In 1962, with the encouragement of the activist and poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal (who was at the time also known as Kath Walker) and Joe McGinniss, President of the Federal Council of Aboriginal Advancement, John visited several Aboriginal communities between Yarrabah and Hopevale on Cape York.
He is grateful to the many Indigenous leaders who then and since have given many hours of their time to help him come to an understanding of the situations which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders face in modern Australia.
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Friday, 31 October 2008 Queensland has had a long history of police killings of Aborigines. In 1848, the Queensland Government set up a Native Police Force under the control of white officers specifically to “disperse” Aborigines considered to be standing in the way […]
How can non-Indigenous Australians dream of a better life when they’ve destroyed so much of the dreaming of Indigenous Australians? Written in 2009 not published
Parity Vol. 19 Issue 1 February 2006 pp.77-79 Back in the early 1960s, an Aboriginal singer from New South Wales, Dougie Young, wrote a song called “In the land where the crows fly backwards”. He explained that crows did so in order to keep the dust out of their eyes. The song contained the lines: […]
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Wednesday, 20 February 2008 I finished reading the collection of essays Coercive reconciliation, edited by Jon Altman and Melinda Hinkson, just prior to the parliamentary apology to the stolen generations. I read the first half of the book when the last government’s intervention […]
*Inspired by Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the wind.” Written in 2008 not published. How many times must a policy fail before it’s tossed in the sea? How many times must a people be jailed before they’re allowed to be free? How many times must a politician lie pretending she just doesn’t see? The answer, my […]
First published in Green Left Weekly 24/6/1998 p.28. Also Union song site 26/8/1998 http://www.mq.edu.au/boomerang/unionsong/u070.html What did you do Daddy to assist John Howard’s ethnic cleansing? Did you just go around donging dagos bashing boongs wacking wogs and slashing slopes? Mr. Brown was a Storm Trooper at the Met Bureau.
I’m grateful for your generosity you have a huge propensity a brain of such immensity capable of intense dexterity and lacking all pomposity announcing with sincerity this magnificent opportunity though forced to jettison mateship you recognised their relationship I think you called it kinship with land could this recognition get out of hand I enquire […]
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Friday, 29 May 2009 Since anthropologist Donald Thompson visited Arnhemland in the late 1930s and early 1940s missionaries and governments have not been able to keep from interfering in the lives of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory. Perhaps the worst form of […]
The ALP in the Northern Territory paid the price for its arrogance, incompetence, infighting, racism and it’s long term diversion of Aboriginal funds to prop up its flagging popularity in Darwin’s northern suburbs. The Territory Labor Party was allowed to get away with the diversion of monies because it, in large part, went along with […]
Published in the National Indigenous Times on the 10 Jan 2005. Dear Bjelke Beattie, So far all I’ve seen is you and Police Minister Spence supporting the police who are to blame for the events which have erupted on Palm Island. You seem, presumably because of your white blindfold, to have no comprehension of what the […]
Dear Mr. Howard, It is great to see you’ve finally accepted your moral limitations. Some of my friends were a little confused when they heard you had ruled out a conscience vote on mandatory sentencing despite all the national and international pressure which was being brought to bear in an attempt to stop the Northern […]
First Published by Al Moharer 14/4/2005 Vol.221. http://www.al-moharer.net/mohhtm/j-tomlinson221b.htm and also by Union Songs 19/4/2005 http://unionsong.com/muse/unionsong/u296html and also the Multicultural Council of the NT Newsletter April 2005 and also New Community Quarterly, Vol.3 , No.2 Winter 2005, p.16. My words are written on a westerly wind if you cannot see them listen to the message I […]
First published in Al-Moharer 7/3/2007. http://www.al-moharer/tomlinson254b.htm Flying squads with cattle prods playing God in Beattie’s racist state, trained thugs high on the drug of righteous indignation. How dare the Blacks or anyone oppose the Beattie nation? You can’t let Aborigines get ideas above their station, so we have cops for rich not poor, that’s why […]
Conflict, Politics and Crime: Aboriginal Communities and the Police by Chris Cunneen (2001) Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest. When I first picked up Conflict, Politics and Crime I thought that Chris Cunneen had gone to a lot of trouble in writing a book for the smallest reading audience in the world – honest cops who wish […]
Noel Pearson’s (The Age 7 May 2002) continuing denunciation of Aboriginal people of Cape York for “substance abuse” and “welfare dependency” has a familiar ring to it. Such an analysis formed part of the stated justification for Archibald Meston’s advocacy which led to the 1897 Protection Act in Queensland. Opium and alcohol were the offending […]
Chapter in Subversive Action: Extralegal Practices for Social Justice, edited by Nilan Yu and Deena Mandell, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Toronto, 2015. In September 1973, a 7 year-old Aboriginal girl, Nola, was collected from her white foster parents in Darwin and returned to her family who lived on a remote Northern Territory outstation. For years her Indigenous […]
They go with their families to the Mindil Beach Markets grab some food, watch some Aboriginal dancers and then wander over the sand hills to the beach to see the sun setting over Fannie Bay. It is almost as if they are just like other Territorians. The next day they put on their uniforms and […]
Chorus: I left my heart in Darwin. Yer, I left my heart in Darwin. I left my heart in Darwin, when I left. I thought my heart was gone when I left my heart in Darwin When, I left my heart in Darwin When I left. It’s the sun sets at East Point and the […]
Queenslanders have for some time watched as Premier Beattie metamorphosed into Peter Bjelke, but it was the police killing of Mulrunji Doomagee on Palm Island which revealed the true extent of the transmogrification. Clearly, in the Premier’s mind, the police were not only in the right but were to be given unfettered powers to deal […]
Wednesday, July 8, 1998 Issue No.324 Green Left Weekly. Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party claim that Australian Aborigines receive “special treatment” not afforded to all other Australians. The “privileges” they receive, she says, “discriminate” against non-Aborigines and should be withdrawn. Native title, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, targeted health, welfare […]
The Emu and the Kanga are on your coat of arms and you say you didn’t really mean to engender harm. But how come the emu and the kangaroo are on your coat of arms? Who gave you permission to put these totem figures there? Did you ask, did you wonder how come they are […]
Land rights, decent health and equal sharing of our wealth. Too much to ask Australia? Or is it. It’s 1993 the U.N. Year of the Indigene. Rape, killing, theft, chopping down what’s left. In our town an Aboriginal Embassy talk of reconciliation but no thought of sovereignty. Too many friends have gone but the struggle […]
This is all the protection which the Howard Government thinks that Aboriginal property rights deserve. Galarrwuy Yunupingu said: My father “would think that no people could be more disadvantaged than the Yolgnu when they had to watch, powerlessly, as bulldozers tore down sacred trees and built huge mines on our former hunting grounds. And having […]
You took Cape York. You stole my hope. You plundered land from me. Then blamed me for my ignorance of what you’d hope you’d be. In place of tribal trust and quiet serenity you missionised you civilised with Christianity and police and grog and squatters dogs and your degeneracy. In the falseness of the day […]
Tony Abbott suggests that Aborigines should move on from the Tent Embassy because relations between Indigenous and other Australians have improved in the last 40 years. Using the same logic, would he dare suggest to the RSL that they demolish all the monuments erected to acknowledge the sacrifices made by service personnel in the two […]
Brian Manning concluded his address at the 45th Anniversary of Gurindji Freedom Day at Daguragu (previously known as Wattie Creek) by reading this poem: Wild horses can’t drag me, and you’ll never tempt me to get into line and pretend you have the truth – the answer: I’ll resist you to the very end. I’ll […]
I rattled the bars on my prison cage I’ve the wisdom of hindsight and old age. I’ve learnt that poor people are better money managers than are poverty experts and welfare counsellors. I know that poor people spend their money more wisely than governments. Just look at the Defense Department if you don’t believe me. […]
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Monday, 28 November 2005 Recently I returned to Darwin after 20 years’ absence. I had worked as a social worker with the Welfare Branch of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs until 1977 and then taught community work at the Darwin Community College until […]
I live in a land of the deaf where the one-eyed king is blind: blind to the suffering of the original owners of country blind to the erosion of hope and aspirations of workers insightful of every opportunity to divide the nation blind to the destructiveness of his racist ideology blind to the lies he […]
Written by John Tomlinson and Penny Harrington. Inspired by and can be sung to the tune of Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man. Chorus: Hey! Mr Johnny Howard, tell a lie to me, I’m hard-up and there is no place I’m going to. Hey! Mr Johnny Howard, tell a lie to me, in the jingle jangle […]
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Tuesday, 15 June 2010 I have been to the top of the mountain and I have looked over and I have seen the glory of the coming of the Kadaitcha man. I looked into his face and saw the sorrow – the sorrow […]
Introduction This paper will argue that much of the current debate about income security, unemployment and social dislocation on Indigenous communities on Cape York fails to address the real issues confronting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in these communities. In significant areas, the assertions made about ‘welfare dependency’, domestic violence, unemployment, economic underdevelopment and drunkenness […]
19/6/2012 Dear Minister, Thank you for ending Jenny Macklin’s racist and self defeating “trial” of withholding parent’s social security payments if their child or children aren’t attending school regularly. There are many reasons why some children do not attend school regularly such as the way they are taught, learning difficulties, bullying, the approachability of the school, […]
Dear Prime Minister, I have an undergraduate Social Work Degree and a Research Masters Degree (as a result of working with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community in South Brisbane). I have an Arts Honours degree in Anthropology and a PhD which looked at the political obstacles to introducing a guaranteed minimum income in […]
Sir, The police shooting of two young Aboriginal teenagers and the subsequent bashing of one of the wounded lads reflects badly on your force. The inevitable delays, cover-ups and obfuscation which follow such events do nothing to enhance the reputation of the NSW police force. One of your deputies called on the relatives to trust […]
Dear Premier, I noted with interest your offer to Indigenous people of this State to settle for $4,000 for lost wages which were paid into the welfare benefit fund and then disappeared by the ‘protectors’. I note that this amount is between one tenth and one twentieth of the realistic loses incurred. I think it […]
Dear Mr Rudd, I was appalled by your attack on Ms Marion Scrymgour for her speech opposing the Liberals invasion of the Aboriginal communities. She knows much more about what is happening in Aboriginal communities in the NT than you and the Malignant Broughs of this world. The intervention in Aboriginal communities in the Northern […]
Written 21 March 2006 Dear Chris I read with interest your speech to the John Curtin Institute of Public Policy. I was not surprised by Christopher Pearson’s “Shift in the right direction” The Australian 18/3/2006 allegedly supportive response or his slightly less obnoxious ABC Perspectives commentary 20/3/2006. Of course, if you are hoping to have […]
(Poem inspired by a photo taken by Dr Bill Day of Dulcie Malimara fishing in the creek at low tide.) Too good to lose too good to dam. Yes, Ludmilla Creek is too damn good to lose. Kulaluk and the traditional owners hold in trust this beautiful creek with its barra, salmon and mangroves and […]
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Tuesday, 28 October 2008 “Father forgive her, she knows not what she’s doing.” Contrary to recommendations made by her own Review, Minister Jenny Macklin has decided to continue, for at least another year, with compulsorily quarantining half of the Centrelink payments paid to […]
First published Al-Moharer 30/5/2006 Vol. 243 http://www.al-moharer.net/mohhtm/tomlinson243b.htm also published Union Songs 16/6/2006 http://unionsong.com/u366.html also published in the National Indigenous Times 5th September 2006 http://www.nit.com.au/TheArts/story.aspx?id=7181 Who wants to be a hooligan when you can be a fool again? Why would you be a ruffian when you can be a Broughian? Never have to think things through. […]
Written by John Tomlinson & Pete Hancock to acknowledge Shane Stone’s various roles in introducing mandatory sentencing in the Northern Territory, directed mainly at incarcerating young or homeless Aborigines. Let me tell you a little story I know you’ll want to hear I achieved the rank of Major in my military career. I wasn’t going anywhere […]
November 2007 How JT saw it There is a growing international apprehension about your law and order issues in the Northern Territory. The Northern Territory Government has distorted and overblown a fear of crime in order to promote a law and order campaign. They consistently misuse and misquote statistics. They even suggest the “measures enacted […]
Howard Government Minister, Mal Brough, recently claimed that Paedophile rings were operating on Indigenous Communities in Central Australia. When asked to produce evidence of the existence of such organised child sex abuse groups he changed his story arguing that people should not get hung-up on terminology. Well I’m right behind Mal – as is Lewis […]
Minister for Intervening in other people’s affairs, Parliament House, Canberra. Madam, There are some pretty incompetent ministers in the Gillard government but you are the stupidest. After reviewing your actions in relation to the NT Intervention since 2007 and your new policy of intervening in Indigenous communities announced on 14/11/11, the Deagon Institute has decided […]
* This song is based on Colum Sands’ song: “The last house in our street.” Mulrunji was killed by a big burley bullyman. Throw the ball against the wall and back to me. The policeman who did it said it must have been an accident. Open up your eyes and tell me what you see. […]
Paper given at International Conference on engaging Communities, Brisbane 14- 17/8/2005 also published by in New Transitions the Journal of the Youth Affairs Network of Queeensland, Vol.10 No. 1. pp. 3-16, 2006 This paper sets out to consider relationships between Indigenous and non- Indigenous people, particularly interactions with governments and their agents in Queensland. Many […]
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted 20 January 2011 Much has been written about the Northern Territory Intervention, in its various manifestations, since Mal Brough announced, on 21st June 2007, that he was sending in the army and was going to ensure that Aboriginal children would be examined by […]
There were many politicians who made speeches quite inane, pretending they’d supported her in struggles and her pain. If I hadn’t known better I’d have thought I was insane. He was a city councillor a man of great renown, speaking at her funeral though he’d tried to keep her down. He trotted out platitudes to […]
January 2008 Re: Intervention in the Northern Territory and Queensland. On the 17th January 2008 you claimed that the intervention under Labor would only utilize techniques which had been shown to work. The first question that must be asked is “worked for whom?” There is no evidence that using racist income support policies does anything […]
Who’s laughing now kookaburra quiet, echidna gone in their place cows and sows and I am forlorn.
Written in 2000, published in Parity. Following the recent death of a young Groote Eylandt man serving a 28 day mandatory sentence in a Darwin detention centre, a number of eminent jurists have denounced mandatory sentencing on the grounds that it does not allow judges and magistrates to exercise discretion. These jurists considered that the […]
I rattled the bars on my prison cage. I’ve the wisdom of hindsight and old age. I’ve learnt that poor people are better money managers than poverty experts. They spend their money more wisely than government ministers. Just look at the Defence Department if you don’t believe me. I know that government paternalism stigmatises recipients. […]
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Thursday, 5 March 2009 Kevin Rudd claims the essence of his 2009 stimulus package is to get the economy moving again and to safeguard jobs. It is interesting that the rhetoric about employment in 2009 is less exuberant now than in December 2008 […]
I’ll tell you a story, I’ll tell you a tale of coppers who kill and policemen who fail. They didn’t suspend them they didn’t need bail and they’re never likely to be inside of jail. Oh he was from Cherbourg and just having fun then he swore at some coppers then tried to run. The […]
First published Green Left Weekly 2001. You peer insensate from the parapet like some myopic gargoyle one eye blinded by the future the other averted from the past. And from your twisted spout- regret. Deep and sincere, no doubt: but, not sorrow: yet. Gabbling grotesque glyph distorting the story of settlement disguising deeds malign by […]
I was asked the other day if I would work without any pay on slogans to help the NT get tourists to prolong their stay. So with thoughts congested, I suggested they might like to try. “Mandatory sentencing is something for the whole family.” or “Get sedated. Visit Darwin’s jails and see where southern taxpayers’ […]
Our Prime Minuscule shrinks in stature everyday he is office. He spent yesterday at a United Nation’s meeting in New York strutting his claim that Australia has a generous and humanitarian refugee policy. He argued he would be able to be even more generous but for the fact that he has to pander to an […]
I asked them for my wages they said to ask the boss. He said he didn’t know, he was at a bit of a loss. I asked him where my money went each and every cent he said he’d given it to the mission and to the government. Protectors of Aborigines in Queensland, mainly missionaries […]
Dear Secretary, I wish to make this submission to the Senate Select Committee on the Administration of Indigenous Affairs. I have been involved with Indigenous people and organisations since 1963 in Queensland, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and the ACT. I was a social worker employed by the Welfare Branch in Darwin 1965-68 and 1973- […]
Yes Terra Nullius made fools of all of us, legal fiction and our greed became our overwhelming creed. We stole their land and watched them bleed. Their rights to land we would not concede insisting on proper title and English deed.
Written in 2004 not published Shall I look you in the eye or hang my head and heave a sigh? The choice is dead easy. What do I do, what do I buy do I tell the truth or do I lie? The choice is dead easy. Confront you till the day I die or […]
Don’t talk to me or guilt or want. Don’t tell me where I’m in default. Your country now is mine by right of English law and oversight. Blackburn did terra nullius decree for mines and pastoral industry. Don’t come here with modern law or telling what Eddy Mabo saw, or what Australia’s High Court found. […]
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Tuesday, 9 March 2004 The Howard government says Indigenous Australians will be assisted by what it terms, “practical reconciliation”, rather than by pursuing what Co-chairman of Reconciliation Australia Fred Chaney calls “the symbolic aspects” of the Indigenous struggle. The Government claims that it […]
First published in Income Insecurity: The Basic Income Alternative Basic Income Guarantee Australia website 2003. This chapter will examine the reasons why Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders are the most economically disadvantage people in 21st century Australia. It is present day structures and actions which inhibit indigenous people economic success rather than some aspect of Indigenous culture […]
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Wednesday, 14 October 2009 The Federal Howard Liberal Coalition Government, with Mal Brough as Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, launched the Northern Territory Intervention in Aboriginal communities on June 21, 2007. They claimed to be acting to save the children from alcohol-fueled violence and […]
National Indigenous Times. Issue 113 – 7/9/2006 http://www.nit.com.au/Opinion/ story.aspx?id=7739 Now that the hullabaloo surrounding Prime Minister Howard’s decision to remain as Leader of the Liberal Party has died down, the background to that decision can now be revealed. John Howard spoke exclusively to National Indigenous Times about his reasons for staying. There is a widespread public […]
Queensland built on racist hate. Stolen wages built this state. The good news is it’s not too late justice doesn’t have to wait. From Aurukun to old Mapoon from Lockhart with a broken heart from Bamaga and an old guitar to Palm and a worn out psalm work was done till the setting sun rations […]
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Friday, 29 June 2007 The first Howard Government Budget 1996-7 removed $400 million from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. In 2004 he abolished the Commission in its entirety. Howard claimed he was going to solve the practical problems which prevented Indigenous […]
The Editor The Courier Mail Dear Editor The Beattie Government has displayed remarkable arrogance in its handling of the winegate saga. There is one law for members of parliament and another for other Queenslanders. Under legislation that the Beattie Government passed last year police can seize unopened alcohol from people sitting in parks if they […]
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