"A right delayed is a right denied." MLK Jnr

"If we do not change our ways, then our ways do not change." G.G. (1993)

"God is Watching." - 2010 - J.J.K.



Gerry's YouTube Library!


14:20

Rally for humaneness opening.mp4

Welcome to country by Uncle Ben Taylor, introduction by Gerry and speech by Bill Haywood

- by haywoodfarm

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/45348

Letter to the Editor - Another Death in Custody - 19.1.2011



Letter to the Editor - Australia or Invasion Day - 19.1.2011



Letter to the Editor - HYPOCRISY where it should not belong - 18.1.2011

Aboriginal Advancement by Aboriginal people is the way forward for oppressed and disenfranchised Aboriginal peoples. Contemporary racism is no longer merely about disliking someone because of the colour of their skin or because of their cultural settings. Contemporary racism includes standing in the way of people's right to self-determination, standing in the way of people managing their own affairs, in believing that for instance white folk can manage the affairs of Aboriginal peoples better than they can - this is a 'Chief Protector' mentality.

We need to eliminate this type of racism firstly at the grassroots for us to have real hope of eliminating racism at the coalfaces and frontiers.

There are some social justice groups that do not understand contemporary racism and do not have a grasp on meaningful definitions of equitable social inclusion. One such group is the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee WA (incorporated).

For all their positive contributions over the years those at the wheel stand in the way of Aboriginal folk who believe in Aboriginal Advancement by Aboriginal people. The Committee was created as a response to the 99 Aboriginal deaths in custody between 1980 and 1989 and subsequently was reinforced as an Aboriginal peoples reference group from the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. During the nineties 'Aboriginal' was stripped from the group's title. Though the issue has been raised a few times 'Aboriginal' has never been returned. The Aboriginal folk dispossessed of their reference group came and went, and came again and went.

We care about all deaths in custody however in the state of WA Aboriginal deaths are more in total numbers than non-Aboriginal deaths and we have three times the national average of Aboriginal deaths in custody. The DICWC's Constitution claims as its first aim and objective the elimination of Aboriginal deaths in custody.

The acrimony at the DICWC, which we believe should be the ADICWC, has reached very sad heights, however the Aboriginal folk, and wise non-Aboriginal supporters, who believe in self-determination, in Aboriginal ownership and leadership, in a Board, at least predominately, of Aboriginal members working with all people are standing up to those who insist they should be leading - instead of a predominant Aboriginal leadership. Don't they see their own hypocrisy?

DICWC is mired with a Board that insists on secrecy, that insists on confidentiality agreements, that argues 'good governance'. Dr Bill Hayward and Glenn Moore have refused to sign the confidentiality agreements and as a result have been excluded from the Board meetings! This is a Board which recriminates people who criticise. This is a Board that indulges kangaroo courts. In accordance with the DICWC Constitution we have called for a General Meeting (twice) however our motions and agenda items have not been affirmed by a morally bankrupt DICWC Board bent on justifying its stance. The Meeting shall be held on February 1.

We ask the media to attend. We ask for a public gallery so our arguments can be heard as we strive to reclaim an Aboriginal reference group and our right to speak for ourselves and lead as Aboriginal people - we need not be led. No culture, Aboriginal or migrant should be led and nor should we only be known through 'Welcome to Country' and food, song and dance. As Invasion Day approaches please remember that the very least non-Aboriginal folk can do is allow us to reclaim our voice and our full suite of human rights.

Dot Henry, Chair of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Womens Alliance
Dr William Hayward, Australia's first Aboriginal Chiropractor and excluded DICWC Board Member
Glenn Moore, Leader of The Aboriginal Party and excluded DICWC Board Member
Gerry Georgatos, Convener of The Human Rights Alliance and PhD in Australian Deaths in Custody



Letter to the Editor - Diana Ryan and LRT - 17.1.2011


The Opinion Piece (Monday 17, January) by light rail researcher Diana Ryan is the best contextual article I have read on light rail transport. There is not much I have not read on light rail transport.

After reading Diana's piece on light rail transport options and ways forward I would suggest to the Barnett Government that Diana should be made head coordinator of making light transport systems happen in the good state of WA, which so desperately needs them.

As Diana writes "It is not necessary to wait 10 years for our first light rail system."
 
Gerry Georgatos



Letter to the Editor - Spare a thought - 15.1.2011

Gerry Georgatos

 

Letter to the Editor - Priorities

We are crying about not getting the FIFA nod for soccer downunder in 2022. Why aren't we crying about ending homelessness, which is growing, child poverty, Aboriginal disparity, or about fixing the ailing mental health system? Why aren't we crying for a national inquiry into all Australian deaths in custody, one of the world's worst records, almost 2,300 deaths from 1982 to present, and at an increased current rate of 77 per year?

Premier Barnett is prepared to guide 700 million to a billion dollars to a sport stadium. Jesus Christ! If we've got a spare billion to tap into why isn't it being used once again for the elimination of homelessness, child poverty,  Aboriginal disparity, for the ailing mental health system? Who determines our priorities? Do we go by triage, by moral propriety, by an ethos of care or by the utter and senseless greed procured by the ignorance of excessive self-interest stakeholders?

Sometimes, for a moment, I feel like giving up. We're always fighting tooth and nail, for social justice while the goals of the self-regarding come so much easier. And then some of them parade around as philanthropists and social justice agents, therefore hoodwinking some of the people.

Gerry Georgatos

 

Letter to the Editor - Dud Politicians, we know: & Gallop speaks up - 17.10.2010

Former WA Premier, Geoff Gallop, who left politics because of depression, was the keynote speaker at the annual Bob Hawke lecture in Adelaide. Gallop spoke about the ineptitude of our political system and of the majority of our politicians. He described to the audience essentially the 'oh der' obvious.

Gallop described that very poor calibre of our ministers and what little they have to offer is often mismatched to their portfolio. Gallop argued for constitutional reforms which would allow us to procure the best talent in Australia to our Cabinets. The problem that Gallop was alluding to is that the majority of Australian politicians are duds and lemons, and that they are not cut out to be managing their respective constituencies, portfolios and the state's or country's affairs. They lack the experience, the knowledge, the acumen and the expertise. Most of us know this.

Yeah sure, politicians are an easy target however they are the ones who put themselves on a pedestal and promised they would rise to the occasion. However most do not and this is because they are managerially illiterate and without the experiential knowledge in various fields that should be prerequisite. It is improper for anyone to aspire to politics if they cannot demonstrate experience, knowledge and management. Human rights and social justice are both delayed and abused by the wrong people in the wrong place.

Gallop's comments at the Hawke annual speak should be followed up however this is unlikely. The majority of our incumbent politicians will argue that Gallop was driveling. The tragic reality is that we are governed by the dumb as Plato poignantly forewarned if democracy was not better understood and expertise and other propriety constitutionally incorporated. Plato warned of temptation and nepotism undermining our investiture of faith and goodwill in the ideals of democracy.

The problem is that democracy for instance in this country has been corrupted by the impropriety and unexamined practices of all our political parties. There is not a single exception. Our political parties maintain corrupted internal processes, for instance with pre-selection of candidates. All our political parties, major and minority, and the worst offenders are most certainly Labor, Liberals and the Greens, are harbingers of organisational cultures dominated by friends, family, factions and the rude dispensation of favours. Party dues and relationships dominate pre-selections and internal appointments.

Which party will one day courageously finally stand up and declare that it does not have partners and relatives in key internal positions and simultaneously in political office? Political theory and policy discussions are subsumed by nepotism and the subsequent struggles for personal power.

As a result of this misguided will to power and personal favours our political parties do not seek out the best people, the most knowledgeable people, those with experience and achievements, those with integrity and capacity. Often when good talent arrives they are often derided or defamed by the power-brokers, who are underwritten by family, factions, party dues, favours and excessive self interest groups. Therefore we finish up with state and federal governments, and with cabinets, wallowing in inexperience and lack of substantive talent. Who within the Labor, Liberal and Greens parties will be the first to rise and confess by describing the crisis and call for the overhaul and reform of their internal processes, pre-selection and for the understanding that politics is a calling and mateship and familial and factional allies have no place?

Gallop was obviously right in publicly stating that misguided loyalties and familial bonds are decimating real hope for overdue change and the best people, those who will "make a big difference" are being excluded by the electrified barbed wire of nepotism and selfishness. And the strong talent where it persists for pre-selection or policy changes however is without parties dues and without the hand of nepotism are hence expeditiously pummeled if they threaten family, friends, factions and if need be their reputations are trashed by orchestrated whisper and public campaigns.

It's easy to change any system and especially the systems of political parties. If political parties and governments expect propriety and disclosure and transparency and accountability from the corporate giants, from the multinationals and mining and banking sectors, from the private sector, and the public sector, and from the ordinary citizen then they should expect it of themselves. We should expect no less or we will continue oft governed by the dumb, and with far too many lemons and duds in parliament and in our cabinets, and in our shadow governments and their cabinets.

Gerry Georgatos



Letter to the Editor - Guantanamo and humanity - 17.10.2010

We live in a vacuum of inhumanity while purporting a journey to a civil and just humanity. Everything we know is subject to revision, especially what we now about the truth. If we are to believe David Hicks' account of his five and half years imprisoned at Guantanamo then we must acknowledge the most horrific ailments of our inhumanity.

Example is our only immortality. What the prisoners endured at Guantanamo and at Abu Ghraib depicts a cruel and vicious, narcissistic and essentially mad inhumanity. If we are to believe the means is the end then violence will continue to beget violence. What hope do we as human beings have if we continue with violence as the means to the end? Especially as we increase our destructive weaponry, contaminants and as we enter the fully fledged nuclear age?

George Bush was a President of the US and we had a President of the most powerful nation on this Earth justify Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Military Police caged human beings, tortured them and senselessly propagated violence as the means to everything under the sun. George Bush described those caged at Guantanamo as the "worst of the worst" however I would describe Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the murderous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as the part of the "worst".

Our ability to discover the truth is only outstripped by our ability to manifest deceit.


Gerry Georgatos



Letter to the Editor - The goodly Mary Mackillop - 17.10.2010

Mary Mackillop has been credited with an awful lot. Her devotion to humanity should be heralded and this devotion should not be diminished by claims her good works were laced by miracles. I believe God is watching however I don't believe that God has a hand in anything whatsoever. All our Saints, even the one I am named after, were only human beings, just like you and I, without any saintliness - only a deep self examination that underwrote their devotion.

Mary Mackillop coordinated numerous schools, women's refuges and charities and assisted numerous young people to improve their lot or to bare their burdens. However she is not directly responsible for cancers disappearing and other such claims. Maybe some believed so strongly in her that their mind's eye did the job, and this happens. However, though we are all inter-connected as human beings and with often the nagging urge of a sixth sense human beings have not evolved miracle working powers. These claims only diminish Mary Mackillop's hard labour, utter devotion and personal achievements on behalf of her immediate humanity and ultimately disservice the prospect towards a civil and just humanity.

Gerry Georgatos



Letter to the Editor - Little outright honesty in the climate change debates - 15.10.2010

There is little comprehensive honesty in the discussions and ways forward about climate change and the increasing carbon footprint. Australia, like other nations, has tried to introduce monitoring and checks to emissions and the carbon footprint since the 1980s and in particular since 1992.

Annually, Australia, like the US and the Europeans, has increased its emissions and carbon footprint. The Europeans are often used as a model for change in terms of claims by some so-called 'sustainability experts' for the implementation of renewable energy servers, for loosely defined sustainable practices in public transport and for isolated balances and checks on heavy industry emissions. However the statistics describe otherwise - they describe an increasing carbon footprint, increasing levels of smog, greater use of high emission private transport, an extraordinary, though obvious, over consumption of goods and services.  Some of us often pretend it is better somewhere else so those some of us can use the somewhere else as a model for change. At best there are pockets of heavily controlled change in certain towns however they have arrived at a heavy transforming cost, and they are underwritten by strict and rigorous consolidated communal disciplines.

In Perth we often use Fremantle as some sort of model for the rest of Perth and WA. Those who pretend to be 'sustainability gurus' advocate Fremantle, as do some of its wishful residents, a title of the 'sustainability' capital. However Fremantle's carbon footprint has exponentially and dramatically increased during the last two decades. It is both the harbinger and destination of increasing pollution, and the graphic hilly port city is a lure to increasing levels of various contaminants as it is increasingly the hub of much thoroughfare, and it is near corridors of heavy emissions industry. Fremantle is increasingly high density in terms of human population however this adds to the carbon footprint. The argument that high density living subsumes the need for people to transport themselves over vast distances is past its use by date. There is no bona fide community living within high density populations, only more methane, carbon, increased stress as a result of cramped living conditions, the promulgation of tenement lifestyles, over crowded transport services, more private transport piled into the location, and of resultant attendant mental ill health. The port city has lost its community living, even as I knew it, and it has been subsumed by an increasingly ugly tourist precinct that only has one purpose - consumption of goods and services. Therefore places like Fremantle, argued by some as a model for change for the rest of Perth, are not the answers, and actually depict as clearly as the light of day what is wrong with high density living and the ever expanding tourist precincts.

Climate change does naturally happen because of gravitational effects and because of the solar activity of the sun and because of the shifts in the Earth's ecosystems and weather patterns which have been affected by the human equation, that is the human over-activity; our heavy industry emissions and human created pollutants. Human over-activity implores upon the Earth as if akin to a xenograft rather than some allograft, and the Earth reacts in ways at times as if with an auto-immune system shock or rejection of the xenograft. The algorithmic matrices of the natural environment and the Earth's weather often endure a combustive effect rather than a synergistic effect from the outlier shock mathematics of human over-activity. There is no doubt to the mathematics and the physics here. We do affect the world around us and it is delusional to argue otherwise. The prospect of primary and secondary resources depletion, water scarcity, a pending uranium dependent nuclear age background the growing uncertainties. It is just as delusional and just as self serving as for those who defend heavy emissions industry as vital to the economies of nations for any proponent of remedies to addressing climate change to restrict their arguments to one element or to a single miracle cure. Some claim that renewable energies alone will diminish the carbon footprint. This is not true. High density living, over population and over consumption, and a wage market geared to decimating the Earth's resources will continue to maintain the dangerous effect we have on the climate and on our consumption of natural resources and in particular water. The debate must be comprehensive to the point it questions our political theories, as they underwrite our economic management systems and human practices.

Most importantly we need to dramatically reduce consumption of goods and services as to make renewable energies viable and the cost of these utilities to the user affordable. This would take an honest modelling of our economies. It would require a radical review of our capital and wage markets and economies. Otherwise whatever we are doing is a pointless exercise in futility, merely chipping away at a larger problem. Or we should prepare for very different future prospects.

What  no-one is prepared to do, not governments, politicians, climate change experts, sustainability gurus, so as not to lose voters, not to scare people, though they should because this is the honest reality, is to do the cross-modelling, with all its implications and inherent expectations, and contextualise what we need to do across the board to make sure we address and remedy what humans do that lead to dangerous climactic variations and our constancy in increasing the carbon footprint. If we do not do this then all we are doing is allowing others to lie to us, us to lie to ourselves, most of us to perpetuate lies and hence allow the manifest of deceit to outstrip the discovery of the truth. Certain political groups have built themselves on the need for change to our human practices however they then about face and limit the discussion so as to grow as a political influence while in the process the impetus for the whole truth is sacrificed. Therefore the real prospect of change cannot occur. Nevertheless, if the politicians remain either ignorant or continue to lie because they comply to immediate voter perceived restrictions on debates and discussions the Earth will not become a dead planet. The Earth will carry on and most probably for the estimated billions of years to come. What will happen if we do not have a comprehensive discussion, with the cross-modelling, about what human over-activity is doing to the climate and to the our natural resources is merely that the Earth will become a slightly hotter planet, vulnerable to various influences, more arid, less of the natural environment as we have known it and humans will continue to morph into something else. Humanity will do as it is doing and invest hopes for the future in unheralded technology, genetic engineering, android dependency, the harnessing of untapped volatile energies and the entrenchment of class divisions and total separation of peoples. We bring on whatever we do or don't.

Gerry Georgatos


Letter to the Editor - I have to agree with some, though zero tolerance needs to go - 13.10.2010

I read Commissioner O'Callaghan's opinion piece in the West Australian, 13.10.10, on the use of Tasers by the WA police. Firstly it is clear that the indiscriminate use of Tasers by a couple of officers among nine officers against Mr Spratt was outrageously wrong and these officers should be held accountable. To the naked eye it was clearly grievous bodily harm and assault.

I am part of several human rights campaign groups and most of them are affronted by the indiscriminate use of Tasers. However as a reasonable person I have to acknowledge some of the arguments the Commissioner propositioned in his opinion piece. I have a brother-in-law who has been a police officer for two decades and I know he would not want to use unnecessary force against anyone. I also know he is often in difficult situations while having to make on the spot decisions.

Any reasonable person would have to accept the Commissioner's claims that
Tasers have resulted in less physical harm and injuries and recovery time than have when officers have used  physical strength. I accept that it is not the intention of most police officers to use physical force as a priority option. Batons, physical force and obviously guns produce more harm and injuries and the significantly increased risk of death in comparison to Taser use.

It takes either ignorance or an unreasonable person to insist that Tasers should be banned when firearm use has diminished and as a result of Tasers preferred ahead of firearm use there have been statistically less deaths overall, and in WA no deaths from Taser use. I would love to see the day when the Commissioner of Police could attend some meetings of human rights campaigns groups and put his arguments to the table and through discussion arrive at community understandings. I would be the first to invite the Commissioner to our meetings as I would have to agree with much of what he wrote in his opinion piece. However to alleviate concerns about indiscriminate use of Tasers there must be one rule for all.

The indiscriminate use of Tasers as appears the obvious case against Mr Spratt, and which some Police officials have supported with abhorrence, should be investigated, and officers charged, no differently than the citizens they often protect. The Police do not need Mr Spratt or the Aboriginal Legal Services to charge the Police Officers in question. When the Police are in possession of evidence against any alleged crime they will charge any ordinary citizen. Through transparency and justice for all, and through dissemination of each others facts, views and positions we can achieve appropriate behaviours, eliminate an attitude to zero tolerance strategies, and journey to the civil and just society we aspire to and yearn for. We may not need zero tolerance towards engaging with one another however we do require one rule for all.

Gerry Georgatos
Human Rights Alliance


Letter to the Editor - The Nobel Prize for Peace - 11.10.2010

Chinese academic Lui Xiaobo, serving eleven years for doing a Socrates according to the Chinese criminal justice system has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. Lui follows former Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov as a Nobel prize recipient who was incarcerated as a political prisoner.

Political prisoners are sometimes termed prisoners of conscience - there is an irony somewhere in this if we look at the world around us. Mahatmi Gandhi was imprisoned for his pursuit of humanity. Thomas Mapfumo was imprisoned in then Rhodesia in 1979 for singing through his Shona language for revolution. Lui is not alone in China as a prisoner of conscience. Gedhun Chosky Nyima has been detained by China since the age of 6, since 1995. He is the heir to the Dalai Lama. Spain in 2009 imprisoned Armaldo Otegi, the Basque separatist, for trying to rebuild the Basque Separatist party. Myanmar has detained as a prisoner of conscience Aung San Suu Kyi since 1990. In the last two years Myanmar's political prisoners have doubled. However all is quiet on the Western Front! The US has incarcerated five Cubans since 1998 for presumably intelligence violations though 110 British Members of Parliament wrote to the US Attorney-General for their release. The Cubans in 2003 imprisoned a number of academics and journalists. The Mapuche peoples of Chile are often detained for believing in their Aboriginal rights. We appear to be societies which presume that freedom is the property of people rather than acknowledge that people are the property of freedom.

However before we point the finger let us consider whether our house is in order. We have prisoners of conscience in our own country. The political definition needs to be widened to ensure justice. We induce injustice when we diminish freedom of speech, when we make it illegal for gatherings, when we introduce anti-association laws and mandatory sentencing, when we introduce curfews and broadened stop and search laws, when we insist on over regulating bureaucracy. Ark Tribe and Lex Wooton are two who our unjust laws victimise. However political prisoners and prisoners of conscience include conscientious objectors and protesters who have been arrested for calling for an end to wars such as Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, who have tried to save old growth forests, who have stood up to the government's unlawful detainment of and unjust policies against Asylum Seekers, who have protested against Australia's horrific deaths in custody record, and for those who have stood up against the snail like pace of change for our Aboriginal brothers and sisters, and let us not forget all our Aboriginal political prisoners, and all those who because the powerful objected to their love for freedom of speech used and abused the legal system against them. Political prisoners are made, they just do not happen, they are those who challenge a system that demands silence, and manipulates the argument for civility to avoid any form of transparency.

Political prisoners could include the poorest of our society who we neglect and harden through our entrenching of poverty, and our incarcerated Aboriginal brothers and sisters, because our governments refuse to provide the funding, services due to them and therefore their full suite of rights. Every child removed from a family by cruel government agencies, predominantly from Aboriginal families and from the poorest among us is a political prisoner because we are not prepared to consider their families in our federal and state budgets in terms of infrastructure, education, health, services.

Rather than pointing the finger at others it is best to lead the way, to be a beacon that guides by its very example. 

Gerry Georgatos
Human Rights Alliance


Letter to the Editor - The Activists of Perth - 11.10.2010

There are a lot of people who contribute to the unfolding human rights language and to a civil and just society and most of them are not our parliamentarians. However the profound tension between society's most influential planners, arguably the ruling class, and society's most enlightened thinkers, arguably the well versed left wingers is formidably heightened in the obvious midst of a steep chasm.

Society's need for an underwriting of dissemination and its robust scrutiny is often perplexed, and often we go backwards, because the discovery of the truth is often outstripped by the manifest of deceit.

Humanity's grasp of technology and capitalism have brought us to a generation where many decisions need to be made. Our carbon footprint is increasing, and there is no year it has diminished as we have stymied scrutiny of Climate Change since Australia ratified the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Resource depletion underwrites the world's future as the Nuclear Age approaches. This Age requires uranium and unmanageable volumes of water to perilously spawn it. However both are not limitless and water scarcity already troubles this planet. Australia has 40% of the world's high grade uranium of which 60% is in WA. Australia's future looks a bleak one with scores of uranium mines and dump sites arising before this centuries close. Uranium mining will forever change Australia. And what if a tsunami, cyclone or earthquake hits? Winds could blow toxic waste to wherever as did powerful winds blow red earth from the Central Desert to the east coast of Australia and covered Sydney in red.

Just as debate on zero carbon sources and a renewable energy future is stymied so is any real debate on human suffering. By so doing we entrench acute and abject poverty, the world's refugee problem, the suffering of many of our Aboriginal brothers and sisters, one war after another. How long must many of us turn our heads away or pretend our ears do not hear the suffering of others?

Hope is not lost. Ultimately there are those who by whatever means attempt to raise awareness of the consequences of many of the plights that face us. They are often lampooned as 'radicals' however their leading from so far out from the front necessarily leverages some outcomes for our legislators and policy makers. These souls are the contextual most minute minority however their numbers are slowly increasing. In every city they exist. I am writing about the heart and soul grassroots activists, the campaigners who get out to the streets in generally small numbers again and again and again to bring to the mind's eye, and to our consciousness, issues, people, fates.

These are the heroes of today for tomorrow, soldiers of peace striving for our meaning. In Perth they include Alex Bainbridge, Sam Wainwright, Alex Salmon, Vinnie Molina, Dave Fox and Alexis Vassiley, amongst others who weather all conditions to present the other view to passing politicians on the way to Parliament or a meeting with the ruling class and to the many passersby of our metropolis, and who attend just about every rally and cause in Perth. Victoria Iverson, Alex Whisson, Andrew Jamieson and Sarah Haynes of the Friends of Palestine who let us know of the unending suffering our Palestinian brothers and sisters and who do not allow the silence of others to immolate our inherent aspirations, a gentler and inclusive humanity. Gavin Mooney and Colin Penter of the Social Justice Network. Dr William Hayward and Glenn Moore of The Aboriginal Party who describe the plight of our Aboriginal brothers and sisters for whom we abhorrently continue to fail. Marianne Mackay, Marc Newhouse, Paul Kaplan of the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee, with its weekly meetings of unbelievably some thirty stalwarts, who persevere to bring to the public's attention the horrific deaths in custody record in this country and the urgency of reforms. Jane Paterson and the Women in Black who are there both in vigil and in support for those who the criminal justice system fails and who attend Courts. Phil Chilton of the Refugee Network, Jack Smit of Project Safecom who rally for the rights of Asylum Seekers and our Refugees. Jo Vallentine, Hsien Harper, Della Rae Morrison, Mia Pepper, Charley Caruso of the Nuclear Free Alliance and the anti-uranium campaign groups who bring to our awareness the dangers associated with uranium. Let us acknowledge the soldiers of truth who try to quell revisionism: Desire Mallet with his camera and Zebedee Parkes with his video camera are at every rally, public event and call for social justice and their images and films travel the internet, YouTube, Facebooks and our email accounts.

In terms of our human rights and social justice languages we may not be where we could have presumed we would be this day when some of us envisaged the future some couple of generations back however we are still somewhere better than where we were three quarters of a century ago. However with our Archimedean grasp of technology, with this ever increasing harness of the earth's elements, and coupled by the urge to blindly produce and produce for capitalism's sake, we face questions and decisions about the world we want to become or morph into. What is it that we deserve?

If it were not for all these activists, who forego opportunities others would not, many questions would never be asked, and our politicians would be working exclusively for the ruling class. I know we surely deserve better from our governments and sometimes some of our parliamentarians deliver, however the real heroes are the ones that shall remain forever unheralded by encyclopaedias and Hansard, at best being acknowledged by Wikipaedia, and they are the activists I have described who weather the ignorance and cynicism of many and the wrath or disdain of the majority of mainstream media, and the windy and rainy days while striving in their belief for a safe world, for justice for all, and the message that we all matter, you and I and all our children to come.

Without them there would be little urge to fight the perilous coal producers and there would be even less notice of the majority of people living in abject poverty, and no notice of political prisoners. Each of these activists are our moral consciousness and the backbone of hope, and hope must continue.

Gerry Georgatos
The Human Rights Alliance


Letter to the Editor - No need to taser - 5.10.2010

The inhumanity of humanity bewilders us often into a vacuum of disregard. We have police officers needlessly tasering people. There are no excuses whatsoever for nine WA police officers tasering one unarmed person 14 times. Why aren't police manuals prescribed with conciliatory and mediating protocols? Why do we have to be zero tolerance in dealing with our fellow humanity?

Why do many of our police have to act like bullies and with an overkill mentality? Why does our Police Union President have to continue in justifying their every action? Why aren't the political parties inquiring into all manner of such behaviours by our police and other personnel and officers of the criminal justice system? Where are the myriad of human rights groups? On this occasion why didn't the Aboriginal Legal Services not pursue further inquiry or accountability or a call for charges to be laid?

Why are people and organisatons and politicians too scared to do the right thing and speak out? Why is the call for simple human rights, for simple commonsense, for human dignity manifest as rocket science?

Why has this country had more than two thousand deaths in prison and police custody since 1980 and yet we have had such little accountability? We have one of the world's worst death in custody records. We know something is inhumane when nine police officers believe that they are not capable of negotiating a peaceful resolution with one person or where necessary in the event of failing such a resolution they cannot merely physically subdue him and conciliate him to calm's fullness. Where is our mind's eye and where does our commonsense stray when needed most?

Example is our immortality and the bearing of each tomorrow.

Gerry Georgatos
The Human Rights Alliance


Letter to the Editor - An humanity of inhumanity - 3.10.2010

I've journeyed through quite a bit of our world and seen quite a bit however the many good people I have met are contextually few among the many more people who disregard others. I have met many politicians however very few caring ones. We live in a humanity of inhumanity and in a vacuum of disregard for the plight of our poorest and the most disadvantaged. This is why they remain poor and acutely disadvantaged.

We can find $85 million to build a sport stadium, we can find a hundred million for an entertainment centre, we can find $86 million for the meaningless Perth Bell Tower, and similarly in every Australian city however we cannot find equivalent amounts for the homeless, for Aboriginal disparity, for mental ill health.

We can find billions to participate in war and to spy on each other, we can find billions to detain asylum seekers and to incarcerate our poorest people for pecuniary sins however we cannot find billions to end Aboriginal ill health, or to invest in our neediest with education, vocational training, rehabilitation and support services and hence diminish any warrant for more jails.

Commonwealth nations are spending billions on the New Delhi Games while acute poverty surrounds the venues - where millions live in squalid nightmares, incarcerated by the blind eye of the haves into a myriad of illnesses, unmanageable and incalculable suffering and premature death. The Harare Games were surrounded by the destitute and the New Delhi Games by leprosy and the acutest poverty. We will acclaim gold medallists and portray them as icons and give them more than they need while those that give to them also gluttonously profit from the calculated fanfare of these icons while neglecting millions of bewildered gaping souls. One fifth of our world lives imprisoned in the most devastating poverty, two fifths wounded in abject poverty while only one sixth of our humanity nurses its ignorance by allowing to make something for itself from 9/10ths of the resources we appropriate from our Earth.

In Australia we can spend hundreds of millions on sport, and in filling our sport stadiums however how is it that we cannot house 120,000 Australians who sleep on our streets or under bridges, and how is it we cannot remedy the ill health, the poverty and homelessness that a few hundred thousand of our Aboriginal brothers and sisters live each day. My experience believes it is because our many politicians, 226 of them at the Federal level, and a thousand more at the state and territory levels don't care enough, and as one said to me once "...we change things only when the story becomes 'sexy', only when enough of community is supported by the media."

Many are like this because we live with one eye opened to ourselves and one eye closed to all else.

Gerry Georgatos
Human Rights Alliance


Letter to the Editor - Aboriginality - Reply to a letter from Gerry Gerhard to me (Gerry Georgatos) - 1.10.2010

I am a consistent writer of letters to the editor, forever pursuant of an equitably participatory democracy. Recently through the Armadale Examiner fellow local resident Gerry Gerhard, 28.9.2010, in his "get your facts right letter" took exception to my letter advocating for greater Aboriginal political representation.

Gerry Gerhard argued that Ken Wyatt, Australia's first Aboriginal parliamentarian into the House of Representatives, is not necessarily "Aboriginal". Gerry Gerhard wrote "...(I) must object to the naming of him as Aboriginal when he is, like so many claimants to be Aboriginal, of mixed race with a preponderance of white blood." Gerry, Ken Wyatt identifies himself as Aboriginal, was brought up Aboriginal, his mother was a child of the Stolen Generation, and he is both Nyungar and Wongi, and yes he like most human beings has various cultural identities within his lineage.

Gerry you argue that "...it is about time the term Aborigine was correctly defined... if anyone is less than 50% of that race, then you cannot be classed as Aborigine." The High Court of Australia (1983) disagrees. I disagree. Those who identify as Aboriginal disagree. For almost two centuries Australian governments considered people with traces of Aboriginality as Aboriginal and hence oppressed and denied them a suite of rights. Hence we need to recognise people who wish to identify as Aboriginal in order to both appreciate their lineage and remedy consequences of their oppression.

In 1998 the High Court of Australia through Judge Merkel reaffirmed and advanced the 1983 High Court ruling, that an Aboriginal Australian shall be recognised in terms of descent, self-identification and community identification and affirmed that genetics were not the determining factor. In 1995 High Court Judge Drummond, keeping in line with the spirit of the 1983 High Court ruling articulated that any three of these steps can suffice for one identifying as Aboriginal, so that there is no cause, such as family separation in terms of feuding and ostracizing, to exclude people from their Aboriginality. Once again it was reaffirmed that genetics were not to be a sole determinant of identity and that simple mathematics were not to rule a line in the sand in determining ones cultural heritage.

2.7% of Australians identify as Aboriginal. Two centuries ago there were about 700,000 Aboriginal people. The densest population was around the Murray Basin. There were 300 language groups and 600 cultures throughout Australia. Today there are 148,000 people who identify as Aboriginal in NSW and down to 16,000 in Tasmania. 6% of the 2.7% identify as Torres Strait Islanders of Papuan heritage, and 4% of the 2.7% identify as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. There are thereabouts 100 Torres Strait Islands, such as the Mer speaking Murray Island where Eddie Mabo was born, which were annexed by Queensland in 1879. Ones identity is cultural, historical and personal, and those who wish to be Mer, or Murri, Murdi, Koori, Anangu, Nunga, Yolngu, Yapa, Tiwi, Nyungar, Yamatji, Palawah, etc., have every right to claim their heritage and their identity and in the process their traditional and contemporary suite of rights and especially in the light of the fact when for so long their identity was made a liability.

Section 41 of the Constitution always allowed for Aboriginal people to vote in Commonwealth elections subject to their States granting them this right, through Sections 25 and 51. However Sections 25 and 51 were used by the States to deny Aboriginal peoples the unqualified right to vote. It was 1962 when Aboriginal peoples were allowed to vote without qualification, however it was not made compulsory. It was 1967 when Section 127 of the Constitution was repealed and Aboriginal peoples were included in the Census for the purpose of electoral distribution in determining the Seats of Parliament.

The Stolen Generation, the forcible removal of children from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, occurred between 1869 to 1969 and in some places into the 1970s. The consequences of these removals and apartheid like practices imposed on Aboriginals continue into the present.

45% of those who identify as Aboriginal live in major cities, 31% regionally and 24% in the remote. In terms of life span the 2009 statistics describe Aboriginal males living 11.5 years less than non-Aboriginal males, and Aboriginal females living 9.7 years less. However, the consolidation of Aboriginal peoples living remote, regional and metropolitan and those, in terms of Gerry Gerhard's arguments, of 'less Aboriginality', has strewn the life span statistics. Demographically within Aboriginal Australia the figures are much worse than described through our current simple mathematical formula. In 1973, there were regions in Australia where Aboriginal people were living on average to 47 years. The formulas that allowed for these truths to be described are no longer used by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

I would argue, demographically, that amongst those 2.7% who identify as Aboriginal Australians there are people living 15 to 25 years less than non-Aboriginal Australians.

Finally Gerry, you argue that you are equally 25% of four various European cultures. If you are born in Australia, you are surely Australian while recognising your cultural identities. Personally, what I would like to see is people left alone to be who they want to be, and regarded as citizens of our world, welcome to wherever whenever and that humanity can eliminate inhumanity and all people treated fairly, and remedies and apologies owed expediently and substantively delivered.

Gerry Georgatos
Human Rights Alliance




Letter to the Editor - Immigration Deaths in Custody - 24.9.2010

Deaths in Custody in Australia continue and are also not limited to prison and police custodial jurisdictions. 2,043 Australian deaths in custody from 1980 to 2007. 72 deaths in custody per year from 1980 to 2000. 75 deaths per year from 2000 to 2007. 18% are Aboriginal. We have one of the world's worst death in custody records.

However four Asylum Seekers have died in the last week in Australia. Since 2000 at least 27 Asylum Seekers have died while in immigration detention. In the preceding decade there was only one documented death in this type of custody in Australia.

These rising human statistics are not being included in the Australian Institute of Criminology's National Deaths in Custody Data Program.

Let us not forget those souls who have drowned at sea. Let us not forget the SIEV X which was turned back by John Howard while it was Australia bound in international waters. 353 people drowned at sea in the SIEV X disaster - 146 children, 142 women, 65 men.The level of deaths in custody in Australia was considered avoidable by the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody that 46 of the 339 recommendations were directed to improving custodial occupational and safety practices and most of the rest indirectly and directly to eliminating racism, discrimination and other inhumanity.

Gerry Georgatos
Human Rights Alliance



Letter to the Editor - WA Euthanasia Bill premature - 23.9.2010

The lodging of a prospective Euthanasia Bill was premature. People have any number of rights which require in depth development and these developments can only be achieved qualitatively over a reasonable period of time.

A Euthanasia Bill should never have been considered for its sowing through Parliament without the scrutiny of a commissioned policy building body which in itself must be enriched with evidence based criteria from diverse medical and health care authorities and consummate ethics modelling. The modelling must describe and examine all potential implications.

A simplistic Euthanasia Bill may have the capacity to discriminate against the poor and the working classes. The middle and upper classes are capable of affording various levels of pain management and palliative care the poor are not. The health and mental health systems inadvertently discriminate against the poorest amongst us.

How many god-like powers and discretion can society continue to unfold upon doctors, lawyers and the courts? Should two doctors have the capacity to underwrite someone's contemplation to end their life? What further qualifications and definitions of experience must such medical personnel have?

Much examination should be tabled, from diverse expertise, into what defines an insufferable terminal illness? How do we define if someone is of 'fit and sound mind' at the time of deciding upon Euthanasia? How do we ensure we do not discriminate against people who manage illnesses which include an incapacity to communicate?

If we rush a Euthanasia Bill as a society we risk not foreseeing where we should consider drawing the line. If we passed a premature Euthanasia Bill the core ethical question would be "who is next"? Human Rights are still only an unfolding language and we must be careful not to prematurely unfold suicide or murder by any other name.

Gerry Georgatos
Human Rights Alliance
MA (Social Justice), MHumRights




Letter to the Editor - Please save these horses - 20.9.2010

The government is planning an aerial cull of thousands of wild Arab horses between Biluluna to Balga near Lake Gregory in the Kimberley. The cull is planned for October. We cannot allow this to happen and we need to plead by petition and through our local Members of Parliament to forbid this pending cull.

The lands on which these beautiful horses run wild are managed by the Tjurabalin peoples under a Pastoral lease however they are financially impoverished in terms of being able to manage the horses. The Government alleges that the horses damage the land which I do not believe. They have described that the land can be better utilised for cattle farming.

These are obviously sentient creatures which are appreciated by far away Sheiks who actually pick some of them for endurance racing. They value them as some of the best endurance horses in the world. If they are culled they will be sent to a South Australian slaughterhouse for food consumption. This is both animal cruelty and inhumane. It is needless.

We can relocate them to multiple locations and we can offer many of them up for adoption. There are stations and people who will want them and as my ten year old daughter points out WA is so vast that there are open spaces waiting for them. Please consider the plight of these beautiful wild horses and please find the time to advocate on their behalf. Once again as my daughter says we need to speak up for these horses so we do the right thing by them. You can visit wildhorseskimberley.com

Gerry Georgatos
Connie Georgatos -10 yrs old


Letter to the Editor - The Birth and Death of Prisons - 17.9.2010

The West Australian newspaper (16.8/p.15) reports the Office of the Inspector of Custodial Services on 15.6.2010 described to a Parliamentary Inquiry in prisoner education, training and employment strategies that there are overcrowding and under staffing in WA women's jails. The Director of Operations at Custodial Services described that the 'good grace' of prisoners was the majorly mitigating factor in keeping prisons safe during periods where it appears that overcrowding is leading to the brink of crises.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Institute of Criminology incarceration is not only rising in terms of total numbers however also in terms of proportion to populations, state and nationally.

I would like to suggest that the only solution is not in building more prisons. and rather it is through investing additional funding in expanding educational and training facilities in juvenile detention centres, adult remand and prison centres. Wherever in our world that this investment in education and people's positive advancement has occurred re-offending rates have dramatically diminished. Wherever prisoners have received the opportunity to complete an education or skills training while in jail they have demonstrated the obvious less likelihood of re-offending. Therefore we have evidence based solutions right in front of us.

Australian prisons do not have sufficient diverse education and skills training facilities, vocational guidance, rehabilitation and professional counseling services. The existing facilities and services are not equal to the prison population. It costs the State $100,000 per year for each prisoner when the majority of these funds would be better spent in real educational facilities for prisoners and in referral and support services for those who could be asked by the criminal justice system to commit to them rather than serve time in prisons where for the most part they are hardened up for a life of knocks, high risk crime, the endangering of community, their essential poverty, lack of self worth, self loathing and the prospect of the steely echo of the door of prison life.

In WA the government has budgeted more than $600 million to be spent on increasing the prison population during the next four years. More prisons are being planned, and 2,300 prison beds are to be added. Could we not invest these funds in building communities rather than prisons, in reinvesting in justice through comprehensive educational facilities, in acquiring job skills, acquiring high level literacy, in providing tertiary level qualification opportunities and in providing at all times psychosocial counseling and mentoring? Wouldn't we all be the better off for this, and unfold a more civil and just society?

Gerry Georgatos


Letter to the Editor - More Wadjellas dying in prisons - 13.9.2010

1980 to 2000, there were 1,442 deaths in custody. According to the Australian Institute of Criminology from 2000 to 2007 there were 601 deaths in police and prison custody. Of the 1,442 deaths in custody 248 were Aboriginal deaths: 18% of all deaths in custody. 1,367 were males, and 75 females. Of the 75 female deaths, the Aboriginal female deaths were 32%.

Australia endures more deaths in custody than all deaths in custody in South Africa during the peak of Apartheid.

If you are Aboriginal in this country, in terms of the total Australian population, you are more likely to die in custody than a non-Aboriginal person. However, if are non-Aboriginal and you are part of the prison population then you are more likely to die in custody than an Aboriginal  person. Deaths in custody are linked to the proportionate Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal arrest and incarceration rates.

Some friends of mine were assisting an Aboriginal family who were enduring a death in custody, and one of the family advised my friends, "You Wadjellas (White folk) need to remember your own in prison. At least our mob, friends and family will visit." Another friend helping out an Aboriginal lady whose partner died in prison custody was jolted with, "You need to look after your own in there too. There are more of you dying in there than us. At least we have our families and strong kinship to speak up for us but the Wadjellas in there have no-one." 1990 to 2002, 82% of deaths in prisons were non-Aboriginal persons and during the same period 56% of deaths in police custody were non-Aboriginal. Our Australian Senators, and I have forwarded the data to all of them, are derelict in their Constitutional duties and moral proprieties in not raising Australian deaths in custody through the Senate. They must be waiting for the issue to be driven by media/community polls for it to become a 'sexy' story (as one of them described to me).

We need to educate one another and change our attitudes towards our incarcerated brothers and sisters. We need to invest in services that assist souls incarcerated from amongst our poorest classes to rise above their lot and we need to to treat them fairly when judging and sentencing them. Foremost we need to improve the police and prison services, their protocols,  manuals, procedures and their supervision, handling and treatment of all prisoners.

Gerry Georgatos


Letter to the Editor - PM forgets Education! - 12.9.2010

I am amazed that the Prime Minister has decided to downsize Labor's so-called Education Revolution by not including a Minster for Education! Miss Gillard has put her Cabinet together but has chosen to go without a ministry for education, a portfolio that she herself held. She has a minister for schools and a minister for innovation however who will the universities, the whole tertiary sector go to, and what happens to the recommendations from the Bradley Report?

Universities, the life blood of the skills sector and the economy, are fiscally under nourished and struggling for high level quality programs and in being able to fully support university students. Maybe the Independents when they were leveraging so-called outcomes and surrendering the right to block supply will remember universities, and Aboriginal Australia and homelessness, and much more if they choose to withdraw the nod to Labor. Many may not realise that if the Independents choose to give the nod to the Coalition before Labor has called for a federal election that the Coalition on the spot, in an amazing switch, can form government. It's all crazy. However Constitutionally government is formed by the party in the HOR with the most Seats and the Independents did not have to side with anyone and just let the debates dawn and the two party system set aside.

Gerry Georgatos


Letter to the Editor - Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow and Physics and God - 3.9.2010

The Universe, in its creation, needed precipitation and therefore logically there is designation. Chaos is anathema as birth to designation, unfolding, ontology and teleology. Chaos would wipe itself, over the short or long course, because it's only nature is anarchy, it is without forecast, and forecast is required to protect laws that produce various evolutions.

Our perception of laws of gravity and their utter intertwining with large scale phenomena, the distance of the Earth to the single star, the Sun, sub atomic particles, the life blood of organic and inorganic forms, and quantum physics, measure is always articulated are clearly designated. Any appearance of chaos is a myth, its only involvement appears as an inculcated quotient such as what we loosely describe selection of the fittest, instinct, synergies. It is controlled otherwise it would wipe out a number of laws, controlled like we control forest back burns.

Physicists, and geniuses, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow are grandstanding when they rule out God as creator and claim 'chaos' as precipitating creation as we know it in their new book 'Grand Design'. Funnily they have not explained how chaos achieved itself and why it doesn't wipe itself out. Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein were never this omniscient and did not presume to rule out God.

Gerry Georgatos


Letter to the Editor/Opinion Piece - Australian Deaths in Custody - 2.9.2010

I am a Committee member of the Human Rights Alliance and a Trustee of the Deaths In Custody Watch Committee WA, and through both during the last couple of years I have been stunned by the fact that Australia has one of the world's worst deaths in custody records. More people die in custody in Australia than all deaths in custody in South Africa during the peak of Apartheid. There are more non-Aboriginal deaths in custody in Australia than Aboriginal deaths however there are more Aboriginal deaths in custody in Australia than there were all deaths in custody during the peak of Apartheid in South Africa!

I am so appalled with Australia's record that I will do a PhD in Australian deaths in custody. We need to definitively document the reality so we can exact genuine remedies and the saving of lives. I have been educating Human Rights groups and even my own Deaths in Custody Watch Committee, who had not realised the extent of deaths in custody in Australia. My God, it is 601 deaths in custody in Australia from 2000 to 2007 alone and the same rates continue. These 601 deaths in custody over 8 years compares badly with the horrific tally between 1980 and 2000 where Australia recorded 1,442 deaths in custody. It is increasing!

The 99 Aboriginal deaths in custody from 1980 to May 1989 which led to the 1991 Royal Commission Reports into Deaths in Custody do not describe the total numbers of Australian deaths in custody. They do not describe the obviously bottom of the barrel sub-standard custodial services, whether police or prisons. Aboriginal deaths in custody inhumanely continue at the same rate, twenty years after the Royal Commission Reports. 339 recommendations arose from those Reports however in terms of police and prison custodial handling and services the majority of recommendations have not been implemented or substantively budgeted for. Non-Aboriginal deaths in custody have blown out to despicably unacceptable and inhumane terms. We have a scandal-in-waiting. A Royal Commission into Australian Deaths in Custody is urgently required. Our Australian Senators, 76 of them, are derelict in their Constitutional duties in having failed to call for and implement such a Commission, and derelict in having failed to educate the Senate and the House of Representatives of the horrific statistics in terms of Australian deaths in custody. I have educated a number of Senators and politicians to the facts. It seems many politicians are inspired to act only when the community at large is aware of a horrific wrong. Our politicians need to oblige their moral duties and not be guided by the polls. With the Human Rights Alliance and the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee we are beginning public talks so as to educate community in order to 'inspire' our parliamentarians into action.

Of the 1,442 deaths in all forms of custody between 1980 to 2000, 1,367 were males, with 75 being females. 248 were Aboriginal deaths in custody and therefore 18% of all deaths in custody. Of the 75 female deaths, the Aboriginal female deaths were 32%. These correlate closely to incarceration rates. There are higher incarceration rates of Aboriginal persons in terms of proportion of Aboriginal people to total population. This indicates that systemic racism to Aboriginal people does not directly underwrite their deaths in custody and rather that deaths in custody are the direct result of the poor and substandard treatment towards prisoners in addition to the probable accompaniment of prejudices towards the incarcerated that the criminal justice system and Australians in general may have. Therefore discrimination can be argued as en masse against all prisoners rather than targeted to only Aboriginal prisoners. Systemic racism can obviously be argued as underwriting the disproportionately high Aboriginal incarceration rates. Deaths in custody appear proportionate to incarceration rates in terms of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal incarceration rates. An Aboriginal person is eleven to twelve times more likely to be incarcerated than a non-Aboriginal Australian. It varies from state to state, however in WA 68% of incarcerated juveniles are Aboriginal.

In 1991, in the year of the Royal Commission Reports, there were 70 deaths in custody, with 13 Aboriginal deaths in custody. Ten years later there were 87 deaths in custody, with 19 Aboriginal deaths in custody. For both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians nothing improved, and the statistics worsened. In 1997 there were a record 105 deaths in custody. During 2007 there were 74 deaths in custody with 9 Aboriginal deaths in custody. Every year has been thereabouts similar. There has been an Aboriginal death in custody somewhere in Australia every month of the last 18 months. For each Aboriginal death in custody there are thereabouts eight to ten non-Aboriginal deaths in custody. How can Australia have more deaths in custody than peak Apartheid South Africa, and one of the world's worst records? The time has come for us to have a good look at ourselves and find out what is going on, and on this occasion empower any Royal Commission to ensure the recommendations are implemented, and that they monitor prescribed remedies and report annually to the Australian Senate.

We cannot turn a blind eye. Our prisons are filled with the poorest amongst us, and with people from the working classes. The middle and upper classes are not the majority of prisoners and generally serve less time for similar offenses and for their predominant white collar crimes. We maybe turning a blind eye because the majority have taught to be harsh on the poor, and on our Aboriginal brothers and sisters who suffered under Australia's own Apartheid practices. We need to invest in services that assist those souls incarcerated from amongst our poorest classes to rise above their lot and we need to treat them fairly when judging and sentencing them. However foremost we need to improve the police and prison services, their protocols, manuals, procedures and their supervision, handling and treatment of all prisoners. We need Australia to ensure that it is a just and civil society.

Gerry Georgatos


Letter to the Editor - Is same-sex marriage the most pressing issue of the day - 2.9.2010

Same-sex marriage is not the most pressing issue on the Australian political landscape. I am very disappointed that Bob Brown and Adam Bandt of the Greens list gay marriage as a priority. In a world of constructs and suppositions, marriage being these, I support the right of gay people to marry. However how can anyone list the pursuit of gay marriage rights ahead of the plight of homeless families, ahead of the 70,000 people waiting to be housed in WA alone, of the 120,000 Australians sleeping on the streets?

How can any parliamentarian or politiical aspirant prioritise gay marriage ahead of the seeking of remedies to the abject poverty endured by the majority of Aboriginal families, ahead of the many Aboriginal families struggling with glaucoma, diabetes, renal and heart diseases? Why aren't these peoples plights and rights on the table? Where are the private member bills for these people?

Gay marriage should not be propositioned as a front running issue, especially when draconian discrimination against gay people has been essentially abolished. Gay people have the right to live in gay relationshipss and they are recognised before the law in terms of their coupling and in terms of probate. Our parliamentarians' political energy seems to be moderated by the need to address the myriad of issues, and this energy needs to be disbursed judiciously, therefore how can anyone expend so much political energy on gay marriage ahead of the increasing mental illnesses, the increasing youth, single parent and elderly suicide rates in both metropolitan and rural settings, the lack of mental health support services, the ongoing little known removal of children from their families by poorly worded legislation, the lack of a Human Rights Act, the near 1,000 Australian deaths in custody during the last decade and the list continues.

I am disappointed in the Greens for not using their so-called leverage to advocate solutions, outcomes, additional funding, inquiries for much of the above rather than focus on gay marriage rights. Gay marriage is inevitable and shall arrive soon enough however does it need to be the most powerful cause of the day on this day? The poor, the homeless and our suffering Aboriginal brothers and sisters do not appear to foresee the same inevitability to remedies as our Gay brothers and sisters shall have. Some argue that affirmative action does not work, well it does as the Greens have proven. The Greens have a very high proportion of gay parliamentarians and gay candidates and therefore garner the gay vote. However politics is a calling and honour is everyththing. The Greens have a very high proportion of gay parliamentarians and gay candidates and therefore garner the gay vote. However politics is a calling and hounour is everything. The Greens cannot lay gay marriage on the table aheead of the other more serious issues, those that incur greater miserty and suffering for people. We must triage our issues.

Ken Wyatt is the only federal Aboriginal politician. The Greens have no Aboriginal politicians at state or federal government and have never had one. Labor has no federal Aboriginal parliamentarian and have never had one. Inadvertent affirmative action by the Greens to endorse gay candidates has brought the gay issues to the fore and therefore maybe the only way we will ever remedy the plethora of Aboriginal sufferings is for us to have Aboriginal parliamentarians, and similarly with the homeless, to have parliamentarians who once walked in their shoes. If the Greens continue to engage in promoting self interests before the most pressing issues they risk exposing themselves as such to the voters, and will lose their perceived value and the investiture of faith and goodwill whom the 12.5% of the Australian voters have given them. The Greens have received my primary vote or preferences for the most part of the last fifteen years.

Gerry Georgatos


Letter to the Editor - Proportional voting and fixed Aboriginal Federal Seats - 30.8.2010




Letter to the Editor - Clawing us back to the Two Party System, drunk with power - 29.8.2010

The political circus continues. We continue to be governed by the dumb. It is a vicious circle. Politics is an industry and not something easily managed by the voters. We only have the chance to vote in or out those they allow us to. Somehow with this particular federal election we have managed to have several Independents and three or four parties however they are trying to bring us back to the two party system.

Oakeshott and Katter are immature in their hoodwinking grab for power. Joyce, Truss and Schultz are imperviously disgusting in their hoodlum like assertions to the so-called 'National' Independents.

Bandt and Wilkes seem thus far to have carried themselves with some dignity in being clearer about their positions and not seeming on the bent to compromise in pursuit of excessive interests and the will to power. Unlike his Greens party Bandt has made it relatively clear his values allow him only at best to support Labor and not the Liberals. However Brown, for whom historically I had significant respect, is disgracefully drunk with power, making comments that compromise his party's prescribed values as he is advocating the setting up of ministries alongside either Labor or Liberal. Brown is portraying himself as a grandstanding prostitute ready to jump into bed with whomever as long as it means more power and more deals. The excuse that the Greens will dilute the outcomes of Labor or Liberals for better outcomes does not wash, as their prescribed stances are hence compromised.

The Independents should remain such, Bandt should remain Greens, and the Greens should hold their own ground and forego the ugly will to power and coalitions. The party with the most Seats in the House of Representatives should form government, even if they are a few Seats shy of a majority, and propositions in the HOR be argued on their merit as they should be, and once again further argued on their merit in the House of Review, the Senate. If they do this we have the erosion of the two party system and therefore the Greens, and the drunkard Brown, should stop trying to bring us back to the Two party system.

In every country where Greens have teamed up with minority governments they have consequently lost their value and voters.

Gerry Georgatos




Letter to the Editor - Hung Parliament? - 23.8.2010

Arguably we have a hung parliamentary outcome from the federal election. If participatory democracy could be trusted a hung parliament is a positive outcome. However everyone is trying to argue the forming of government in terms of control so as to ensure that Bills are passed through both Houses. This is not stability. Stability arises from robust review and scrutiny of propositions that may lead to Bills and Acts of Parliament.

On this occasion we have the Greens with the capacity to control the Senate by teaming up with Labor and passing the Bills propositioned by the House of Representatives where Labor may team up with the single Greens member and the single genuinely Independent member from Denison. The three other Independents may team up with the Liberal party and assist them into governing. However the Greens can equally pass Bills in unison with the Labor or the Liberal party depending on how much the Liberals and Labor are prepared to compromise.

The reality is that historically with the exception of the Whitlam years Labor and Liberals team up in the Senate to pass most Bills. Theoretically, as these two parties have grown closer together in ideologue and outcomes it would be logical that Labor and Liberal coalesced on this occasion to form government! Teaming up with the Greens, who even though are only moderates, not radicals, in their ideological viewpoints could be a poison chalice for either the Labor or Liberals. Only the Greens would continue to benefit and increase in numbers and supporters.

The best outcome would be if parties did not coalesce to form majorities and monopolise either House and certainly not both Houses and the party with the most seats, even if a minority government, did form government and benevolently allow participatory democracy to take hold. No deals should be done. Unconstitutional. If they cannot stand alone with their arguments and their evidence to argue democratically their propositions in Parliament then the elections should be once again brought on.

Gerry Georgatos



Letter to the Editor - Dr George O'Neil and Naltrexone - 19.8.2010

Recently at a small Social Justice Forum (Thursday 12th August) in which I was one of the speakers on a panel that included Senators Siewert, Pratt and (Dr) Eggleston I questioned why the Commonwealth is not appropriately funding Dr George O'Neil's Naltrexone implants through the Fresh Start Recovery Program.

In the last couple of days Julie Bishop of the Liberal Party subject to the election of a Liberal Government on August 21 has committed $1 million to the program. This is a start however we need a commitment from Nicola Roxon of the Labor Party. A program of such qualitative human worth such as this should not depend on who is elected.

The UK fully fund naltrexone implants, Australia does not. The only clinic in Australia, the Fresh Start Recovery Program, is in Subiaco. Instead of injecting houses, and these are about harm minimisation, which keep addicts injecting themselves and addicted we should have the naltrexone implant clinics in every major city. The Therapeutic Goods Association has confirmed WA implants are manufactured to international standards.

The Fresh Start Recovery Program receives $1 million in state funding, and $200,000 currently in Commonwealth funding however the clinic works hard to raise $8 million per year, mostly from donations, to help thousands of opiate addicts end their addiction.

At the Social Justice Forum though I raised many social justice issues I specifically turned to the Senators representing the three major parties and asked them to personally take back to their parties and the appropriate agencies the need to urgently fund this program. Two of them nodded and one of them personally told me they would. We cannot accept wasting any more time. Why would any Government not dedicate the funds to encourage recovery?

Some years back the National Institute of Clinical Excellence ferociously lobbied the British Government to full fund naltrexone implants. The Government accepted the substantive evidence and hence there are tens of thousands in the UK who are no longer opiate addicts. This relieves not only an incredible burden from the tax payer funded health system, eliminates incidences of criminal activity, however frees desperate human beings into fully living their lives and releases surrounding family members from incalculable trauma.

I ask the all political parties and the incumbent Governments, state and federal, to ensure that the Fresh Start Recovery Program is fully funded and is developed to such an extent that clinics arise in every majorly populated city and town in Australia.

Gerry Georgatos



Letter to the Editor - My view on the GFC in reference to Australia - 14.8.2010

Someone has to correct the economic misunderstandings in reference to the proposition that the stimulus package improved Australia's fiscal position and kept us out of recession.

Australia did not endure the recession nor was it at risk of a recession during the Global Financial Crisis. Australia was buoyed by industry infrastructure which ensured a high capacity for employment at a strong wage level. Therefore the capacity to subsidise credit which undermined other countries was still manageable for most Australians with loans and mortgages. We were less advanced in the accumulation of risks in terms of loan to equity and loan to liquidity ratios.

Australia's small population means in economic terms that it accrues much of its wealth from exports and it does not require a high consumption society to return a substantive financial margin to upkeep the national treasury or to recycle currency.

The economic underwriting to this industry infrastructure were the Commonwealth surpluses achieved while the Liberal Government enjoyed high returns from resources, taxes and the variable influences in the domestic and international markets. I have never voted for the Liberals and never will however it was the soundness of their economic trends, in light of the fact it's sadly hands off with the filthily rich with by Australian governments or you go out as Mr Rudd did, that isolated Australia from the GFC. Mr Howard's Government did inherit a $50 billion debt from his Labor predecessors and Mr Howard handed over to Mr Rudd a $20 billion surplus. Now we have a $90 billion debt.

The $42 billion stimulus splurge was an utter misspend and blew away the surplus. It is economic naivete by politicians to claim that this package pulled us out of a recession that never happened nor would. It's a Clayton's claim by Mr Swan.

The $42 billion stimulus could have been spent on the National Broadband Network which has been estimated at $43 billion however will certainly blow out past this estimation. The NBN is a venture that needs to be well managed as it can be incorporated by other means than a direct outlay by the Commonwealth of such monies at a time when the health sector desperately craves assistance. At this time we have a deficit of $90 billion. Many schools, hospitals and businesses actually have high speed connections and fibre optic! The NBN should not be implemented en masse and rather by demand and over time.

The financial crisis in other western countries was the cumulative result of an advanced credit crisis, the contravention of commonsensical monetary regulations which underwrote unreasonable lending, and devalued house prices. At the time of lending house prices were recklessly over valued and over priced. Commodities and shares with their variable fluctuations in value were recklessly over exposed as financial underwriting by the major lenders and banks. The bubble had to burst for borrowers and lenders.

Australia did not have a part in any recession. It's turn shall arrive. The stimulus package played no role in keeping Australia out of recession other than to perceptually diminish some of the perceived panic which was arising or was fabricated. The stimulus package was manipulated, without substantive evidence, to make financial wizards out of the so-called miracle workers. In the kindest terms I view the stimulus package as a placebo.

America's unemployment is 10% however Australia's has remained at 5%. The Global Financial Crisis was exploited by some sectors in Australia to trim their workforces and for the RBA and Treasury to inadvertently assist the real estate and housing industry to exploit people by procuring demand for land and homes at prices that may in time devalue as they did in the USA. Australian house prices especially in the wider metropolitan suburbs of cities will not be sustainable as the nation's surpluses diminish, national deficits increase, debt to GDP proportionately increases, inflation rises, interest rates rise, and as industry infrastructure cannot be upheld to current levels and wages are hit and jobs diminish. Capitalism is a tough gig, it requires a good juggling act, it needs expertise and it needs dignity and honesty.

Due to the lower interest rates, once again rising, and the perceived $14,000 and $21,000 first home buyer assists many families were exploited by lenders. These souls are now paying off mortgages that which for many families are ticking bombs. Australian cities have the world's highest home and land prices. It is an economic circus and a crisis in waiting.

The Labor Party should stop lying about the stimulus package, and the Greens should stop claiming they were pivotal in passing it. Economic nonsense as the package was not remedial and rather at best an ignorant spend. 

Australians need to appreciate that that industry infrastructure and its capacity for output are what have protected the Australian economy for at least the time being. In light of the increasing prospect of various resources depletion and subsequent economic pressures the future prospects of the Australian economy can be preserved by adept higher taxes upon those industries, such as mining and banking, most of the profit share market and by the shoring up of surpluses so as to increasingly nourish the social services that profoundly assist in the economic security of Australia.

Australia strives to a globally comparative good standard of living because it provides some benefits to 6.6 million Centrelink recipients. We try to accommodate our neediest unlike America which is a country very harsh on its poor and testimony to this are the millions living on its streets. In the financial year 2010/11 Australia will spend $114 billion on welfare out of a total Gross National Product of $331 billion. This assists the economy by diminishing the risk of various burdens on the economy. A healthy society diminishes risks such as abject poverty and ill health which accumulate associative financial burdens and further layers of bureaucracy. The only way to improve our chances of defeating the prospect of chilly recessions and scary high costs of living is to have housing prices slowly brought down, mortgages brought down concomitantly, interest rates regulated and unbiased, lending heavily regulated and with a prohibitive onus, taxes on the high end of the profit share market strongly increased and reinvested in infrastructure and health services which in turn lower inflation and assist in making daily living needs more affordable.

To sum up, there was no prospect of an Australian recession linked to the GFC and the stimulus package was economic stupidity and Australia will be best served by increasing taxes on the sectors that can afford them and in nourishing the social services which increase the quality of life of those at the bottom end and thus keep Australia economically rational.

Gerry Georgatos



Letter to the Editor - Release the fisherpeople! - 14.8.2010

Very recently in visiting jails to speak to our incarcerated souls about alternative pathways to education I came across a number of Indonesian souls taking an English class. I asked them what they were in jail for.

Apparently, the score of Indonesian prisoners I came across at a particular Perth jail were arrested and charged and sentenced for fishing in Australian waters while they were on board boats transporting Asylum Seekers to the safety of Australia. These are poor Indonesian fishermen who merely fished. So what?

I was appalled to learn they have been sentenced generally up to five years. For what? For being a fisherman and in fishing in the Earth's waters? For being poor?

Recently we were outraged, and rightly so, for a New Zealand anti-whaling protester brought before a Tokyo Court for harm he allegedly inflicted on a Japanese crewman. Let us not forget there is ramming of large ships on the open seas by the Sea Shepherd and good on them. However how can we bleat about this New Zealander's rights while in this country we are cruelly sentencing poor Indonesian fishermen to five years jail? Are we nuts? I was so riled when I witnessed their plight that I screamed out at the utter wrongness of their sentence and that I wanted to march them out. My companion on our visit to the jail had to wisely calm me down.

Release them.

Gerry Georgatos



Letter to the Editor - Understanding the economics of it all - 14.8.2010

Australia does try to underwrite a secure society with at least basic though minimal standards. Australia is not as harsh on its induced poor as America is. America is a country very harsh on its poor with millions living on the streets. We do have thereabouts 110,000 living homeless in  Australia, and in WA there are 14,000 homeless, 24,000 applications for public housing accommodation. The 24,000 applications translate to 70,000 people in waiting.

Australia in its current financial year will spend $114 billion dollars out of a Gross National Product of $331 billion dollars. We have 6.6 million Centrelink recipients, obviously means tested and tiered in terms of supporting benefits. It is this type of underwriting that ensures some capacity for all people.

The remainder of the GNP is enormous capital even in light of the fact Centrelink expenditure is thereabouts one third of total GNP. We misspend funds on mythical border controls, unreasonable detainment of asylum seekers in unwarranted facilities and with unwarranted levels of supervision, and in wars where we have no business and where we have contributed to millions of deaths, and in unreasonable levels of expensive bureaucratic layers.

85% of the Australian located mining multinationals are overseas owned and much of our profit share market is foreign owned, included banking sectors. Had we regulated reinvestment in Australia from the profit share market our GNP would be higher. The eleven richest people in this country accumulate the equivalent of the aggregate annual incomes of the bottom 850,000 people in this country.

We need to nourish our social services and the infrastructure that can support equitable social inclusion. We need to work towards public transport being free, and most certainly for senior citizens and those on pensions. We need to make health care free, mental health care free, aged health care free, dental health care free. If we want to ensure the best lives for our humanity and the best for the future prospects of humankind we need to invest in people, and find profit within people and not profits before people. Gym memberships should be free or subsidised as they will bring about health benefits that in economic terms will lower the health burden/cost. The solutions are easy however the voices in Parliament are not there, nor the brilliant minds with the economic understandings and the true social consciousness.

Gerry  Georgatos



Letter to the Editor - Facts about Deaths in Custody - 13.8.2010

During the last decade there have been more deaths in custody in Australia than there were deaths in custody during the peak of Apartheid in South Africa. Non-Aboriginal deaths in custody in Australia outnumber Aboriginal deaths however Aboriginal deaths in custody are disproportionately higher. Aboriginal deaths in custody in Australia are much higher than were total deaths in custody during the peak of Apartheid in South Africa.

Many good citizens are ignorant of the facts. Many believe that deaths in custody are incidental rather than endemic. Many have limited deaths in custody to the deaths of Mr Ward (Warburton) and Mr Domadjee (Palm Island). There have been more than 250 deaths in custody during the last ten years.

Many good citizens believe that the G4S prisoner transport van had no air conditioning in the prisoner compartment. Many see television images of the back of the G4S prisoner transport van and assume it was a single compartment van. However the van had TWO prisoner compartments. One without working air conditioning and one WITH working air conditioning. Mr Ward, on a 43 degree day, and with a journey of 400km, was inexplicably located into the compartment with NO air conditioning. No charges laid. Another death in custody, adding up to the 250 plus this last decade.

Gerry Georgatos



Letter to the Editor - The Senate - 7.8.2010

Plato wrote that if people do not engage with politics we risk being governed by the 'dumb'. The Australian political landscape is very constricted and there is little democracy available for all voices to be legitimately heard. We all have a right to shape the political debates. However the media's obsession has been with the Labor, Liberal and Greens parties. The minority parties and independent candidates have to work very heard, with grass roots door knocking and citizen media through emailing and working the internet.

This monopoly of politics by major coalitions of incumbent parliamentarians and cohorts of aspirant politicians has diminished not only democracy however also damaged democratic parliamentary processes. In this letter I will write about the Senate.

The Senate is our Upper House and the Commonwealth Constitution intends for the Senate as a House of review of the propositions from the House of Representatives, our Lower House. The Commonwealth Constitution intended for a separation of the two Houses and has never intended that political parties or a coalition of parties attain control of the Senate. This defeats its purpose as a body that reviews and scrutinies the propositions of the Lower House.

Each state provides twelve Senators, and our Territories two Senators. Constitutionally our Senators should considerably demarcate their political affiliations and regard the propositions before the Senate on their merit, with unfettered discussion. The Commonwealth Constitution did not intend for any Party to control the Senate and pass Bills without legitimate review. The Senate is a balance and check. The Greens should not be creating a coalition with Labor to pass Bills in the Senate, nor should they control the balance of power in the Senate, rather they should be independent scrutineers and reviewers in fulfilling their constitutional obligations.

We need more political parties to arise as significant influences and enter the House of Representatives so as to ensure legimate debate, erode monopoly politics and return decisions to the House rather than they having been decided in party rooms and caucuses. Voters need to assist the rebirth of our balance and check, the Senate, by voting in Independent Senators, and not allow any party to control the Senate. The media could assist by ensuring that minority parties and independent candidates receive ample opportunity to put their case to the constituents.

I have knocked on 2,000 doors, spoken to thousands at shopping centres and in public places and written thousands of emails however Western Australian voters number more than a million.

Gerry Georgatos


Letter to the Editor - A little bit of history - 3.8.2010

Julia Gillard is a former Guild President, 1983 and in the following year rose to President of the Australian Union of Students. In that year the AUS collapsed and disappeared. It was nourished back to life as the National Union of Students in 1987.

Student Guilds, especially in years gone by, as in these conservative days they are increasingly no more than ad lib and personal aides to University Chancelleries, were tough gigs where student politicians in the midst of genuine campaigns engaged in unfettered confrontations with each other dominated by an ugly will to power.

It seems ironic that Julia was the last president of the Australian Union of Students, which collapsed in acrimony, dissent, factionalism, and low morale from internal bickering and power struggles, and here we are a quarter century later possibly watching the collapse of the what appeared for a period of time the highly successful and morally driven Labor government. Like the AUS, Labor may well disappear for a period of time. Strangely I have been often thinking and describing this former chain of events since Gillard and Rudd came together in removing Beazley.

Gerry Georgatos


Letter to the Editor - Light Rail Transport - 2.8.2010

Australia needs to remedy transport problems, increasing congestion and pollution in conjunction with the reality of resource depletion.

In Sydney and Melbourne roads make up one-quarter of the cities, in Perth they are one-fifth. Rail systems have a permanency and a use by people that buses do not have. Cars pollute and with the peak oil prices we have an existing and even worse pending nightmare.

Light Rail is the option. Human population will increase even if our Labor and Liberal governments pretend it will not. Therefore oil will be wiped out and as it is being wiped out it will be unaffordable for our poor. Poverty will be induced. What will we be able to rely upon to sustain us? Electricity is rising in price and we still have not found the courage to move to wind, water and solar. New technology for more cars in not the answer.

All governments, state and federal need to focus on light rail networks.

Trains do work, and therefore light rail networks will work. Additionally light rail networks will reduce the loss of life experienced on our roads. They will also procure a culture of more sedate, less stressful, commutation.

Light Rail Networks can be integrated into existing communities without the decimation of infrastructure and without the roads needing to be widened. Light Rail Networks can reach every suburb and can alter the demographic. There are suburbs, poverty having been induced, where there is no or little public transport.

Light Rail Networks can play an immediate role in a more sustainable environment, in real communities, in helping the world move forward while we ready humanity for a new age where we take into account resource depletion and the emissions from polluters and start sorting ourselves out.

Will our Parliamentarians lead the way?

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - Erode Monopoly Politics - 1.8.2010

The media can play its role in eroding monopoly politics and in ensuring unfettered and informed debate. Why does the media have to fixate its total attention on the Labor, Liberal, Greens parties? This is not only undemocratic however it's sad. It would be great if the media during this election paid some attention to the Independents and the minority parties, and on a daily basis printed or aired what we have to say.

There are many marginal seats and what the rest of us do and say and have to offer needs to be documented so the constituents have every opportunity to cast their vote wisely.

The media should lay time and pages aside for the rest of us candidates, from minority parties and Independents in order to help shape the political debate. It is not morally appropriate that the three major parties with funding from various sources can monopolise the election campaign and inadvertently deny the people's right to be truly informed.

Why should we expect democratic discussions in parliament when we are being denied them at the community level?

Gerry Georgatos



Letter to the Editor - The Blame Game - 30.7.2010

$3.2 million will financially assist the family of the late Warburton Elder Mr Ward. It will not bring him back. There was a shuffling of blame and abrogation of responsibilities by WA Labor and Liberals over the death of Warburton Elder Mr Ward.

WA Attorney-General Christian Porter is correct that the death occurred during the Labor Party's watch. However the shadow government which tends to make up close to half the parliament was on that watch. For two and half years the 'State' let down the Ward family.

I am appalled at the political point scoring by Shadow Attorney-General John Quigley arguing that the payment was about $600,000 less than the 'minimum'. What price is there on a human life?

Some financial compensation has been meted out to the family, and about time, thanks to the Aboriginal Legal Services and the Deaths In Custody Watch Committee. However the transport company G4S are liable for compensation and their overdue unabridged apology.

I respect Christian Porter's apology and acknowledgments and his matter of fact statement that when the prisoner transport tender is up for review that G4S's disgraceful record will be brought up. I would have preferred the G4S contract was ripped up at the time of the Coroner's Findings.

Most Australians do not realise the number of deaths in custody and presume they are several per year. There have been hundreds of deaths in custody during this last decade. In some years they are as high as 69 deaths. Most are actually white deaths in custody with Aboriginal deaths in custody at disproportionately much higher rates. Porter and Quigley and all our parliamentarians could lead the way by addressing the issues that culminate in these high levels of deaths in custody, and that is by eliminating systemic racism, discrimination, maltreatment, and by improving existing checks, policies and laws.

Proportionately more Aboriginal deaths in custody occur in Australia than did all deaths in custody during the peak of South African Apartheid! Let us stop all deaths in custody and in the process educate us all to a more civil and just society.

Gerry Georgatos



Letter to the Editor - Bile - 28.7.2010

So far we have: 'People smugglers' are 'evil'. Sounds very George Bush. We will stop the boats. Sounds very Ronald Reagan. Company tax down 1% and mining companies relieved from the Resources Tax. Sounds like Margaret Thatcher and business as usual. A good government had lost direction. Sounds like Idi Amin and a junta. Cabinet "leaks" dish out the dirt. Sounds like cabin fever. Labor and Liberals arguing who is better at delivering the same policies. Sounds like Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee or Australia. And the Greens in an almost coalition like state with Labor. Sounds like power corrupts.

Sounds sad.


Gerry Georgatos.


Letter to the Editor - The horrific death of Mr Ward - 22.8.2010

Racism cuts to the bone. The violence of the silence that systemically supports racism and bleeds compassion out of humanity demoralises our brothers and sisters, those disenfranchised and those downtrodden. When will our national identity stop denying its racist layers?

A man found death melted to the hot metal floor of the inside of the back of a prisoner transport van. Warburton Elder Mr Ward died in temperatures reaching past 50 degrees of heat. Two and half years later there has been little remedy, and the cries for justice worn out by the ears that had been listening.

Some of society and many groups have uttered their undeniable outrage at the never before seen horrific nature of this particular death. Finally many more people have argued for the flicker of hope to stare us back from the horizon and for us to meet and create a more just society. Why has it taken such a graphic depiction of injustice, wrong-doing and vile disregard for a human being for us to ask questions of how we treat one another?

There are many deaths in custody, most of them our Aboriginal brothers and sisters. Somewhere in Australia an Aboriginal person has died in custody each month of the last 18 months.

If the revered Elder Mr Ward had been the offspring of elderly residents of Peppermint Grove I assure, believe you me, justice would have been served. G4S, Corrective Services and the criminal justice system would have been brought to account, to an education, and to hefty payouts.

The fact that it has taken such a horrific death for many West Australians to finally take some notice of how we treat one another is something we should really think about. We are all brothers and sisters. For those of us who have felt the wrath of racism every inaction in remedying wrongs is salt to our deepest wounds.

Gerry Georgatos


Letter to the Editor - Flubba Bubba Wubba Jubba - 17.7.2010

YouTube, after some 200,000 views, took down a four minute video of white persons with black paint and frilly hair and fuzzy beards purporting to be of the Nyoongar Aboriginal cultures. However they were not. Rather they disgustingly portrayed racially vilifying and unfair stereotypes of drunkeness and criminality.

The police were also stereotypically parodied. The video is titled Flubba Bubba Wubba Jubba Nyoongah. Its contents contravene racial vilification laws and at no time during the filming are there any disclaimers to argue any contrary intention nor is there any educative narration.

After complaints were lodged with the police who then decided to prosecute the Flubba Wubba video makers YouTube took down the video. The Magistrate unbelievably accepted that the intention of the video makers to racially vilify or disparage had not been proven. The Magistrate believed he had to allow for 'artistic expression'. There was no admission on the part of the defendants during the Court proceedings that they had intended to be 'racist'.

This verdict sets a precedent dismissive of racial vilification laws and extends a dangerous capacity to unscrupulous and just plain 'dumb' people.

The police should consider appealing the Magistrate's decision. The video is racist. Its contents are more than immature, they are disgusting. The Magistrate should have asked Nyoongar people how they felt at being depicted in Flubba Bubba Wubba Jubba Nyoongah.

YouTube after taking down the video has put it back up, alongside some other streamlined rubbish, and already in less than a fortnight there have been an additional 67,000 views.

The First Nations Political Party (federal) and the Ecological, Social Justice, Aboriginal Party (WA) condemns the Magistrate's, YouTube's and the video makers' decisions.

Gerry Georgatos



Letter to the Editor - The Hon. Wilson Tuckey - 27.7.2010

Arguably our elected members of parliament reflect the views and values espoused by the majority of the constituency. The constituency trusts in the elected member to contribute to the shaping of their society.

I beg to ask the constituents of O'Connor whether the Hon. Wilson Tuckey is really who they want to continue shaping the landscape of O'Connor. Is the Hon.Wilson Tuckey reflecting the views of the majority of the constituents in terms of pursing an equitably socially inclusive civil and just society?

I have recently read many of the Hon. Wilson Tuckey's comments, historical and contemporary, especially regarding our Aboriginal peoples and refugees. A Liberal candidate recently lost his endorsement for making disparaging remarks to our Muslim Australians however these pale, by many country miles, to the outrageous comments and views of the Hon. Wilson Tuckey.

The Hon. Wilson Tuckey should either step down or have his endorsement removed by his Party. His comments and views are disrupting the unfolding human rights language and the prospects of a civil and just society. Why is he being allowed such relatively unfettered unaccountability?

Gerry Georgatos




Letter to the Editor - Voting, is it compulsory or not? - 13.7.2010


As long as voting is promoted as a compulsory requirement it is anathema for the Australian Electoral Commission to encourage people to enrol to vote! We have compulsory voting however if a person has never enrolled to vote then that person does not have to vote! Therefore is voting compulsory? When something is compulsory it arguably infers or intends equality and inclusion.

Upon reaching the age of 18 every Australian should automatically be registered to vote. This will ensure everyone's rights in a society that advocates compulsory voting. Citizens should have to update to the AEC only the variation of the electorate that they may have relocated to.

Many Australians are not necessarily recognised by the AEC enrolment criteria. If they live in remote communities they may not have a fixed residential address however a main remote community address. A person who is in a sense nomadic however within a specific electorate should have his or her right to vote preserved. Current legislation that does not recognise our Aboriginal cultures in terms of remote living and those without fixed addresses in rural and metropolitan electorates are systemically racist. This discrimination applies to those who are homeless or of no fixed address. If you live under a bridge or in a creek bed you should nevertheless have the right to vote.

Our prison systems allow only those serving sentences of less than three years with the right to vote if they so wish. Everyone has the right to vote. Most civil liberties and rights should not be diminished because someone is disadvantaged.

The legislation in reference to our Aboriginal peoples and remote communities, in reference to our downtrodden, homeless, in reference to our incarcerated souls, and in reference to those who prefer nomadic lifestyles is in many respects inconsiderate, discriminatory, racist and utterly ironic and most certainly inhibits and prohibits the objective of compulsory voting.

I am describing more than a million people who could influence the political landscape if they were allowed to vote with those of us 'compelled' by law to vote.

Gerry Georgatos
Endorsed Senate Candidate (WA) and Kurdungurlu for the First Nations Political Party




Letter to the Editor - Julia Gillard and Asylum Seekers - 5.7.2010

Julia Gillard is right to argue that people should speak up about their concerns regarding Asylum Seekers and Refugees. Julia is wrong to argue that these concerns are not necessarily racist. Like Pauline Hanson and the million people who voted for her at one time it is important people speak up so we can achieve a cathartic engagement and educate to eliminate ignorance and racism.

Australia has the lowest intake of Asylum Seekers and Refugees in the OECD. We take in less than 0.5% of the world's total intake. Have we no shame?

Let us never forget our greatest shames and scandals; John Howard turned back the SIEV X which was in international waters Australia bound and 146 children, 142 women and 65 men, 353 in total, drowned. And of course the other John Howard lie, the Tampa.

We are not doing enough to help people and rather we are inadvertently clinging to a White Australia policy.

Gerry Georgatos


Letter to the Editor - An Aboriginal Prime Minister - 5.7.2010

Australia has female parliamentarians, female premiers, female governors, a female prime minister, a female governor-general. We've come a long way. However we've come much less way, not far at all, over a longer period for our Aboriginal brothers and sisters, and with our troubling attitudes to first generation migrants and to those very few Asylum Seekers. When Australia has for instance Aboriginal premiers, an Aboriginal prime minister and an Aboriginal governor-general we will have come some way. Ask yourself, will we see this in our lifetime?

Gerry Georgatos


Letter to the Editor - Insensitivity and Over handedness at a Protest Action - 2.7.2010

The WA Deaths In Custody Watch Committee and the First Nations Political Party organised a snap action outside the Department of Public Prosecutions, 12:30pm Friday to publicly peacefully demonstrate the community's outrage at the fact the Director of the DPP deemed, on legal advice, that no category of charges whatsoever could be successfully pursued in the unwarranted death of Warburton Elder, Mr Ward.

Up to one hundred people and the media attended. During the peaceful action an Aboriginal person flying an Aboriginal flag was arrested. It may have been because he was standing one foot off the kerb and on the road. It all happened in seconds. A number of conscientious objectors, some of the media and myself witnessed what happened. We pleaded with the Police to release him. The WA Police on this day at this peaceful protest action utterly disgraced themselves and cast a dark shadow of questions on the content of their training and policies.

The irony in what occurred will never be lost. An Aboriginal person arrested at a peaceful protest about another Aboriginal person having died while in custody. Where were the Officers' interpersonal skills and common decency especially in lieu of the reasons for the protest action? The police officers could have approached me or any of the other organisers and asked for our assistance in properly advising the protestor of expected protocols. I would have done this. Instead the protestor was aggressively manhandled and bundled into the back of a police van amid outcries for the courtesy of his release. The police could have done the right thing instead they continued this unbelievable unnecessary exertion of authority.

If my personal witness of this arrest is typical of how WA Police officers engage with people in either protests or in any situation then it highlights endemic problems. I was embarrassed for the Police, and for my brother-in-law who is two decades into his service as a police officer, and for those officers who would not act in such ways or would not want to. What I witnessed will forever remain an indelible fact in my memory.

If Karl O'Callahan, Christian Porter, Rob Johnson in any way justify the arresting officers' actions and their lack of interpersonal and conciliatory skills then they should resign. if Messrs Barnett and Ripper don't rise up and inculcate propriety and do the job they were elected to and that is to ensure the rights of every West Australian then too should hang their heads in shame.

There were children there who witnessed the events. What are these children thinking? Enough is enough.

Gerry Georgatos
Deaths In Custody Watch Committee (WA)
Kurdungurlu of the First Nations Political Party


Letter to the Editor (The West Australian) - Whistleblowers - 1.7.2010

Paul Murray's article "Whistleblower seeks a fair go" is a courageous effort in trying to depict the real truths and problems, short and long term, faced by those few of us who rise to the occasion. No 'whistleblower' legislation will protect people if the investigating authorities and agencies are not absolutely independent from each other and independent from the institutions they investigate, and who themselves must also be subject to bona fide reviews and other balances and checks.

Plato argued that the "Guardians" of society must be separated from all temptation, from the influence of others.

Gerry Georgatos



Letter to the Editor - Justice delayed for Elder Mr Ward - 28.6.2010

Western Australia's Director of Public Prosecutions has deemed the horrific death of Mr Ward was outrageous, avoidable and wrong. However the Director does not believe that a prima  fasciecase can be brought against any one person who may have contributed to the death of Mr Ward. The Director does not believe a successful prosecution can be achieved against anyone although Mr Ward was transported in the back of a prisoner transport van that reached 55 degrees of heat on a 43 degrees day over three hundred miles and four hours.

Many questions about why Mr Ward was detained, why he was denied Bail, why perceived breaches of the Bail Act occurred, why he did not undergo a prior health check considering the state he was already in when bundled into the van, and why GS4 and the drivers have acted as they have shall now go unexplored and therefore unanswered.

To add  further salt to the deepest wounds the Western Australian Attorney-General, in light of the DPP's decision to not proceed with the laying of charges, claims the consequent need to reassess the ex-gratia payment and the prospect of long overdue compensation to the family of Mr Ward.

The DPP argues, time and time again, that the laying of charges are often assumed in terms of the community interest. I am shocked as to why many people are then dragged through criminal proceedings on much less bases when the DPP cannot see any benefit to the community interest in terms of Mr Ward's death. Who were responsible for Mr Ward's death, the  pixie fairies?

Gerry Georgatos
Deaths In Custody Watch  Committee (WA)


Letter to the Editor - Misleading the people (Labor Party) - 28.6.2010

The Labor Party is misleading the Australian people. Through misleading pass the buck statements, and actually defamatory imputations, they are in effect purporting that they are a party that believes in dictators.

For instance in terms of population they are arguing that Rudd believed in a large Australian population and therefore this was the party view. They are arguing that Gillard believes in a smaller population growth and therefore this is the new party view.

On any number of issues they are insulting us that Julia Gillard's view is different to Kevin Rudd's view. Since when is the Labor Party, or the Liberal Party, or the Greens, the mere view of their Party Leader rather than the sum of the views of the Party?

Gerry Georgatos




Letter to the Editor - Community Cabinet Forum(9.6.2010) - 24.6.2010

June 9, my ten year old daughter and I attended the Rudd/Gillard Community Cabinet Forum at Como Secondary College. The day before I had suggested to a certain sector of our community that the Prime Minister would be caught up in a leadership spill within weeks, just before the end of the Parliamentary sitting period.

At the Forum I had the opportunity to briefly speak to the Prime Minister. I presented him with a letter from me with questions on the inappropriate language used by our Government Ministers in relation to Asylum Seekers, which are in contravention to both ratified UN Conventions and the Racial Discrimination Act. He put it in his shirt pocket and promised to reply.

I noted to the then Prime Minister that politics is a calling and it should be treated as such, as it is a short lived opportunity to contribute to our national identity through consciousness raising. I also suggested that his time may be limited if he does not speak boldly and educative to his colleagues and to the electorate, and that we cannot compromise our unfolding human rights language.

I wished him well though I knew he would not survive as leader much longer if he did not educate all people much more strongly and honestly on those issues I believe in his heart he believed in however let populist generated fears diminish.

23.6.2010, I and a friend met with a Labor Party Secretary on an unrelated matter and during break-in conversation I described the imminence of a leadership spill and that Rudd would be gone. The Party Secretary laughed this off explaining that the Labor Party would not contemplate such a situation before the election! I disagreed. Ten hours later news broke out that there would be a leadership vote the next morning! I don't think he understood that politics has been appropriated by individuals and that they put themselves before politics as a whole, before the Party and before ideals.

I am disappointed in monopoly politics where a couple of major parties have coalesced wide churches of peoples under a single banner, that does not represent them, to dominate parliament from within their party rooms. I am disappointed when what little democracy we have is disregarded by leadership spills. I am disappointed when elections can be called whenever an incumbent government feels it is best placed to win it rather than when it is due. I am mostly disappointed that in the end the Twiggy Forrests of the world have proven beyond doubt that their deep pockets and utter self regarding arrogance determines the political landscape and the decisions within it. it is only days since he boasted that the proposed 'tax' is 'officially dead'. Yes, they are the real Government and Prime Ministers of this country.

The Labor Party at this time has disgraced itself. I shall not vote for them nor for any Party that shall direct them preferences. They have failed democracy and working Australians.

Gerry Georgatos



Letter to the Editor - Replying to Zoltan Kovacs - 18.6.2010

I am responding to Zoltan Kovac's Saturday, June 12, article in the West: "We need a better way of helping Aboriginals." Briefly, the better way is to allow them to manage their rights just like the rest of us try to do.

Zoltan supports Kimberley Labor MLA Carol Martin's view that Aboriginal peoples should not have to go to a separate organisation, that is one which is separate from the rest of society, in pursuit of assistance, remedy and justice. I agree, as I believe affirmative policies should exist within all government services to assist both needy Aboriginal peoples and those who are the poorest amongst us. However, Zoltan mistakenly argues that there is no systemic racism only possibly racist individuals in our governments, agencies and institutions. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Racism is more than just the assumption that it means a hostility towards people because of their race as Zoltan and his dictionary limit its real meaning. Racism is also about doing nothing for those that have been beaten and downtrodden.

Zoltan argues that special favour dispensation to Aboriginal peoples, obviously affirmative actions and policies, are racist because they may not be inclusive of the rest of our society. Zoltan is carrying on that because the Apartheid that we flogged off on Aboriginal peoples has been in principle removed that we have at least achieved equality. Go tell that to the Alyawarr peoples of the Northern Territory, or to most of our 360 Aboriginal communities. We do not have equality, as the majority of Aboriginal peoples still live in the consequences of many generations of inequality.

Zoltan is illogical when he argues, "Certainly, there is race discrimination in the offer of some services exclusively to Aboriginals." Strangely in the next sentence he continues with "...Aboriginal disadvantage is so oppressive, widespread and entrenched that extra help to overcome it is necessary." Make up your mind Zoltan! This assistance is affirmative action, and it is discriminatory to have argued against it.

Zoltan wraps up a long article with, "Surely, the time is overdue for government services to be made available to all people in response to their needs, not because of their race." Zoltan, government services are made available to all people in response to their needs. Centrelink is not the privilege of Aboriginal Australia, nor are the myriad of government agencies. It happens that many Aboriginal Australians, less than 3% of the Australian population, because of the oppressive poverty induced upon them need assistance, and truth be written there is not enough assistance or what they are enduring would not be the case. They also need a right to manage their unfolding and not be humiliated by a nanny state. Zoltan, it's you who is arguing from a racial point of view, and ignorantly so, because 'rich' Aboriginal peoples cannot access assistance that is meant only for the poorest within our society.

Gerry Georgatos



Letter to the Editor - Mr Domadjee - 18.6.2010

The Queensland anti-Corruption body has produced further findings in the Death in Custody of Mr Domadjee. These findings define a police culture where police officers back each other up, naturally this is systemic discrimination. These findings further articulated systemic racism. In Western Australia the Police Commissioner, the Police Minister, the Attorney-General and Editors of newspapers have argued against claims from Labor's Kimberley MLA Carol Martin and against the WA Deaths in Custody Watch Committee claims of systemic racism. They argue there is no systemic racism in our government agencies, and in our police services. When we allow what should not occur to happen, when we do not rise in pursuit of remedy, well this is just plain wrong and the systemic continues.

Gerry Georgatos



Letter to the Editor - The Dingles - 18.6.2010

I don't know the ins and outs of the Coroner's Inquest into Penelope Dingle, however the media seems to have taken an incredible amount of interest in the fine detail. How many of our poorest peoples and how many of our citizens in our remote regions receive no attention? How many are allowed to live in utter abject poverty?

Dr Peter Dingle seems to have been brought under a considerable amount of attention. For some reason my intuition considers the extent of the attention to him as unfair and of a distorting nature. It appears he is in good part being held responsible for Penelope not undergoing early surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

It takes two to tango and society is not set up in ways where we drag people kicking and screaming against their will (except to gaols). When we claim 'intervention' such an action is theoretical and none of us are actually allowed to do much other than discuss matters.

None of us are perfect and none of us should act as if we are. We are just merely people and at best all any of us can do is merely our best. Who is to say that Penelope and Peter did not do their best?

Gerry Georgatos



Letter to the Editor - Facts about profit share increases - 9.6.2010

With all the debate on Profits and Super Profits I thought I'd assist with a couple of facts. Wage share of Australia's total income since 1975 has fallen from 62.7% to 54%. However in this same period profit share of total income has been bumped up from 16.9% to 27.7%. This is a shift of $2.3 trillion dollars to profit share. What does the profit share market, which includes the mining sector, have to say to this?

Gerry Georgatos




Letter to the Editor - We are one people - 8.6.2010