being a broad church. I even questioned
whether to continue calling myself a feminist.
I have realised that as
an Aboriginal feminist, I don’t have to continue reacting to these failures.
There is already a foundation built by brilliant black women which allows us to
continue developing an Aboriginal feminism. And the reason this is so important
is because the unique experiences of Aboriginal people, the way racism impacts
our lived experiences as women, brotherboys, sistergirls and non-binary
peoples, is a matter of life and death.
While the national
conversation around domestic violence and sexual assault is undoubtedly
important, often Aboriginal voices are bypassed altogether. An example of this
was the recent Our Watch media awards, where a white male journalist was given
an accolade for reporting on “the violence no one talks about”. Aboriginal
women have been talking about violence for decades – the ‘silence’ is not the
issue. It is that no one listens unless it is spoken in a way that bypasses the
role of white Australia, and places blame right back onto Aboriginal people
themselves.
That is why arguments
about Aboriginal culture being inherently violent are so appealing. There may
have been instances of violence in pre-colonial Aboriginal society –
but from my perspective, if Aboriginal people were participating in
the level of violence we see now in many communities, we would not have
survived for tens of thousands of years, and we would not have developed a
sophisticated system of land management, astronomy and science that intertwined
with our spirituality.
But the cultural
arguments around Aboriginal violence find an audience in a white Australia that
denies its continuing role in the current circumstances affecting our people.
And white feminists can often be complicit in the perpetuation of the myth,
particularly when it comes to ‘saving black women and children’ from the hands
of Aboriginal men. The fact is, Aboriginal communities are not inhuman – we
care deeply about violence and the impact on our people, particularly our
children. But the conversation has become dangerous due to the centring of
white outrage and the appetite for black pathology which borders on
pornographic.
Meanwhile, Aboriginal
women are painted as depraved for this perceived silence. Like the colonial
images that rendered Aboriginal women as uncaring ‘infanticidal cannibals’ who
did not love their children, we are again caricatured as powerless and
unconcerned about our children. This is the real silence: the silencing of the
strong Aboriginal women all across the country who have worked day in and day
out on this problem in the face of continual slander. …..
Full article can be read here.
Labels:
access & equity,
feminism,
Indigenous Australia,
inequality,
IWD,
racism,
women
Friday 26 January 2018
Sunday 21 January 2018
United Nations spokesperson calls US President Donald J Trump a racist
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights was established in 1946 to weave the international legal fabric that protects our fundamental rights and freedoms and, this is what it said in the wake of US President Donald J Trump's remarks concerning 'non-white' countries in January 2018.
Watch The United Nations lay out exactly why @realDonaldTrump can't be labeled anything other than a racist in 1 minute. pic.twitter.com/1Bc0e7zg4d— UnsilentMajority (@The_UnSilent_) January 13, 2018
Rupert Colville, spokesperson for UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights:
"These are shocking and shameful comments from the President of the United States. I'm sorry, but there's no other word one can use but 'racist'.
"You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as 'shitholes', whose entire populations are not white are therefore not welcome.
"The positive comment on Norway makes the underlying sentiment very clear.
"Like the earlier comments made vilifying Mexicans and Muslims, the policy proposals targeting entire groups on grounds of nationality or religion, and the reluctance to clearly condemn the antisemitic and racist actions of the white supremacists in Charlottesville, all of these go against the universal values the world has been striving so hard to establish since World War Two and the Holocaust.
"This isn't just a story about vulgar language, it's about opening the door to humanity's worst side.
"It's about validating and encouraging racism and xenophobia that will potentially disrupt and even destroy the lives of many people, and that's perhaps the single most damaging and dangerous consequence of this type of comment by a major political figure."
Labels:
bigotry,
Donald Trump,
racism,
UN-US relations,
US politics
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