Indigenous people used as sacrificial lambs

There was a lot of media focus on the video of street violence that Indigenous elders from Wyndham, Roebourne and Ceduna took to Canberra in a graphic appeal for our nation’s leaders to support the implementation of the cashless debit card.

The elders believe the card — designed to minimise spending on alcohol and gambling products by quarantining 80% of welfare income — is key to stemming the kind of vicious acts in the footage, which are seen in their home communities daily.

I would describe the video as even more abhorrent than the footage revealed in the ABC Four Corners program exposing mistreatment of youth inmates at Don Dale. Yet while we saw public outcry and action in response to the Don Dale revelations, there has been no action on the street violence and the cashless debit card.

How is a toddler being picked up by their scalp, or a woman being kicked and stomped on, any less worthy of action than the Don Dale inmates? Is it because the street violence is between Aboriginal people — something the left shies away from addressing — rather than the perception of the Don Dale acts as being white people inflicting racism on Aboriginal people?

But while the Greens have followed their usual stance: to sit back and do nothing except condemn the desperate pleas of the community leaders (presumably because they don’t fit the Greens’ narrative) we have to also ask what the major parties are doing to address it.

Perhaps it is fear of another backlash like the one the former Howard Government received over the intervention. Why is it that our MP’s are comfortable being held to ransom by activists who ignore the plight of the thousands of battered Australian women and sexually abused children in the name of political correctness?

How do our leaders and politically-correct activists sleep at night after viewing the footage and sitting on their hands?

Why are these abused and assaulted women and children — all of whom are Australian citizens — being used as sacrificial lambs for the enforcement of ideological thinking?