Mr Pearson,

You want considered responses and not knee-jerk name-calling, well, here goes.

I won’t re-iterate the criticisms that have already been leveled at the Howard/Brough/Pearson proposal because I’m sure you’ve acquainted yourself with those already. So I’ll restrict my comments to those questions which have thrown themselves up in my mind.

I would dearly love to hear your responses, being as you are a considerate man and not merely the tool of the Howard government, bent as it is on finding a little black rabbit to pull out of its hat, even though their intentions may be ostensibly honourable.

Firstly, what is your solution to the problem of the whitefellas who are an external contributory factor? I speak about those owners of the grog shops, the men who run the multinational corporations such as Woolworths Liquor and Liquorland who sell the grog in the towns to be taken back to the settlements or the long grass.

Also, there is the recently identified problem of the whitefella miners, who with their 9 day on, 4 day off shifts, have been getting toey and paying for the ‘services’ of mining camp followers among the teenage aboriginal female population. I know John Howard won’t touch them, for at the moment miners are a protected Howard species, but what do you say?

Surely you are no toady of this government and, to be even-handed and not simply to vilify your own people, surely you must also make this problem worthy of your attention also. Or, are some problems easy to get your head around and propose solutions for and others just a bit too hard?

Next, I have heard that those children who are taken away from their parents for their own safety will be resettled in boarding houses. Do you agree with this proposal or do you think that there must be another way, which will not alienate children from their parents and break family bonds, nor stigmatise the children and cause still further psychological pain? Surely there must be, among the extended family, a ‘safe’ grandparent that could be prevailed upon to take over care responsibilities for these children, maybe in a nearby settlement or town.

Suffice to say that an obvious upshot of this process will be the spectre of desperate individuals turning to whatever they can lay their hands on containing alcohol to substitute for the grog that has been taken away. I have heard that mouthwash is now a favourite, and then there is always the old favourite Metho.

So, what I’m saying basically is, do you advocate locking up those who will be going through the DTs in drunk tanks, or, even worse still, how do you feel about the possibility of the detention centres being used to put your people behind razor wire until they ‘straighten out’ to the Howard government’s satisfaction?

I posit this theory because I can think of no other means of corralling all those that will have the Howard government’s measures foist upon them. Also, they are virtually empty and mothballed at the moment.

Do you think that if there is no grog then maybe the members of the affected communities may turn to other, more dangerous, but easily available drugs of intoxication, such as heroin or Ice (Methamphetamine)?

If this happens then what is your solution to that problem because in its 11 years in power the Howard government haven’t been able to do diddly squat about it in the white community. In fact, their ‘zero tolerance’ approach to heroin only led to the outbreak of the Ice epidemic subsequently, and now heroin is back again anyway.

Another problem will be the underground black markets that this prohibition will engender. What little money the community members will be left with will no doubt go on inflated prices for what grog they can get their hands on on pay day.
This migration to the towns and cities will also probably see those exact same children, who you are attempting to save, abandoned in many cases by their parents who are on the prowl for grog. Do you believe that freedom of movement and basic human rights should be allowed for the people that are under the government’s microscope?

What about the whitefellas that drink with the blackfellas, or are the husbands of Aboriginal women with a drinking problem, should they come under the purview of the Howard government’s action?

I also would like to make the purely medical point that you will be dealing with a large percentage of the target population who already have significant brain damage from their years of drug and alcohol abuse. Thus, a lot of their behaviours will be ingrained and unable to be changed simply as the result of a little bit of drying out. When the money, or the inclination to do something about these people, finally runs out, as it inevitably will, then what?

Do you think they should be permanently incarcerated somewhere away from their people for the term of their natural lives, in a kind of leper colony-like situation, because not all offenders will be able to be cured of their afflictions?

Finally, what do you think of the suggestion that, as part of its wider agenda, the Howard government has done what it is to get their hands on the uranium in the Northern Territory, so as to not have to go through the traditional landowners for approval for their larger Nuclear Power agenda?

So, Mr Pearson, you wanted attention focused on this problem, well what are your answers to the problems that this so-called solution has thrown up?

I await your reply with intense interest.