ABORIGINAL LEADERS DEMAND CHILDREN BE "STOLEN"

Australian readers, and everyone who's seen Rabbit Proof Fence, will be aware it was once gorvernment policy to take half-caste Aboriginal children from their parents. These so-called "stolen generations" weren't taken from their parents to ensure a perpetual supply of cheap domestic labour as the plot summary for Rabbit Proof Fence would lead you to believe, the ultimate goal was to improve the plight of Australia's Aborigines.

Obviously some good must have come from the policy because Aboriginal leaders in Western Australia's north have asked that it be reactivated, albeit in modified form:

The beleaguered town of Halls Creek has called for Aboriginal children to be forcibly removed from their parents in a desperate bid to stop the community self-destructing.

The town's indigenous leaders are pushing a series of drastic moves which would effectively take the theory of Aboriginal welfare back decades - introducing curfews, payment of food vouchers instead of money, allowing parents to smack their children and issuing court orders which would allow children to be taken from parents and placed in a boarding school out of town.

Under the town's plan, parents who have their children taken from them would also be required to attend rehabilitation as part of the court order.

Halls Creek leaders, including school principal Garry Smith, parenting bodies and the medical service, have endorsed the plan.

Who could possibly oppose such a scheme, proposed by the Aborigines themselves?

"Activists, do-gooders, non-indigenous people will think it is going back to 'stolen generations' and treating people like little kids," Yura Yungi Aboriginal Medical Service chief Judith Butters said yesterday. "But you have to do something. This seems to be the only solution."

Yeah well, it seemed like the reasonable solution to a perceived problem back when, and then the do-gooders, activists and movie-makers turned it into the "stolen generations".