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 Carroll. Otherwise he would not have bothered to write Alice in Wonderland in the full knowledge that Mal would need his support one day. Remember the conversation between the March Hare and Alice?
`Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?’ said the March Hare. `Exactly so,’ said Alice. `Then you should say what you mean,’ the March Hare went on. `I do,’ Alice hastily replied; `at least–at least I mean what I say–that’s the same thing, you know.’
Of course, from time to time, all of us say silly things – just last week, Mal was arguing that he was going to take money from neglecting parents so that their children would be well fed. Now we can all understand that some people’s capacity to feed their children is less than others but I fail to understand how taking a third of welfare money from parents is going to help them manage better; let alone improve their children’s well-being.
The good news is that Mal is getting ready to take over the administration of some of the Northern Territory’s child and welfare policy. Mal knows a lot about administration in fact he was nearly nominated for the Nobel Prize for Administration. He has renamed his ministerial bureaucracy. Henceforth it will know as Maladministration.
Written in 2006
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