Opinion
It’s a sad state of affairs when a clown gives more sound legal advice than one of the nation’s supposedly top legal minds, but that’s life in a Clown World, I guess.
While the NSW Chief Justice, like so many in his profession, not to mention the sprawling, multi-billion army of the Indigenous Industry wring their hands and witter pious nostrums about Aboriginal incarceration rates, Jim Carrey, of all people, had the solution nearly thirty years ago. In the 1997 comedy Liar Liar, Carrey’s Fletcher Reede, a lawyer magically compelled to tell the truth, however confronting, bellows at a recidivist client: Stop breaking the law, asshole!
Apparently, that simple prescription is a pill too difficult for Aboriginal Australians to swallow.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart accurately calls out the “obscene number” of young Aboriginal Australians in detention, the Chief Justice of Australia’s largest jurisdiction says, rallying governments to do more for Indigenous people following the voice referendum defeat.
Marking the first time a sitting judge has spoken to Australia’s rejection of the voice, NSW Chief Justice Andrew Bell said the loss should not “obscure the stark and confronting reality” of the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians when it comes to the justice system.
Note that m’lud says nothing about the stark and confronting reality of the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians when it comes to committing crimes. Although Australian Bureau of Statistics data on crime excludes Victoria, Tasmania and WA, its data for the rest of the states and territories shows that Aboriginal offending rates are on average eight times higher than non-Aboriginal. In some jurisdictions, such as the ACT, it’s nearly 20 times higher.
Stop breaking the law, assholes!
“The Uluru Statement laments that ‘our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers’. That language is strong, but it is not hyperbole.”
Perhaps not, but it is lying by omission. If “their youth” weren’t running rampant in violent gangs every night in cities across Australia, they wouldn’t be “languishing in detention”. No amount of hand-wringing can hide the stark fact that Aborigines are breaking the law at vastly higher rates than the rest of the country.
But the learned Chief Justice won’t talk about that.
Instead, having lost his obviously earnest desire to impose an apartheid Constitution on Australia, via the “Voice” referendum, the judge wants to impose an apartheid court system. Rather than one law for all, Bell wants two laws: one for the rest of us, and a separate, special one, for Aboriginal Australians.
Chief Justice Bell told the crowd at the Sofitel in Darling Harbour that the loss of the referendum means governments and courts need to step up and assist Indigenous Australians, through initiatives such as specialist Aboriginal courts such as the Walama List court being piloted in NSW […]
“Aboriginal Elders, themselves invariably members of the Stolen Generation, play important roles in the Walama List in the District Court, and circle sentencing in the Local Court and the Youth Koori Courts, together with many non-indigenous practitioners, in seeking to achieve diversion towards critical support services directed to underlying offending behaviour, enhanced respect for the legal system, and rehabilitative justice, especially for young offenders.
With Aborigines in NSW offending at seven times the rate of everyone else, it doesn’t seem to be doing much good.
Note, too, the tacit excuses peddled, here: “members of the Stolen Generation”. So what? It’s a fact of history too often swept under the carpet that more non-Aborigines were “stolen” (in reality, removed, and usually with far less reason) than Aborigines under that lamentable, paternalistic regime. So, why aren’t non-Aborigines offending at higher rates than they are? Many non-Aboriginal Australians, such as Jewish and Vietnamese refugees, suffered far more brutally than Aborigines, yet they and their children are notably law-abiding.
So, spare me the “inter-generational trauma” excuses.
Stop breaking the law, assholes!
Then comes the really weird stuff.
Taking a veiled swipe at former US president Donald Trump, Chief Justice Bell condemned anyone who believes the 2020 election was “stolen” and said it was an attitude Australians must guard themselves against.
The Australian
Which has exactly what to do with anything?
If this deranged left-loon is the best the NSW justice system has to offer, then it’s no wonder we’re so beset by a clown world reality.