Andrew Bolt: Dysfunction in Aboriginal culture a deadly problem

WE are seeing signs of a horror that few people, particularly of the Left, will face. It is not white racism or colonialism but the terrible dysfunction in Aboriginal culture, writes Andrew Bolt.

PLEASE, please, wake up. Last month, a two-year-old Aboriginal girl was allegedly raped in Tennant Creek. She hadn’t been removed even after 21 notifications to social workers. This week, there was another alleged rape, this time of a four-year-old boy at a remote Aboriginal community, also in the Northern Territory.

POLICE INVESTIGATE BOY’S ALLEGED SEXUAL ASSAULT

TWO-YEAR-OLD GIRL ALLEGEDLY RAPED IN TENNANT CREEK

Here are signs of a horror that few people, particularly of the Left, will face. That horror is not white racism or colonialism. It is the terrible dysfunction in Aboriginal culture.

We have Aboriginal women at least 30 times more likely to be hospitalised by domestic violence. We have Aboriginal children nearly five times more likely to be sexually assaulted.

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Experts now warn we leave Aboriginal children in dangers from which we’d save white children.

But where’s the reaction from the Aboriginal industry? I saw just one protest after the two-year-old was raped. Of all things, it was against Channel 7 for having had guests wanting more Aboriginal children saved by adoption. “Leave our kids alone,” chanted the protesters — exactly the deadly problem.

Child welfare officials are so scared of seeming racist that some do not save children from danger if that means removing them from Aboriginal culture. Indeed, the ABC promotes people like Grandmothers Against Removals who demand we save even fewer Aboriginal children.

A young child plays alone on top of Anzac Hill in Tennant Creek.

Greens MP Lidia Thorpe complained “we still continue to see our children being ripped out their mothers’ arms” when in “a lot of cases … they should have remained”.

This poison has worked. Experts now warn we leave Aboriginal children in dangers from which we’d save white children. The Chief Justice of WA has said it. A former chief magistrate of the NT has said it. Victoria’s former commissioner for Aboriginal children said it last month. And a memo in 2014 from the NT Department of Children and Families head suggests staff turned a blind eye to children being raped.

“A small number of staff misunderstand how some cultural practices in local Aboriginal communities affect their role as child protection practitioners when assessing and managing cases involving sexual exploitation,” it warned.

It reminded staff that “children under 16 years of age cannot ‘consent’ to intercourse”.

Enough. We cannot base child welfare policies on the myth that Aboriginal culture is better all round for Aboriginal children in the 21st Century.

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