The proportions of Aboriginal children and young people placed in a relative or kin placement or with an Aboriginal foster carer have decreased, and the proportion of Aboriginal children who were reunified with their families has declined.

Not only do the purveyors of imagined Aboriginal culture insult us while making us pay for favoured fantasies, their patronising advocacy for the 'world's oldest culture' helps to sustain barbaric initiations that still go on in places like West Arnhem Land. How proud must the urban sophisticates be to know their support locks fresh generations into lives of dependent hopelessness

There is no love for Aborigines in this referendum proposal, just ego. Aboriginal people in remote and blighted communities are radically disabled. They are self-determining all right -- sitting on country, not speaking English and dying early. Aboriginal leaders, CEOs and the Prime Minister think this is a good idea. That must be their view, because their solution is to change nothing

The madness of the period was unmistakable, few instances more so than the 1973 referenda asking voters to give the Commonwealth power over prices and incomes. Fortunately, it lost, albeit setting a precedent for the Albanese government to be just as silly in its attempts to control the Australian energy market, and to tell Australians that they should hand Aboriginal leaders what would amount to a national 'black cabinet'

A stupid idea, once embedded in the heads of intellectuals, […]

Integration works. Just ask the vast majority of Aborigines who […]

The Aboriginal industry, those people who are tutored to promote an almost always undefined Aboriginal culture, stand in the way of successful integration. If their goal is to support Aboriginal culture the result will be precisely the same as it has been for generations. Those who escape culture succeed. Those who remain captive find culture a burden.

Where Aborigines have been ‘ghettoised’ -- whether in Redfern, Aurukun or Wadeye -- the result has been the same: appalling physical and moral degradation in a culture entrapped in despair. The path out of the ghetto lies in changing the behaviour of individuals, not the dominant society

Voices for and against re-writing the Constitution met recently at a Quadrant symposium in Sydney. As editor Keith Windschuttle put it, if the Commonwealth goes ahead with the referendum, it should fund and publicise a fully investigated, well-articulated case for voting No.